Antarctic rescue like scaling Grand Canyon

A snow-covered, windswept, freezing, inhospitable, inverse Grand Canyon awaits rescuers attempting to reach three airmen missing in Antarctica.

The Canadian men aboard a Twin Otter aircraft went missing on Wednesday night. Their locator beacon was set off about halfway between the South Pole and McMurdo Station.

Dense cloud, heavy snow and winds up to 170kmh have hampered rescue efforts so far.

Antarctica New Zealand operations and infrastructure manager Graeme Ayres said it was difficult to describe the vastness.

‘‘The terrain, if I was to liken it to something it’s sort of like the Grand Canyon. It’s very similar to that, only on a reverse scale. It’s huge. And glaciated as well.

‘‘The winds have been blowing up to about 90 knots, the visibility is about 200m on the ground.

‘‘The temperatures with that will be about minus 30 degrees Celsius [plus] wind chill. They’re hard conditions to work in and hard conditions to mount a rescue in.’’

Aerial surveillance would identify possible chopper landing sites, Mr Ayres said, and how far the joint US-New Zealand rescue team may have to go on foot. Even a short-distance mission was dangerous and like ‘‘mounting an expedition’’, he said.

Maritime New Zealand spokesman Steve Rendle said the beacon was transmitting from high up on a mountain in the Queen Alexandra range, at an altitude of about 3900m.