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Welcome

The idea of doing the Patagonian Triathlon Expedition emerged on one side, of the enchantment that Patagonia, with its incomparable beauty and vast nature, poured over each of us, members of this project. On the other side, also born of the passion of our team for extreme sports and outdoor activities who, with the backing of a major background and experience, plus a hard physical and mental preparation, take the challenge and commitment that a venture like this requires.
This website is only one of the pieces of this dream of ours. It is intended to share this experience with you, to show the beauty of the place where it is carried out and to reveal the changes Patagonia has undergone.
Thanks for joining us!

Patagoniani Triathlon

The 'Patagonian Triathlon' will be a highly demanding sports challenge. Severe weather conditions and technically difficult route places the expedition on the top shelf of what has been so far called extreme.

The expedition will set off from Neuquen, northern Patagonia. Two Poles will bike 2000 kilometers through Patagonian highland and Andean Cordillera. The difficulty of this first stage is constituted by mountainous characteristics of the region, unfavorable surfaces on most distances, blustery winds and wintertime beginning.

The second stage is devoted to traversing the distance from Jorge Montt glacier to Balmaceda glacier – the two extremities of the Continental Glacier, the third biggest ice arena on the planet.

This is probably the most difficult part of the expedition. This is best illustrated by the fact, that so far only one team has successfully crossed this glacier.

Chileans who have done that spent over 90 days on the glacier and of those it took them 30 days to pass through 5 kilometers of Falla de Reichert. That point is a monstrous fracture and an ice wall of more than half a kilometer to climb, that has successfully stopped more than 30 expeditions so far from continuing their efforts.

Traversing that glacier would be a world class achievement and we would be known as the first winter expedition to have accomplished that. Similarly, we could be the first ones to pass the whole Continental Glacier – over 400km - without any external help.

The third stage of the expedition is to kayak down the Magellan and Beagle channels from Punta Areanas to Ushuaia. Ushuaia is known as the 'End of the World' and lies on the tip of the Tierra del Fuego. Two Poles will cross those windy regions, uninhabited by humans, kayaking for over 800 kilometers among the enormous glaciers of the Darwin Cordillera. On their way, they will have to take time to carry their kayaks through the glaciers to the other side of the Cordillera.

Goal of The Expedition

The expedition, led by Arek Mytko apart from being a purely sports challenge has an ambition to provide more visibility to one of the most stunning regions of Latin America and the changes that have been happening over the last decades.

The climate warming is not fiction, it's a fact. Huge glaciers descending from Continental Glacier – like Petito Moreno - are retreating and melting in a rapid pace. Commercialization of touristic spots results in cumulation of waste, pollution and intrusion into nature. Pumas or deers, previously numerous in their habitat, are now close to extinction. The Ushuaia Bay is now a sewage. Right at the border of the Lapataia National Park trees are cut down to make room for expensive residential buildings.

Of course one living elsewhere could ignore the ecological problem, as it relates to a far country, but in the same fashion as Amazon, Patagonia is a source of pure natural resources, uncontaminated water, untouched nature – a gulp of clean air for crowded and noisy metropolies.Tourists from Europe can savour the magnificent views of Andean and wildlife on Tierra del Fuego under the condition that nature is treated with due respect and care.

The Patagonian Triathlon expedtion will cross places where wildlife still has a say and where it dictates. The members of the expedition will try to bring the wildlife closer to the spectators and supporters of their effort.

Preparation

Each expedition has a preparation phase, that in most cases starts months before. Preparation for Patagonian Triatlon Expedition is a huge boiling pot of ideas and attempts to eliminate problems arising on the way; fixing the route, working the logistics, getting all of the required authorizations and hundreds of kilograms of equipment.

It's the first part of the preparation, which takes hours of work spent over computers, writing letters and consulting atlases and maps.

Second part is about physical preparation – training.

The members of expedition crew are used to doing sports every day. Be it purely in training mode - in the gym, swimming pool, climbing wall – or during competitions and excursions.

Currently both of the expedition team members follow daily rigor of training. For Adam that means biking a couple of tens of kilometers a day and spending weekends in Polish mountains. Antek's training includes running and indoor climbing each day followed by a complete gym routine. He visits Scottish mountains on the weekends.

Everyday training routine is a key requirement to make the expedtion come true.

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