Tough decision for J.E. Nilson and Kippenes
Published on 05.05.2011 - Climate Neutral Pole 2 Pole
The Climate Neutral Pole2Pole team is heading towards Cape Bryant, Greenland. But Johan and Harald have been informed that the sea ice off that coast just broke up.
Notwithstanding the roughness of the terrain, J.E. Nilson and H. Kippenes have made good progress so far : on 4 April, they were at 86°09'08" N / 72°52'01" W. A little bit more than 460 km from the coast. And they had 22 days of food remaining.
But yesterday, their HQ has been informed through Kenn Borek Air that according to government high resolution satellite imagery the sea ice off the coast of NW Greenland has started breaking up 5 days ago. Kenn Borek even called the ice, "a big time mess". The person in charge of their HQ said that he is waiting for confirmation on how far north the break up goes.
Team needs to make its decision by 7 May at the very latest : weather to continue to Greenland or make a turn and head towards Ward Hunt -knowing that 3 dog teams are waiting in Qaanaaq (northwest coast of Greenland) for Harald's decision -ready to go and pick both men up.
One may recall that back in 2007, when Alain Hubert and Dixie Dansercoer have succeeded their entire arctic crossing they also where informed of the presence of a huge zone of fractured ice just ahead of their itinerary. Of course they were closer to Greenland than the P2P team -217 km instead of 460. But they had indeed taken the decision to change the cap and move more to the east.
This time, if the P2P team change their cap and choose Ward Hunt as landing zone they will be obliged to turn to the west.
