The end of their dream
Published on 15.07.2009 - General Info
The three explorers who had decided to drift on an ice floe from the east coast of Greenland have ended their adventure. The end of a dream.
This is the dispatch that explains the end of the story for the three dreamers, who wanted to make the world aware of climate change while drifting along on a scrap of sea-ice: "It had to happen, of course, because the ice was nothing like we had envisaged. After we completed our approach, we found ourselves prisoners of the pack-ice. After hours of effort trying to cross the jumble of floating frozen water, we finally decided to camp on an ice floe. At least that was our intention. But before that, there was a psychological barrier to overcome. So little is known about this particular environment that it seems disproportionately inhospitable and that first night on the ice did not get off to the best start. Circumstances dictated the ice floe we started our journey on, but we still had no idea what might happen to us. So we didn't sleep a wink..."
"Position at 11.00 pm: N 65° 29.503 / W 037°05.216. Position the following day at 7.00 am: N 65° 30.350 / W 037°08.306. We had barely moved. A little to the north, certainly, but not as much as we wanted. A touch to the east. There was one thing, though: we had survived. No malevolent iceberg had wiped us out of this world. In fact the night passed without incident and our confidence began to grow..."
"Throughout these five weeks, of which almost half was spent sleeping on the ice, we did not suffer from bad weather, as we might have expected, but nor did we embark on a long, slow drift  which is what we had prepared ourselves for. Each time, though, after two or three days, we realised we had been drifting round in circles or else the captain of our 'ship' had sent us 15 kilometres from the coast! Which meant we had to up sticks and choose a new island to live on, hoping this one would benefit from more favourable currents. But achieving our aims was easier said than done! We had to pull, haul, push, tack, get off one floe, climb aboard another... Push, pull, fight and struggle... All day long until nightfall! And then in the evening there was always the freezing cold, generally accompanied by mists..."
"A fabulous adventure. It is impossible to believe that we were surrounded by these placid white giants, that they were drifting towards their watery grave, that the southerly waters would soon engulf them and also that before we know it, the winters will no longer be cold or productive enough to create new ones. Climate warming is sounding the death knell for these marvellous expanses of sea-ice, often over six metres thick. Slowly but surely, rising temperatures are dissolving the great buttresses of white to nothing. Our fears dispelled, as the castaways of the ice we had become and will continue to be as long as the climate still allows the ice to exist, we revelled in admiration, respect, poetry. We realised life comes and goes with the waves as we watched the never-ending spectacle of grinding, crunching, lonely drifting ice. The ice knows it will melt into the Earth, which is a comfort. But it seeks to preserve its transparency, knowing that it is only here for a while. We wanted to remain forever attached to this great void that no-one has ever walked on before, able to realise our dream  just for a moment..."
