There’s people at the Pole!
Published on 09.04.2009 - General Info
Interestingly, because the Barneo station has been set up closer to the Pole this year (due to the difficult ice conditions), quite a few explorers have already reached the base. Some of them to set out on their great march into the unknown, others to complete the Last Degree, or at least what's left of it...
The fact that the ice was simply not strong enough 111 kilometres from the Pole, where Victor Boyarsky normally positions his spring station, this year the Russian has had to place it closer to the Pole. At the beginning of April, the station was located at 89° 43' 445 N, 41° 15' 610 E. As one degree of latitude represents approximately 111 kilometres, this spring, Barneo is only about thirty km from the Pole. The clients of people such as Doug Stoup, Eric Philips, Tomas Ulrich and Ramon Larramendi, who have paid to do the full Final Degree, will no doubt want to travel from Barneo to the Pole and back again if they want to get their money's worth!.
In any event, that's what Londoner Christina Franco (who was finally allowed to take her rhino head to the North Pole, by the way!) has decided to do; accompanied by Jason De Carteret, she is not only going to do the return trip from Barneo to the North Pole and back again, but she has also decided - if there's time before the base closes - she wants to be dropped off a hundred kilometres from the Pole and cover that distance into the bargain.
While some of the big names in polar expeditions are still cosily with their clients at Barneo, the duo of Hedrich and Tortel left the Pole on 6th April and are making difficult progress through some awful ice conditions. "It's like trying to haul sledges through quicksand," Arnaud explained in his blog on 8th April. "When you think that our sledges weigh 140 kg, you can imagine that progress is somewhat difficult. But despite that, morale is good. We're moving without skis because the snow is simply too dense."
There is no major news from the other expeditions that we are tracking regularly this spring. Dupré is busy celebrating the centenary of Peary's arrival at the North Pole (6th April 1909). Pen Hadow's team of three has decided to take on fresh supplies earlier than scheduled; Pen is in the process of locating a landing strip for this second re-supply run. He is using satellite imaging and Radarsat 2 data sent to him by HQ. John Huston and Tyler Fish in the Victorinox expedition also continue without too much trouble on their way. Thus far they have not yet encountered many leads of open water. And in their daily updates, they are still as positive and enthusiastic as they have been all along. An example of their way of seeing things occurred on 6th April when they came across the first really broad expanse of open water of the expedition so far. Under normal circumstances, most explorers really hate this type of obstacle. But not John and Tyler. Here is what they wrote instead of expressing their irritation and weariness: "We felt we were really lucky to come across an obstacle like this, whereas everything had been going so well for us on that particular day. If this had happened to us on a bad day, we would no doubt have waited for the channel to freeze so that we could get across...". As for the six Finns, they have just completed a 56-km stretch in just 7 hours, using their traction kites, of course.
