The Art of Flight Page #2

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it's like epic.

Sounds like a great time.

And then, the more we started looking into it,

especially when we got down here,

that's when everything flipped up-side-down.

It's a place difficult to handle.

Mainly, here, everything is weather permitting.

This is like... like a beast,

like a live beast that doesn't like visitors.

You know, it became pretty apparent

immediately when we got down here

just how exposed to the elements we were gonna be, and

how we truly were at the mercy of our own decisions.

You cannot get in and you cannot escape from this place.

We are here in Puerto Williams,

in Navarino Island on the Beagle Channel,

one of the main gates to Antarctica.

And here it's a very, very remote place.

It's nothing, just the island.

It's very cold, mean, bad weather.

Sometimes you need to wait one or two months

to have two or three good-weather days.

When we first got down here,

we kept hearing about this place called the Darwin Range.

So we asked our pilot if he takes us there.

He said, "absolutely not.

"It's where the devil is."

Darwin?

Devil in the Darwin?

- You should consider a second the other time.

- No, no.

Does the Devil live?

Is that where he lives?

Tell me what you think, tell us.

He knows this area well and I respect his opinion of that.

- You are the pilot. Bottom line.

- Okay.

You are here in charge of our safety

- and I respect that.

- Yes.

We all respect that.

We cannot push that.

We could walk, we could walk this.

I mean, I don't know, maybe there's a big river here that we cannot cross.

- Across the glacier.

- I know you don't know.

We'd have to look at it. We'd have to look at it, of course.

Maybe this is a very big river. I don't know, I don't know.

The only problem is that there's absolutely no backup if some thing happens.

The first thing,

we follow through with our plan that the pilot has approved.

Don't forget I am in f***ing charge of what's going on here.

Then let's go get tons of fuel and go here.

What planet the f*** are you from?

After a long discussion, we decided to try.

It's 6:
00 a.m. and we finally have no wind.

This is some of the gnarliest weather that I've ever dealt with.

We are going to...

..one of the sketchiest areas down in the southern tip.

Really variable weather conditions.

It can change like that.

We have 40 minutes of working fuel once we are out to the Darwin Range

and it's gonna take an hour to get there.

But he's not gonna shut the helicopter down and It's gonna be a time crunch.

It's a strange thing, you know,

the first time we laid eyes on Darwin.

It was a real just position of

the surrounding terrain -- mountains

to this iced-over island.

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