June 11, 87 43.21'N:72 32.43'W
Day 42. There have only been a few days when we've ended the travel day early - not by much, just five or ten minutes. Yesterday was one of them. Looking a few hundred yards ahead we saw a flat pan, but first big pressure. Rather than risk making a sore back worse, we set up camp. But you already know this. Still, that one simple decision may have saved us from serious injury or worse.
A quick morning scout revealed the ice pretty much as we had left it - a big pressure ridge (40' wide), then some manageable mess and finally, what seemed like flat ice again just a few hundred yards away.
For the next hour and a half we struggled with all our will and might to cover those few hundred yards. The pressure ridge was fairly straightforward but required our combined effort to heave the sled-canoes up and over chunks of ice almost big as cars.
A five-minute ski later revealed what we couldn't see from the morning's scout: an area of semi-frozen brash ice - the worst by far. Some chunks were large enough to stand on; others were around 2 feet in diameter. All were pushed haphazardly together.
We pulled out every last trick we knew and improvised a few new ones just to get through that small section. Hopping from ice chunk to ice chunk, pushing our sled-canoes in the water and long lining (using the two pull lines as one long rope) them through watery sections, dropping the sled-canoes down off ledges and trying each time to pull them back up to a more stable position.
It's both scary and exhilarating to make it through something like that.
Traversing that route last evening would have been a nightmare. As it is, we're pushing our physical limits to actually move those heavy loads. Exhausted with no place to camp would have put our lives at serious risk.
We spent the last four hours of the day traveling through whiteout conditions, tripping on snowbanks and stumbling down slopes. During days like today it's easy to think the Arctic Ocean is a barren place but really, there is a complex ice ecosystem being supported by the ice that includes distinctive Arctic species such as seals, whales (including the narwhal!), walrus and polar bears.
Even at its most inhospitable, this place surprises us. Today, a lone gull flew in between us then off to the east. Where had it been and where was it going? We'll never know. It didn't seem to be in a hurry so maybe it was enjoying the Arctic just like us.
The warming weather is becoming a bit unnerving as well. At freezing point anything that touches snow gets wet. Our gloves were soaked by the end of the day. A south wind made the snow really soft to boot. Our skis and sled-canoes seemed to have considerably less glide.
Today was also particularly fun as we got to do something we like to call swimming in a 14,000 foot deep ocean. When we encounter a lead with ice too thick to paddle, yet too thin to ski across, one of us will put on a dry suit, get in the water and use his body to break the ice. Once on the other side he will pull the catamaraned sled-canoes across. Fun fun!
Word of the day: delicatessen - you know why.
June 10, 87 35.12'N:73 18.41'W
Day 41. They say the Inuit have 200 words to describe snow and ice. The English language isn't quite as colorful, but after five weeks on the Arctic Ocean we can probably find enough adjectives and related nouns to come close.
To date we've seen pressured ice, pressure ridges, brash ice, rubble ice, skim ice, grease ice, frazil ice, honeycombed ice, rotten ice, ice flowers, good ice, bad ice, ice chunks, chips and shards, ice pans, ice platelets, pancake ice, slab ice, sugar snow, drifted snow, deep snow (are we there yet?), sastrugi, snow banks, wet snow, dry snow, snow that is good for cutting into blocks, leads, cracks...
We had a good day and managed to get the longest stretch of flat ice (did we mention that in the list?) we've had since leaving Ellesmere Island. It lasted for 8 of the 9.5 hours we traveled. The new snow (rain last night) slowed us down as did some drifted areas but we still eked out 10 miles.
We had some 'puzzle navigation' to contend with at the end of the day and are now camped on a very small pan surrounded by cracks and slabbed pressure. It's a good thing that the moon isn't full or we aren't far enough north for the trans polar drift to push us haphazardly (wait a minute, both of those are true). Unfortunately we have rough ice to contend with tomorrow morning for an uncertain distance. In the meantime, pasta alfredo will soothe our nerves.
And just so you know how amazing polar bears are, here's some interesting facts: Polar bears are supremely adapted to their Arctic environment, a place where ambient temperatures can plummet below -50 degrees Fahrenheit. They have two layers of fur on top of a layer of blubber that can measure 4 ½ inches thick. Polar bears are so well insulated against the cold that they have more problems from overheating when they exert themselves, such as when they run. Check out the rest of www.projectthinice.org for more 'cool' polar bear facts.
You can join us December 5 & 6, 2006 at Pacuare Jungle Lodge in Costa Rica for a presentation about our experiences, teamwork, polar bears and global warming. The place sounds amazing. The lodge grounds are completely surrounded by tropical rainforest. Enormous trees and rainforest inhabitants live in natural harmony alongside the lodge itself. The Pacuare Lodge was designed and constructed to blend with the surrounding environment, effecting minimal impact, and has been recognized by the World Tourism Organization as 1 of only 65 examples throughout the world of good practice in sustainability and ecotourism. You can visit www.oneworldexpedition.com and click on the costa rica button.
