The following is a summary of the whole journey in 2004.

26-28 October: Flew from Tokyo to Punta Arenas. On the way I met Fiona and Craig for the first time in Gatwick airport.

29 October: Arrived in Punta Arenas and meet Denise and Hannah.

30-31 October: Briefing and organising in Punta Arenas. Catch up on sleep after the very long flight and drank our last beer.

1 November: Flew to Patriot Hills in Antarctica. We were very lucky with the weather and flew exactly on the date scheduled - many other flights were delayed by 1-2 weeks.

1-2 November: Arrived in Patriot Hills and spent a couple of days getting organized and conditioned to the new environment. Patriot Hills consists basically of a few tents in summer, and is the nearest runway to South America in Antarctica.

3 November: Flew by a small Twin Otter plane to Hercules Inlet, which is a frequent starting point for expeditions to the Pole. Hercules Inlet is the notional "coast" of Antarctica, although we didn't actually see any water since the ice sheet extends for several hundred miles out into the Weddell Sea.

3-6 November: Walked back from Hercules Inlet to Patriot Hills. This was intended as a "shake down" trip to test out equipment and get prepared. However the conditions ended up too severe to really treat this as a training trip and we were rather thrown in at the deep end instead, in fact to such an extent that Fiona suffered severe frostibite on her hands as well as hypothermia and had to pull out.

7-8 November: We spent a couple more days at Patriot Hills to get reorganized and finish up any necessary equipment adjustments. We ate a lot of food and got ready for the big journey.

9 November: Started skiing South!

6 December: Reached our half-way point at the Thiels Mountains. Here there is a 'skiway' runway that is marked with black plastic bags. This was the point at which I pulled out of the trip and flew back to Patriot Hills.

7 December: The rest of the team had a rest day at Theils. They picked up items for resupply, which included all the food and fuel for the last leg and extra items such as a change of clothes. These items had been flown there ahead of time and we had found them in a pile marked with a bamboo stick. They left behind garbage, dirty clothes and other unnecessary items. These items were picked up later by a Twin Otter on a flight coming back from the Pole.

We carried all our rubbish with us in order not to pollute the environment. We left our first load at Thiels and then carried out the rest from the Pole to Patriot Hills.

8 December: The rest of the team carried on heading South on the final leg to the Pole.

10 December: I flew from Patriot Hills back to Punta Arenas.

28 December: The rest of the team arrived at the South Pole.

The following is the detailed log of the journey up until 6 December when I pulled out. There is some more information here.