The race kicked off six days ago. Teams biked through a night and then put crampons on to trek into the vast ice fields of Patagonia. Navigation into the white-wall valleys ensued, including crevasse leaps, glacial melt water crossing, and miles trekked through frozen otherworldly terrain.
700 kilometers long, and with a 10-day cutoff, the Patagonian Expedition Race in southern Chile is still going strong. But beyond the ice fields, the tough course and horrid weather of the region has forced many teams to drop out.
Team GearJunkie/YogaSlackers is one of the few squads left on the course. Currently, it looks like our team is in 3rd place, with the British and the Japanese teams ahead.
These images, by Alexandre Buisse and Chris Radcliffe, capture some of the epic scenery and action already from the event. Stay tuned as the teams makes their way further south toward a finish line in Punta Arenas, still many miles and many days ahead.
—Stephen Regenold, editor of GearJunkie, raced with GearJunkie/YogaSlackers in the Patagonian Expedition in 2010 and 2011. Follow our team this week as they race live via a DeLorme-powered interactive map on YogaSlackers.com.
