With about 4 hours of sleep in the past two days, I am more than ready to be sitting on a plane preparing to take a very BIG nap. Despite a hectic few weeks, I actually feel really good. I am excited to finally be underway. For almost three years, I have been planning and preparing for this moment.

I'm not nervous or excited. As time passes and I gain more experience, I seem to get more pragmatic than anything. There are still some big hurdles to jump before getting to the ice and our starting point at Hercules Inlet. I've definitely learned to manage my expectations. Anything can happen between now and then and the list is fairly long: customs in Santiago, making sure all the gear makes it to Punta Arenas, food purchase and pack, final gear tweaks, sewing fur ruffs on the Sierra Designs Anoraks, some lingering office work, and a few other odds and ends.

Still, I can't help but be a little excited. I'M SKIING TO THE SOUTH POLE. For around 53 days, I will be traveling across one of the last great wilderness areas left on the planet. Along the way, my team and I will have innumerable successes and hardships. Pared down to the bare essentials of survival we will become intimately familiar with the personality and moods of Antarctica.

While I have skiied to the South Pole before, the STP team will be traveling along a different, longer route which adds another level of excitement as well. More important (and the ultimate goal of the Save the Poles expedition) is the team's effort on real world solutions to global warming. Over the next two months, savethepoles.com will feature steps that we can all take to reduce carbon emissions. Please visit the global warming page regularly and learn more from Save the Poles partners Newsviine.com, Center for Biological Diversity, Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center, Science Teacher Lynae Anderson and her students at Lakeville High School, Seventh Generation and much much more.

So this is where are paths diverge dear reader. You on your own adventures and me on mine. We are all explorers in one way or another. Still, I believe the goal of explorers in the 21st century is not to go out and conquer these places, but more to protect them.

That is the ultimate goal of the Save the Poles expedition!

Image: Expedition electronics - satellite phone, pda, expedition battery, digital camera, hd video camera, battery charger all packed in Granite Gear soft storage cells.

For more information, please visit www.savethepoles.com

For media inquiries, please contact lora@screamagency.com

For technical inquires, please contact webexpeditions.net