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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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Mud and Ice Mayhem

May 20, 2006
cloudy, west wind 30 F, 8.3 nautical miles
We know that you have been running around on the stuff for quite some time, but for us the experience of seeing solid ground is not quite so commonplace in all this snow, ice and water. OK, so it wasn't exactly bona fide terra firma, but it was as close as we are going to get in the next two months.

About an hour into our day, we discovered a small patch (12') of mud, just sitting there on the ice. The edges of our little dirt pile were somewhat dried up and very earthy-looking. We tried to pick up a piece but the whole works was frozen solid. We wondered out loud where this had come from. Siberia perhaps. Other theories include magic, a polar bear or, most plausible, Santa Claus must have dropped a piece here on his way north to help remind us of Minnesota.

The rest of the day was a mix of back-breaking hauling through pressured ice and weaving in and around older drfted pressure. We whiled away the better part of an hour clawing our way through some smaller pans (100'-100 yards) that had rafted into each other.

For another one-hour stretch, we skied through a cold misty haze toward one small blue block of ice on the horizon. From all that nothingness, we emerged into another area of severe pressure.

The nature of the ice has been different these past few days. We are seeing smaller pans of thicker ice rafted into each other. Our hope is to be out of this soon

Word of the day: zigzag - our route through the ice today.

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