Race against the clock
Published on 21.04.2009 - General Info
While the Fuchs expedition has just been officially launched and the teachers will be arriving in Greenland in a couple of weeks' time, Copeland and Heger have begun a furious race against the clock to the North Pole.
The two men are experiencing the same problems and are under the same pressure as the other two expeditions also heading for the Pole (the trio led by Lonnie Dupré and the two young Americans): they have to reach their goal by 27th April, which is the day the Barneo base closes. Otherwise there is no way they can call in an MI 8 to chopper them out and they'll have to turn back to Resolute Bay. Trouble is, the Canadian solution has two very major disadvantages: one, it is by no means certain that they will be able to find a suitable landing strip for the Twin Otter at the North Pole, and two, it will be much more expensive to call in Boyarsky's MI 8, which is stationed 50 km from the Pole.
So, like the other expeditions, Copeland and Heger have decided to put their foot down. Which means they'll be walking or skiing 15 hours a day, with only 5 hours' sleep at night. All of which is fraught with danger. The two men have also had to take the decision to limit their rations, otherwise they won't have sufficient supplies to complete their journey. This, of course, has provided them with even more things to worry about and has only added to the daily stress that they have to endure in silence.
And that's by no means the whole picture as this expedition comes to a close, because Sébastien and Keith have had some other bad luck, too. In their dispatch filed on 20th April, they reported that on that day alone, they had lost five miles due to negative drift on the sea-ice -let's hope they're not talking about nautical miles!
That said, they have also had the opportunity of witnessing some amazing sights, with whole sheets of ice thrusting over the top of each other before their very eyes  huge blocks of ice weighing several tons each being tossed about by force of the sea-ice like lumps of sugar. On 15th April they had the same luck to see the edge of one lead of open water come towards them and close up the lead they were about to cross in just a couple of movements.
Latest news: Canadian explorer Meagan McGrath, who is preparing an expedition to the Antarctic for next season, is currently doing the Last Degree. Meanwhile, the Brits Ben Thackwray and Ian Couch have abandoned their crossing of Greenland as the result of frostbite to their hands and feet.
As for the two Channel Islanders, Simon Elmont and Steve Wright, they're due to be dropped off on the Greenland icecap today or tomorrow to begin their trip (they have already arrived on the island).
To round off this general look at things, there's the Thule to Thule expedition. The two Danes, Jesper M. Ganc-Petersen and Erik B. Jorgensen, have had a difficult start to their trip, because just a few days after they set out, several of their sledges were badly damaged on the ice after breaking the shackles of gravity and taking off. As a result, they had to call in the helicopter to take the sledges back. But now they appear to have picked up a good pace and their ski-kites are propelling them along at over a hundred kilometres a day.
