June 3, 2004 Famed British adventurer David Hempleman-Adams announced Sunday that he plans to fly 11,500 miles from Cape Columbia in the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn in Chile in a single-engine Cessna 182. Hempleman-Adams, along with his Canadian co-pilot Lorne White, will attempt to break a number of speed aviation records over the course of the three-week trip.
Hempleman-Adams, 47, is perhaps best known for the distance and altitude records he's set in recent years using his vehicle of choice—an open basket hot-air balloon (see Outside Online's September 2003 story, "Big Kid in A Wicker Basket").
"I originally thought of doing this challenge by balloon, but it's just not practical," Hempleman-Adams said Sunday, regarding his upcoming expedition.
Hempleman-Adams and Lorne will be flying a plane modified for traveling long distances. Specifically, the Cessna will be outfitted with a relatively lightweight fuselage and a large ferry tank that will allow the pilots to cut down on fuel stops.
"We've had to strip everything out of the back of the plane to get extra fuel in," Hempleman-Adams told the BBC.
Throughout the adventure, the pilots will be at the mercy of prevalent weather conditions. In their way will be fog and —30 degree arctic temperatures, potentially lethal tropical storms over the Caribbean sea, sweltering heat over the equator, and frigid winter conditions in Patagonia and Southern Chile.
Hempleman-Adams will pick up the modified Cessna in Pittsburgh at the end of June and the pilots will then make their way to Cape Columbia, approximately five hundred miles from the North Pole. From there, the duo will head to Eureka in the Canadian Arctic.
"Unfortunately because of the mountains and the terrain we have to make sure the weather's good to be able to get back to Eureka because there's no other strips or airports we can go into," the explorer said of the arctic leg of his trip. "And this is an amazingly remote area, so we have to get that section, which is right at the start of the trip-- we have to get that right."
Then, they'll move on to the Arctic's Corwallis Island with stops at Rankin Inlet and Timmins. From there it will be on to Montreal, Toronto, and New York continuing to Baltimore, Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia and the Florida Everglades. Leaving the continental U.S., Hempleman-Adams will then skirt Cuba by flying from Nassau in the Bahamas to Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. Next, it's a long haul 650 miles to Caracas, Venezuela. From there, the pilots will take a deep breath as they make their way 2,500 miles over the Amazonian rainforest in Brazil to reach the city of Manaus on the Amazon River. From Manaus the two adventurers will head to Cuiaba, on to Asuncion in Paraguay, Buenos Aires in Argentina and a stop in Comodoro Rivadavia in Patagonia before hitting Porto Williams and Punta Arenas in southern Chile and moving on to Cape Horn.
In 2000, Hempleman-Adams flew a balloon over the North Pole, becoming the first man to do so and earning both a place in the Guinness Book of World Records and a Gold Medal from the British Aero Club. And in addition to his flying accomplishments, the adventurer completed the Explorers' Grand Slam in 1998, in which he conquered the North and South geographical and magnetic poles and climbed the highest mountain on each of the world's seven continents.
