Staff from the company Arctic Trucks in Iceland are currently taking part in an expedition in Antarctica. Yesterday evening they reached the South Pole in their super-4x4s. This comes after they also rescued a stranger from near-certain death in a crevasse last Friday.

A statement from Arctic Trucks says that the man (an employee of an Antarctica tour company) decided to go for a walk alone in the area around the Novo airbase early Friday morning. When he did not return, his colleagues followed his footsteps in the snow to a crevasse. Upon calling his name, it became clear that he had fallen down a long way and was completely stuck. After several fruitless rescue attempts, including trying to drag him up with a snowmobile, an emergency call was put out to the Arctic Trucks crew, who were also in the Novo area at the time.

“Two cars from Arctic Trucks were sent, and on one of the cars was a specially designed crane device made by the company. The cars were tied together 40 metres apart and one of them was driven to the very edge of the crevasse. With the help of the crane and a winch, one man was sent down into the gap in the ice with the necessary equipment to free the man’s foot, which had become badly stuck,” the statement reads.

According to Eyjolfur Mar Teitsson and Freyr Jonsson, Arctic Trucks employees who took part in the rescue, the procedure of freeing the man was very difficult and as he had been stuck in the ice for some six hours, he was very cold and would likely not have survived if the Arctic Trucks crew had not arrived when it did along with specialist equipment.

No pictures have been released from the rescue, but the photograph with this article shows the crane being tested this summer on a glacier in Iceland.

Information on the team’s route can be found on www.arctictrucks-expeditions.com, and a revealing daily diary is also available on the site.

Photo: Arctic Trucks