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Published on 15.05.2008 - 2008 Ellesmere Island Expedition

Will Steger's team is continuing to make its way along the west coast of Ellesmere Island, travelling through some of the world's totally forgotten and far-flung regions. During the resupply stage, a new member, Ben Horton, joined in on the expedition.

The route selected by Will Steger for this new Globalwarming101.com expedition is one very rarely taken by anyone else. The main adventure, which is taking place in the vicinity of the west coast of Ellesmere Island, is probably the same as that which was experienced by the Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup, a companion of Fridtjof Nansen, at the end of the 19th century. Otto Sverdrup is the man to whom Nansen handed over command of the Fram when he made his attempt to reach the North Pole. Sverdrup sailed the waters off Greenland and Ellesmere Island for nearly five years, between 1898 and 1903. Three times he spent the winter on the west coast of the island, which explains the large number of Norwegian names given to the fjords along this coastline.

As Steger's expedition is in the same area as one of the routes which was taken, at the time, by Otto Sverdrup, the expedition is trying to locate a cairn that the explorer erected to mark the point at which he had to turn south after reaching the most northerly point on his trek. But, despite coming across numerous cairns in the surrounding area, the expedition has been unable to find the one inside which Sverdup left a number of documents about his trip (maps, logbooks, etc.).

On 7th May, Sam Branson was musing about the consequences of climate warming and thinking about what he experienced during his adventure (again as part of Glowarming101.com) on the crossing of Baffin Island. He wrote in the expedition log: "I like to think of the Arctic as though this region of the world were a giant snowflake, totally fascinating in its structure and superbly beautiful. But it melts as soon as it lands on someone's hand on account of the change in temperature, disappearing forever. If all of us take action so that climate warming does not become a global disaster