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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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Happy Summer

Jun 21, 2006
overcast, whiteout, 33 F, 7 nautical miles
Day 52. At exactly 12:01 am (the middle of our travel day), we stopped forward progress to pay special homage to this day. We wish we could say we were more excited by the first day of summer, but in all honesty, it played out much like all our other days on the Arctic Ocean.

For starters, we haven't seen a sunrise or sunset since arriving in Resolute at the end of April. It's 24 hours of light all day, every day. We often wonder how people function in the dark. