Antarctica Prep

I will be heading to Antarctica in December. I will be taking a trip to Antarctica with Antarctica XXI Expeditions which is a Fly / Cruise vs the normal straight cruise option. By flying to Antarctica, you skip the 4 days of travel back and forth across the Drake passage. But because we are flying there is a weight limit of 44 pounds of total gear you can bring. That is 44 pounds for all my camera gear, laptop and my clothes. When I first signed up for this trip and heard about the 44-pound weight limit I was thinking “no big deal” since then I have discovered hitting 44 pounds is no simple task. I created a spreadsheet to keep track of all my gear, I bought a luggage scale and got to work. When you find that you give up almost 25% of your weight to just the bags empty you start to see how big your problem is and how selective you need to be to make it all work. After adding all the weight for my camera, computer gear and bags to my spreadsheet I can see that I’m at 39.8 pounds without any clothes. My camera bag is the single heaviest thing I will be taking 5 lb. and I upgraded to get the weight down, with my duffel bag I will be at 8.5 pounds in just bags. So, the next step will be to start dropping weight and coming up with a strategy to meet the 44-pound weight limit.