Kieran at Greenpeace HQ has mentioned to us that other Greenpeace offices are picking up on our expedition. That's great and is due in large part to the efforts of Mark Warford, Melanie Duchin, Kert Davies and Kieran, just to name a few. Thanks guys. You're awesome!
Today's picture. Lonnie using his skis to span a small lead.
Word of the day: viva - long live the Arctic, long live the polar bear.
June 9, 87 25.30'N:73 34.02'W
Day 40. We woke up to a sunny and warm morning, 32 degrees when we hit the trail. As far as we're concerned, that's almost too warm for traveling as we overheat and sweat easily. It was so warm, in fact, that we could thought we could smell summer.
The sunlight has been so intense the past few days that we have been sleeping halfway out of our Integral Designs sleeping bags. The sun is an amazing force, and it is, unfortunately, easy to see how global warming is affecting sea ice.
The ice itself actually reflects energy back into space. However, water absorbs heat very effectively. That means the more water, the more heat is absorbed, melting more ice, creating more water, and so on. Scientists call this a positive feedback loop. We can see this happen in other ways too. A ski or snowshoe left on the ice overnight will leave its melted imprint in the morning.
It is unfortunate that we continue to search for oil and gas (the main cause of global warming) when we have clean energies like solar and wind already available. Our energy security lies in renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind. They are there for the taking and exist in unlimited supply. It's just a matter of political will.
By mid afternoon, the sun was so intense that we had to give our faces an additional layer of Dermatone's special zinc oxide. At least the bright day allowed us to navigate relatively easily, which was of considerable benefit as day 40 stretched long and arduous.
We bit the figurative bullet this morning to try to get through the pressured nastiness that we had spent most of yesterday afternoon in. Instead of veering northwest, we headed straight north into the ugliest of the ice. There was more pressured ice, more traveling from small ice pan to the next (we call this puzzle navigation), more leads, pretty much more of all the conditions that make traveling difficult. We were snowshoeing for nearly three hours.
In the end our gamble paid off (at least for now) and we are camped on the south end of a very nice looking piece of ice. Hopefully, we'll be able to make more than six miles tomorrow.
We are trying to be extra careful as we are traveling outside the range of any support or rescue. Planes from Canada can only fly to 87 degrees N and Russian helicopters can only fly as far south as 88 degrees north. We've got our fingers crossed for extra good luck during the next 35 nautical miles.
A note about today's picture. For most of the really difficult sections of pressured ice, we work together to move the sled-canoes up and over. However, sometimes the second person is left to their own devices. This allows the lead skier more time to evaluate ice, choose a route and break trail. The second skier usually catches up in 10 minutes or so. Here Eric's sled-canoe has slipped off an ice bridge into the ocean and he is trying to get it over a 3-foot embankment.
Word of the day: replete - how we feel after a big noodle dinner.
June 8, 87 19.11'N:73 37.51'W
Day 39. At the end of today, we felt like a couple of hungry, over-worked sled dogs (just trust us on that one). The day brought lots of cracks, pressure, brash ice, leads and broken ice - a smorgasbord of Arctic hardship. We should have known this was coming.
However, as eternal optimists, we keep thinking each day is the day that the conditions will improve dramatically. Today our expedition adage was never more true: "Where there's good ice, bad will surely follow."
Sometimes when we wake up in the morning and take our first compass bearing, we find that our ice pan has rotated overnight. It's a bit disconcerting to leave camp in a different direction. Today we joked that we had indeed been traveling the wrong direction and made our way south to poorer ice conditions.
We spent a couple hours snaking through small broken pans of ice. They looked like giant white puzzle pieces separated by inky black water and icy mush. We struggled with heavier loads for 9 hours and made only 6 miles. It goes without saying that we are once again, very tired. When is our next rest day, we wonder?
We eat all our rations each day now and are just beginning to feel a bit more hungry. The topic of food has started to enter our casual conversations. We think about fresh salads, cookouts with grilled chicken and a meal at a nice brew pub sitting at, of all things, a table. Don't get us wrong, we still have lots of love for Clif bars.
We also wanted to thank all the kind people at the Rolex Awards for Enterprise who have been an important part of our journey.
We also thought we'd expand our poetical horizons a bit and delve into the exciting world of haiku.
Attempt number 1:
All is snow and ice
When it's overcast, we can't see
Each night noodle night.
Of course, one last limerick to round out the day.
This is an ode to our favorite dinner, the noodle. Some are straight and others curly like the hair of a poodle. Spaghetti, elbow and egg, We eat them to the last dreg. If we were Picasso, we'd include them in our best doodle.
A note about today's picture: the chunk of ice Lonnie was standing on just before this picture was taken disintegrated beneath his skis. He jumped off at the last second.
Word of the day: laconic - there isn't much talking during the day, as our conversations have evolved into simple statements about ice and navigation.
(we randomly open the dictionary each day and pick a word that relates)
June 7, 87 13.29:73 22.54'W
Day 37. We have finally left 'camp depot'. It was a comfortable piece of ice, but it was time to move on. For one thing, our camp was beginning to smell a lot like 'people' and even though we are about 300 miles from land, we are still concerned about curious polar bears.
It's easy to think of polar bears as being similar to other species of bears, but they're not. Sure, they're bears, but polar bears are classified as marine mammals because they have become so well adapted to this environment of ice and water and the amount of time they spend in the water traveling between ice floes.
However, they are not adapted to swim long distances, which is why polar bears are drowning with alarming frequency off the north coast of Alaska.
Polar bear drownings used to be a really rare event, but now, scientists are noting record numbers of drownings, and they chalk it up to the lack of sea ice and to global warming.
If we were to have seen a polar bear today (which we didn't) it most likely would have been in the water. We catamaraned the sled-canoes five times over leads ranging in size from 15 feet to 100 yards wide. The bigger ones acquired names like Mississippi, Amazon and Nile as they stretched out of view.
It was really good to be traveling again. Despite our heavy-again loads, we feel strong. Luckily, the ice has cooperated a bit and was fairly flat. We did run into problems a few times where ice pans are drifting apart. Normally, when we are navigating through small pans, we look for areas of pressure and cross where the two pans have collided. Between those spots today were large gaps of water.
A note about the picture - we keep track of our daily position by writing in marker on the tent wall.
Word of the Day: troubadour - the Arctic versions.
June 6, 87 03.32:73 12.51'W
Day 37. The rations in our depot gave us a smorgasbord of new flavors for our taste buds. Though the amount of food per day, per person (30 oz) is the same, we have changed the menu slightly. We have dried and aged Italian salami, aged parmesan cheese, dried Finnish rye bread, and chocolate with hazelnuts and raisins, just to name a few of the items.
The actual acquiring of these items was quite a feat. A Twin Otter plane with equipped with extra fuel left Resolute Bay and flew to Eureka, a small science outpost on Ellesmere Island. There, they refueled and removed the side door to aid in dropping our supplies. Two hours later our food and fuel are being pushed out of the opening 150 meters from our tent, so close in fact that we can see a person in the opening. Our supplies tumble to the deck one or two seconds later and we whoop and holler with excitement.
We want to extend our a gigantic 'thank you' to Kenn Borek Air for their professionalism, friendliness and thoroughness. They went above and beyond the call of duty to get our needed supplies to us. Thanks also to Daniel who was always there to give us updates and other relevant information.
We have spent most of the day sorting through our newly acquired culinary riches. After these chores, sorting, dividing and packing canoe/sleds with our new provisions, we lounged in the tent resting for our push to the pole. We had been up much of the night talking with Kenn Borek's headquarters to relay current weather information.
After naps, we used up some time playing a couple games of chess on a newly drawn-up board. Outcome of the tournament: Larsen one, Dupre one. Grudge match coming soon.
We have now been parked on this comfortable piece of ice (drifting north) for three days and, amazingly enough, we are looking forward to the hard work and challenges ahead.
We have also been using this time to talk to press about our experiences to date, and more importantly, how global warming is affecting the Arctic, polar bears, and ultimately the world.
If you haven't had a chance to visit www.oneworldexpedition.com, you should check it out. Once there you can learn more about what expedition manager John Huston has been up to. Also there you'll find links to our equipment sponsors and companies like Granite Gear, Clif, Jytte and Timberland, all of whom have strong commitments to protecting our environment.
Word of the day: philistine - we are two men, living in a small tent, eating meals while laying down; our etiquette and tact are slowly declining and someone forgot to pack the 'Miss Manners' book to refresh us.
June 5, 87 00.17N:73 47.29'W
Day 36. We are still camped at 87 and waiting to for our depot. Just for the record, we aren't enjoying our extra day of rest. At least that's the official line we're towing today.
In lieu of more exciting news to report, we thought we'd give you more insight into our daily routines. Here's the play by play:
5:45-6:00 pm alarm goes off. Lonnie wakes up (remember we're traveling at night). 6:15 pm Lonnie dressed and packs sleeping bag, lights stove, begins to melt snow. 6:30 pm Eric up, packs sleeping bag, gets dressed 7:00 pm Hot drinks served by Lonnie 7:15 pm Breakfast served by Lonnie 7:25 pm Eric does dishes 7:30-40 pm Eric out of tent, puts on Granite Gear gaiters, unplugs solar panel, begins science work. Lonnie packs up stove, puts boots on, throws all gear out of tent. 7:45-8 pm Arrange gear in sled, take down tent, morning constitutional. 8-8:15 pm Begin day's travels north.
We'll fill you in on our evening routines sometime in the near future.
Kieran from Greenpeace asked us to deploy our banner (see picture) as a satellite was going to be taking our picture of our camp from outer space. Pretty amazing.
We did manage to come up with a new limerick for today:
Here we are in our Hilleberg tent. With one pole that is awkwardly bent. It happened last year tripping on some gear And now we're in a district of lower rent.
Did you know that global warming's first victims are the polar bears? Already, Hudson Bay's polar bear population has declined by 15% and the remainder have have averaged a 15% weight loss. Polar bears are also drowning off the coast of Alaska as they try to reach land from the receding ice. Make sure to sign the polar bear petition today!
Word of the day: decrepit - defined as made weak by age or use. Insert your favorite explorer's name here.
