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Polar Explorers Lonnie Dupre and Eric Larsen send daily dispatches during their unprecedented four-month journey to the North Pole and back. The expedition team will pull and paddle specially modified canoes across nearly 1,000 miles of shifting sea ice and open ocean. Their objective is to complete the first ever summer expedition to the North Pole and to highlight the growing issues surrounding global warming.
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Life on the Ice


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It's Worse

May 14, 2006
sunny, cloudy foggy, 15 F, 5.5 nautical miles
We were roused from a deep sleep sometime last night to find the skies had cleared and it was clear blue all the way to the horizon. We gave each other groggy high fives then snuggled back in our sleeping bags. Little did we know that the upcoming day's travels would yield the worst weather we've seen to date.

Once out of the tent, we realized that, while clear, it was really cold with a stiff wind still driving from north. Regardless, it was nice to able to see the terrain for a change.

That lasted for almost two hours.

The sky darkened and an ominous fog rolled in. Soon, it was nearly a whiteout, but this time dampness permeated everything. We were chilled to the bone and skied along face down trying to hide as much exposed skin as possible behind our hoods. At one point, we even thought we could taste salt in the air.

Eventually, we found the source of all this foulness: a huge wide open lead - and a million smaller leads.

We got lucky and were able to skirt the biggest lead, but had to catamaran the boats to cross a second, then weave back and forth for almost two hours to get through all the fractured ice. At one point, we had to leap across a four foot gap. It was hard work, scary at times, and every other emotion as well.

Finally out of that jumbled mess, we ended the day just as it started, in an old pressured area with lots of drifts and the sun shining.

On a more serious note, we heard that a proposal to build the biggest offshore wind farm in the nation won approval from Texas state officials. That's great news to us, but also reminds us of other projects like Cape Wind that need to be approved.

Word of the day - robot. We are machine-like contraptions covering our daily miles.

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