The Arctic Arc: Greenland in Sight
In the icy chaos
© International Polar Foundation
It has been a week now that Alain Hubert and Dixie Dansercoer can see the outline of the Greenland mountains, dominating the coast in the distance: a vision that is a little surreal for the two men, after having spent over 100 days seeing nothing but ice blocks. Today, for the first time, they can distinctively see the Greenland coast, since they are now only about twenty kilometres away from their goal.
These past few weeks have been the toughest of the entire expedition. Alain and Dixie can't seem to get over the fact that the terrain on which they have progressed has been so broken up close to Greenland. Remember, the abnormal ice melt in the Lincoln Sea had occasioned an incredible chaos on their path, forcing them to modify their trajectory. But, more so than the extra kilometres they have had to do, our two men are worried about the unexpected changes they have come across these past few weeks.
Throughout their expedition, Alain and Dixie have encountered quite some difficulties. They were never able to progress long on flat and regular sea ice. They had to assemble their sledges to be able to cross the leads (open water channels measuring several metres wide) several hundred times. They were confronted with ice blocks several metres high, thousands of times. This is without talking about the abnormal meteorological conditions of this part of the world: very bad weather even though the atmospheric pressure is high (usually a sign of good weather) and too high of a temperature close to the coast. These signs show to which point climate change has modified the Arctic Ocean over the past fifteen years!
Thank goodness, a couple of walking hours away from Greenland, Alain and Dixie have finally come back to more stable conditions.
"Now it is clear", Alain tells us by satellite telephone, "the ice is old again and therefore more stable. What happened in the Lincoln Sea, I will never understand. But I do think now that we are most definitely out of big trouble and that we can now start thinking about the end of the expedition with more serenity."
According to the latest count, Alain and Dixie only have enough food to last them 4 or 5 more days. Once they have reached Greenland, the big issue will be to find an ice zone which is flat enough to enable the plane, a Canadian Twin Otter coming in from Resolute Bay to pick them up, to land. This is hoping that the weather will be good enough to allow for this pick up.
For the moment, the two explorers have to stay focussed until the very end of their trip, because the least bit of inattention could be tragic; so much these regions are hostile!
