Photo album: "Return of an expedition"

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Between two launches of balloon, we are going to visit a group of friends coming back from an expedition on the Antarctic continent. They left four months ago to try and reach the Russian station of Vostok, two thousand kilometres away, while drilling bores along the way to get ice cores for glaciological studies. Unfortunately, failures of the vehicles which had suffered a lot during another expedition the year before and the bad weather conditions that had made difficult the arrival of spare parts to be parachuted by an American aircraft, didn't permitted the full success of the expedition. They had to go back before reaching Vostok.

We are flying aboard an Alouette 2 helicopter, to a point, about thirty kilometres from Dumont d'Urville base, where our friends have just arrived from an expedition towards the Russian station Vostok, situated at the point farther from every shores of the Antarctic continent (nicknamed the inaccessibility pole).

We are beginning to sight the vehicles of the expedition.

We are drawing near the vehicles of the expedition. They have stopped forming five parallel lines oriented according to the main winds direction. This permits to limit snow accumulation.

We can see, here, an element of the travel party, it is made of a tracked vehicle Hotchkiss HB40 "Castor" attached to a caravan mounted on skis and a sledge.

The helicopter has just landed. A member of the French Polar Expeditions is walking away with the letters addressed to the expedition people. It is the first contact we have with the expedition since they have left the base, about four months ago.

We are seeing one of the five tractors HB40. The French Polar Expeditions (EPF) asked Hotchkiss to develop these vehicles, of a larger capacity than the weasels, according to their specifications. They had been used for the first time in Greenland during the EGIG 2 (*) campaign (1967-1968). They have been moved, then, to Adelie Land.  (*) If you know the French language, you can read "l'Histoire des Pôles" on the AMAEPF (Amicale des Missions Australes Et Polaires Françaises) website:  Histoire des pôles Les premiers grands programmes scientifiques internationaux. L'expédition glaciologique internationale au Groenland 1967-1968 (EGIG 2)

We are ready to leave after this short visit. We can see on the background one of the sledges whose content is protected by a plastic cover.

Two members of the expedition are watching us taking off. The caravans are used as a kitchen, a dining room, a laboratory, a meeting room, a drawing room, according to the needs. Members of the expedition sleep in the HB40.

A few days from now the vehicles will be stored, about ten kilometres from the base, where they will spend the winter under the snow. The ice cores retrieved during the journey will be stored in a cold container inside the ship Thala Dan. They will be transported to France where they will be analysed by a glaciological laboratory.

We are flying back to the base. We can sight, still far away, the archipelago of Pointe Géologie.

We can see, on the snow, a storage of materials and on background, the tongue of the Astrolabe glacier advancing into the see.

We are drawing near Pétrel island where is situated Dumont d'Urville base.

Before flying back to the base, we are flying over the edge of Astrolabe glacier whose surface is scored with deep crevices.

Another view of the wild surface of the glacier.

At foreground, we can see the antenna of the Alouette 2 and, below, we are having a bird's eye view on the crevices of the glacier.

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