Hardwear Sessions

In November 2007, Mountain Hardwear athlete Jon Bowermaster and a small team of athletes, scientists, and documentary filmmakers traveled to Antarctica to launch the Antarctica 2008 expedition.

Part of the Global Warming 101 initiative, Antarctica 2008 will document global warming's impact upon the South Pole.

"If in the final equation the surface of the Earth is a single, complex system," Jon writes,"Then Antarctica is its heart, the slowly beating pump that drives the whole world." Antarctic ice helps regulate the earth's climate. Global warming destablizes the processes that regulate ice formation at the Antarctic, disturbing the earth's fragile thermoregulatory processes.

Jon and his crew intend to provide "an empirical look at how the seventh continent is changing and evolving" in response to global warming. The Antarctic 2008 expedition aims to help us understand how these changes affect the oceans. The Antarctica 2008 expedition focuses on the remote eastern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula, an area seldom visited by humans. Unlike the west side of the Antarctic, which is protected by large barrier islands, the east side is completely open to the elements.

"We intend," Jon writes, "To get as close as we can to the remains of the Larsen Ice Shelf, to document how it is today." In March 2002, the Larsen-B ice shelf collapsed into the ocean. The 500-billion-ton ice shelf fractured into thousands of tiny icebergs. Scientists believe that global warming directly contributed to the Larsen-B's collapse. A harbringer of things to come, the Larsen-B's collapse gave scientists a glimpse into the Antarctic's future.

Visit the Antarctica 2008 website to read Jon's dispatches from the field, watch documentary footage, and learn more about climate change's impact on the South Pole.