Category: Updates

Day 9 on the ice…..

Started out early this am trying to get the distance done…only to spend almost 4 hours to get 1.7 miles! Ice cubes, water – Dale dipped his toe in (he didn’t want to be left out) – but nothing else. He is absolutely fine.

Then things really improved and we were able to make some good time/distance. Dale led for quite a while – quote…’interesting to see the whole empty ice field right to the horizon with no tracks ahead – hoping I wont miss a soft spot’

We are at 89.45 East 129 – 15 miles left to go…..

Overall total distance covered 81.61 nautical miles

Everyone is doing well, the difference today was the cold, man was it cold – 25 plus windchill putting it down to about -40. The kind of cold that defies explanation – damp as well. We came into camp and the wind really picked up – major challenge for fingers and toes.

We are loading up tonight – bagels with salami, cheese appetizer followed by Lasagna in a pot (sorry LP and EDL)

The two polar cowboys continue to amaze finding paths through the chaos.
Hoping the wind is blowing us closer to TNP

MW Iced up

The boys at a rest stop

Finally the sun is out

April 9th

April 10th

Day 8 on the ice – Mother nature is a tease…..

We woke up – and the first thing out of my mouth, even before the eye blinds were removed, before I thought of my morning coffee – was ‘positive or negative’ – this directed at Keith my tentmate – re drift – in fact we had drifted 1 mile towards the North Pole! Excitement was palpable. We got organized and broke camp, (much oatmeal eaten this morning), and started off.

The wind picked up and the snow started. As we marched along -Mother Nature showed her true colours…..and there was water everywhere – we lost count of the leads – everywhere we looked. It was an incredible challenge. Keith went in (twice – but he is OK Stacey). We had to use the sledge as a bridge on many occasions. I managed again to put in my left foot (but just my foot). Between Keith and Dirk there is > 1500 miles of Polar experience – we have felt safe, secure and looked after the whole time.

The ice age ranges from days (one of the leads we crossed), to about 3 years old. But overall the ice extent has been steadily diminishing in size, thought to be due to global warming. Some predict in 5 years there will be summer time free ice, i.e. there will be no structure and ships will be able to pass through the northwest passage in summer. . Thankfully we have not met any animals – as we don’t want to see any Polar Bears.

Overall we travelled 9.5 nautical miles today (so our grand total is 69.3 nautical miles) so now we are…….at 89.34.0 (i.e. for every 2 miles we work we have gained 1 mile towards the pole..) and still 26 miles away…

Mother nature indeed is a cruel mistress….

We set camp and the high point of the evening was Tomato soup with shredded Parmesan cheese – yummy. Two tents – Dale, Michel and Dirk in one; Keith and myself in the other (we are the cook tent and entertainment tent). Tonight we are back to Beef Stew. We burn about 6000-8000 calories per day, between the temperature and exertion – it is hard (but fun) to keep up.

Hoping for much drift tonight.

The sled as a bridge

Polar bear safety

HR getting ready to cross the breach

Day 7 on the Ice

Something magical about today…….we hit our 60 nautical mile target – unfortunately we are only at 89.25 so we are still 35 miles from the Pole. We will need some positive drift and divine intervention – but at least we know we skied the distance required. From here it is all gravy. I myself spontaneously cried and all the guys looked at me like – here we go again! I remain amazed at Dale and his capacity. Steady pace throughout 8 hours of pulling.

I got to lead for a while today – nothing in my periphery but 180 degrees of magic desolate ice. It looked like an ocean had been snap frozen, with waves in progress, whitecaps, the peaks and valleys of waves of ice.
We had great ice today so overall we skied 11 miles covering 9.8 nautical miles north (not much drift today).

The sun came and went all day – temperature minus 20, no major windchill so pretty tolerable (compared to last few days). Keith almost went in the drink but managed to show impressive balance one ski on ice, and one on water……

Here’s hoping for (+) drift.

Don’t try this at home

Dale about to negotiate open water

An open lead

MW

Day 6 on the ice

We woke up again to the usual ugly weather, blowing snow and crazy wind – nasty nasty nasty.
But first a word about last night – I think in all the weather, the drift, the arctic ‘treadmill’ as it is called made life a bit miserable – so we had a treat. Keith had reconstituted dried apples, I caramelized them, et voila – quesidillas became crepes a la Ross (no a la mode – though we could have reached outside the tent and added plenty of snow). Then came the Baileys (Dale) and Laphroig (Keith) – all in all we went to bed feeling pretty satisfied.

Back to today – we started out
9 nautical miles but only made 6
89.16!!!!!!!! East 138

The other group that went out at the same time as us is somewhere near us but we can’t see them – apparently 2 of their team left the ice by chopper yesterday – we don’t have details but hope they are well.

