All teams and expeditions : wrap up

Published on 30.03.2010 - General Info

Expeditions' positions

It's now about a month since most of the Arctic expeditions left terra firma, each to embark on its respective adventure. Explorapoles has drawn up a brief analysis and is taking stock.

First observation: the teams have taken care to set out earlier this season, towards the end of February, undoubtedly fearing the ravages of global warming and its consequences on the ice pack's topography. And they were right.

Without counting the ones that have made no announcements and are shunning all publicity for their endeavours (but it seems to us that, this year, there are hardly any clients of this kind on the ice, except no doubt at the Russian Barneo station from which those who are starting in the last degree set out), we have identified eight expeditions that have embarked upon the Ward Hunt / North Pole route. Plus one, the Catlin Arctic Survey, which has also embarked upon the Ward Hunt-NP route but without looking to get to the Pole since they are in charge of a scientific expedition and for them the legendary spot has no part to play. Among these expeditions, let's recall that there are three solos, Christina Franco, Tom Smitheringale and Michele Portrandolfo. All these expeditions are still on the ice except for that of the Irishman Pat Falvey, who threw in the towel barely a week after setting foot on the pack ice, because one of its member's fingers were frostbitten.

Second general remark: it seems that the progress of the teams during the first two weeks of their treks this season has been "easier" than envisaged. Admittedly, they have had to endure the strong compression areas and the chaotic ice that characterise the area where the pack ice comes into contact with the coast of Greenland, but they got through them pretty well -on the whole. Even though it was terribly cold during the first fortnight of March.

What was on the other hand a first in the history of Arctic exploration, was that at more than 150 kilometres from the coasts, the teams have had to fight against some completely dislocated pack ice, fissured with interstitial waters and leads that opened and closed again before their very eyes. A pack ice formed above all by young ice and subject to a gigantic drift (Franco for example lost twenty kilometres in two days!) that we ourselves, here at the Expolorapoles HQ, have never known in the thirteen years that we have been following the great polar expeditions. This drift seemed to happen above all between the 85th and 86th Degrees. Weber, for example, who at the time when these words were going on-line, was about to cross the 86th Degree, noted a serious lull of the wind and a notable deceleration of what polar adventurers call the treadmill. Let's note in addition that it was also one of the first times that we have received reports from adventurers writing that they were actually seeing before their very eyes ice sheets moving on the water and crashing on top of each other!

Another observation: because of the conditions described in the previous paragraph, the expeditions are slow this season. And all of them fearful of missing the 26 April deadline set by the Russian logistics of Viktor Boyarski (who is closing Barneo on that date) and who normally had to go to collect them from the North Pole before that date. Admittedly there is still the possibility of calling upon the planes of Kenn Borek or Summit Air Aviation, which depart from Resolute. But, as we have previously written, these two last companies are increasingly afraid of having to land at the Pole late in the season in order to collect a team because of the increasingly uncertain state of the pack ice.

With regard to the last degree, we would inform our readers that, within less than a month, we will be receiving the testimony of Alain Hubert's two clients - pure neophytes who are going to be guided by the Belgian precisely in such a last degree trek. With the growth of polar tourism, it will be interesting to learn how and why people like you and I get the idea of going up there on to the pack ice and of skiing or walking hundreds of kilometres, under conditions that we know about, from the Barneo Base to the North Pole.

Latest information: Jean-Louis Etienne (who has to fly over the pack ice in a rosebush balloon) and his entire team arrived at Spitzberg on Friday, 26 March at around 15:00; they are starting to get the rosebush ready. While Ghislain Bardout's team, for its part, (Deep-sea under the Pole.com), consisting of eight people, has been just had itself dropped at the North Pole (on 26 March at 13:00.) and has already begun its trek back to Ward Hunt. For them, Friday, 26 March, is Day 1 of the adventure. As for the Canadian pair that wants to pull off a first in Greenland (Ice Dream), it has just left Quebec and arrived in Iceland on 28 March at 06:00. Just one more flight to get to its adventure's venue.