The Arctic-Arc - All-white days and storms
Lead crossing - Copyright: Alain Hubert
© International Polar Foundation
Alain Hubert and Dixie Dansercoer are approaching the North Pole and are keeping spirits high. They deserve all the credit, considering the week has been tough: weather conditions were really bad, the ice drift hindered them sometimes considerably and they had to cross numerous leads (open water chanels).
Even though the beginning of spring has been warm and stable under our latitudes, this is not necessarily the same story up north. After a sunny Friday April 13th, Alain and Dixie awoke on Saturday to discover an "all-white" day. They could hardly see anything and they only spotted the huge blue ice blocks they had to walk around when they were 20 to 50 meters close.
Saturday night, they were suddently awoken at 3 am by a series of loud and worrisome cracks! After a quick check, they discovered that an eight-meter wide lead was now only ten metres away from camp, with huge blocks of ice in front! Indeed, these chanels of open water open and close up constantly in an unpredictable way, following the motion of the ice plates. Our explorers therefore broke camp in less than ten minutes and moved it away in order to go back to sleep and gather a few more hours of strength before the next day's effort.
After a short night, Sunday was another white day, filled with snow and stormy weather. The ice was thin and Alain's leg even sank knee-high into the water because the ice had given way. This small harmless event goes to show how fragile the ice upon which the explorers' progress can sometimes be.
During the following night, the ice drift pushed them 12km southwards (though they are aiming the North Pole). The mild day which followed was therefore spent catching up on their lost distance.
The next morning, the storm was back with violent winds and significant snow falls. Over the days to come, future prospects do not seem very bright, since the Russian weather station in Barneo is forecasting 3 days of heavy storm.
Alain and Dixie still have high spirits and are making the most out of small and unforgettable moments which compensate in themselves all the small miseries they have endured in the past few days. For instance, as they were crossing one of those open water leads, Alain found himself two metres above a turquoise water stretch which was so transparent he was able to see the ice forming the underwater lead. It was a wonderful sight.
While waiting to show you the photograph taken at that particular moment, we have uploaded numerous other images on the ExploraPoles website, taken by Alain and Dixie and brought back by Gigi after their re-supply.