It was a major day of rubble – basically as you know we are on the arctic ocean – huge pans of ice that are floating – kind of like a jigsaw puzzle with space between the pieces. So these pans float along till they meet another pan and then crash, boom, they make rubble – i.e. they push up on each other and make giant sized ice cubes – some shoebox sized, some volkswagen sized – and we have to go through them……so skiis on skiis off – all morning long. In fact we did about 4 miles of work to make about 2 miles of distance in about 3 hours……

Also lots of open water – which leads me to the next challenge – apparently my horoscope today says something along the lines of relax by the water – well I had other plans – I didn’t quite swim – but I came close – there was a small tilted pan of ice, some slush and unfortunately I caught a tip and down I went – left leg in up to thigh – Dale was behind me and was about to rescue me (what else is new?!) when I told him to stop as I wasn’t sure if the pan would hold me, my sled and Dale as well. I tried to find purchase and put my left arm in to above the elbow. Slowly I was able to extricate myself – and all I could think of was thank God we did the dip in Ely or I would probably have panicked instead of just taking my time. Got the full slushy – lots of water in my boot – Keith (Captain Keith) said keep going – we had to get off the pan. about 5 minutes later we stopped and the team went to work. Keith found my spare liner and sock, Dirk took my boot and sock off, Michel gave me warm drink – they rubbed my foot to life, redressed the sock and spare liner and away we went – best way to stay warm is to keep moving! Now we are in the tent and I am just fine!!

Michel provided the biggest moment of humor today – there was about an 8 foot drop off into powder and he decided to do a ski jump launch – but face planted instead – I thought Keith was going to wet himself he was laughing so hard.

Finally a bit of magic about 1 hour from camp – the sun came out – we could finally see the landscape – gorgeous, somehow like the moon, shadow, sunlight low on the horizon – everyone much happier for it.

Dale has coined the best expression so far of the trip – day in day out like taking a hammer to your head, get up the next day and HIT yourself again!

Whose idea was this trip anyway?

Perhaps tomorrow could be dull????

The sun coming out

Navigating the jugsaw puzzle

Doing the rubble dance

Which way should we go?

Latitude: 89.14.5 Longitutde 136.27.25

We have skiied 44.8 nautical miles over the ground to date.
Today was a day of water and wind. We came across many many breaks, small ones, slushy ones, lake like ones. Keith was amazing at finding paths around, over, through which made for some interesting moments!

We crossed 89.1 again today – it is ‘groundhog day’ (remember the old movie…..) – we go to sleep, we drift, we wake up still behind 89.1 and we ski all day – losing 0.2 to the treadmill each hour – so we have skied 39 miles, 29 hours and lost 0.2 about for every hour – hence our total ski is 44.8 nautical miles. Yet we were closer to the pole 48 hours ago……and are still 46 miles away.

We continue to drift as we sit in the tent so tomorrow we get to wake up and do 89.1 all over again!!! In fact it got me thinking – we have drifted 25 miles – so when you think about it…..25 plus 39 means that we have essentially skied on the land that was at the North Pole 5 days ago! Didn’t see any corks go by…

Keith had a great kite which we flew in camp. Winds gusting to 20 mph again which made for amazing kite flying.

Spirits remain high despite the challenging conditions.

Finding our way across

Kite Flying

Take extreme weather and harsh condtions – put them in a blender and you have today in a nutshell. We opted to go out at 4 pm as we thought things had settled down. About 1 hour in we came across open water, a lead, that was about 8m wide. Huge sections of slush, all I could think was add lemon, rum and an umbrella and away we go. It took us about 45 minutes to try to find a way around it – but we did eventually – moving quickly. Again zero visibility in sections. The plan was to pull until midnight.
Then around 6 the wind really picked up – I mean howling – we pushed on for another 2 hours and then called it. 8pm we started to set camp – wind was about 30 mph gusting much more. All hands on to put each tent up in turn – I was hanging on to the strings and all I could think is wow I’m going to fly.
We are now in tent and eating beef stew.
We have actually skied 29.5 miles which still doesn’t account for drift when we are skiing.
However tonight we are further from the pole than we were two nights ago – the drift is amazing. Our location is: 89.10.665; 134.32 – i.e. we have skiied 29.5 miles but accomplished just over 10!
This really is testing our limits

Keith navigating open water.

The Man!

Open water slushy

Wind is 35 mph – with gusting to 40 mph
sustained > 25 mph
drifted 5 miles south since going to bed
we have a sustained drift of 0.5 mph mainly to the east/southeast
there has been drifting snow that has buried all of our sleds, skiis and started to bury the tent.
overall too dangerous for us to venture out – visibility very poor, so can’t wander off or you wouldn’t find camp again
89.11 degrees and moving away from the pole
we are hunkered down and waiting it out – nothing else that can be done –
living arrangements are tight but we are making it work
we may go out later if things settle down
Happy Birthday to Trudy, Stella and John

p.s. Can’t thank everyone enough for the comments – they bring warmth and humour to us everynight as we do the dinner prep!!

A windy day

Snowed in