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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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Houston We Have 87

Jun 03, 2006
overcast, 33 F, 6.75 nautical miles
Day 34. Houston we have 87, but actually we say Huston, for John Huston our expedition manager. Of course, they're pronounced the same, but for the sake of being accurate we thought we'd spell it out for you.

Special 'props' go out to Huston for coordinating our resupply, managing the www.oneworldexpedition.com web site, writing and sending out enews (as well as Ann Possis - thanks Ann), answering emails, taking our phone calls at all hours and giving us encouragement. Thanks superstar!

The weather has warmed enough (just above freezing) for us to be uncomfortably warm during the day's travels. Now, we usually take off our Wintergreen jackets after a 10-minute warm up, then it's just long one layer of long underwear. The warmer temperatures are beginning to make some of the deeper snowed-in areas fairly soft as well.

We have still been encountering drifted and pressured areas which have slowed us down a bit. However, we have also come across some of the flattest pans we have seen so far.

We are at the northern limit to where we can receive our resupply. Therefore, we traveled with the GPS within close reach for most of the afternoon to check our position. After traveling across a flat pan for nearly an hour we knew we were close. A quick check revealed just how close 86 59 09'. Unfortunately, we were on the southern side of a large lead.

While we were getting the sled-canoes ready to catamaran and paddle across, a seal poked its head out of the water. A seal!? Swimming at most likely what was exactly 87 degrees north latitude. We watched in awe for a few minutes while it tilted its head back, slid underneath the surface and resurfaced nearby.

What must it think of us? We can only offer our biased conjecture in the time it takes to paddle across the lead.

Now, we are camped safely on the high side of 87. Tomorrow is officially a full rest day which we will use to our full advantage. However, we will also be stationed here until our new supplies arrive. When, you ask? We're not sure exactly. A lot depends on the weather. Luckily, we do have 6 days worth of rations remaining.

Al Gore's movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' opens this weekend. It is getting rave reviews. This is from a review in The New York Times: 'I can't think of another movie in which the display of a graph elicited gasps of horror, but when the red lines showing the increasing rates of carbon-dioxide emissions and the corresponding rise in temperatures come on screen, the effect is jolting and chilling.'

If you have a chance, please go see it.

Word of the day: skulk - we're loitering steathily at 87.

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