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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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On the Road Again

Jun 07, 2006
overcast, fog, some sun, 28 F, 9 nautical miles
Day 37. We have finally left 'camp depot'. It was a comfortable piece of ice, but it was time to move on. For one thing, our camp was beginning to smell a lot like 'people' and even though we are about 300 miles from land, we are still concerned about curious polar bears.

It's easy to think of polar bears as being similar to other species of bears, but they're not. Sure, they're bears, but polar bears are classified as marine mammals because they have become so well adapted to this environment of ice and water and the amount of time they spend in the water traveling between ice floes.

However, they are not adapted to swim long distances, which is why polar bears are drowning with alarming frequency off the north coast of Alaska.

Polar bear drownings used to be a really rare event, but now, scientists are noting record numbers of drownings, and they chalk it up to the lack of sea ice and to global warming.

If we were to have seen a polar bear today (which we didn't) it most likely would have been in the water. We catamaraned the sled-canoes five times over leads ranging in size from 15 feet to 100 yards wide. The bigger ones acquired names like Mississippi, Amazon and Nile as they stretched out of view.

It was really good to be traveling again. Despite our heavy-again loads, we feel strong. Luckily, the ice has cooperated a bit and was fairly flat. We did run into problems a few times where ice pans are drifting apart. Normally, when we are navigating through small pans, we look for areas of pressure and cross where the two pans have collided. Between those spots today were large gaps of water.

A note about the picture - we keep track of our daily position by writing in marker on the tent wall.

Word of the Day: troubadour - the Arctic versions.

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