On walking up to a lead, AJ turned around and asked me if I thought it was safe. I responded, 'Maybe, take a few steps out there and see what happenss.' AJ thought it should be nominated for the quote of the day (not that we have one yet - quote of the day that is).

AJ's hesitation is not unfounded. After a scary dunk a couple days ago, he is taking all the right precautions to be safe. Still, it's a delicate balance. Part of what we do every day is inherently unsafe. Also, we are traveling under finite time constraints. We have to be at the pole by April 26th. Therefore, we need to factor efficiency and our forward progress.

My comment to AJ was simply acknowledging all these factors. A quick visual assessment of the ice - whitish in color with one inch diameter ice flowers - indicated it was passable. A winding seam down the middle of the two sides suggested some instability. Other clues: no open water anywhere near and some frozen over flow pieces.

'You can't think about these things too much,' my old dog sledding boss Arleigh Jorgenson used to say. Loading up his dog truck with 34 sled dogs, gear and a month's supply of food for a three day drive to Yellowknife and an expedition north of Great Slave Lake, we were an accident waiting to happen Yet, we were successful.

'Well, no one died,' Arleigh concluded at the end of our trip.

Another polar potpouri on the Arctic Ocean today. We found a long arch like the Darcy saw collapse and joked about standing on top of it, then skied over and climbed up on top - a long 30-foot curving fold that looked like a tunnel. During the second shift, we skied on a relatively flat pan for more than an hour.

We thought it might be a gift from the polar gods, but everything costs on the Arctic Ocean. Darcy inherted the brunt of whoever's wrath and we struggled through small pans and big blocks for quite some time.

'On a scale of 1 to 10, one being getting your tooth pulled with no pain killers,' Darcy added wryly after one particularly brutal section. 'That was a minus five.' We would pay for another flat section with whiteout conditions.

Later in the day AJ was thrilled to find a large pressure ridge filled with dirty looking ice blocks. 'We've struck gold,' he blurted skiing back from collecting a few shards of alge encrusted. His enthusiasm for collecting algae samples is unparalleled. But his is only one step in a process that will eventually yield clues to understanding our changing climate.

On Newsvine http://ericlarsenexplore.newsvine.com this week, contributers are discussing energy conservation and efficiency; however, considering our polar bear track sighting, you may want to ask Rose from the Center for Biological Diversity about their work in getting polar bears listed as threatened and what you can do to protect them.

Image: Eric and his sled.

The Save the Poles expedition is sponsored by Bing with major support from the University of Plymouth, Terramar, Seventh Generation, Goal0, Atlas, Sierra Designs and Optic Nerve.

Remember, it's cool to be cold. Save the Poles. Save the planet.

For more information, please visit www.ericlarsenexplore.com

For information about guided Antarctic expeditions, please visit http://www.antarctic-logistics.com/

For media inquiries, please contact lora@screamagency.com

For technical inquires, please contact webexpeditions.net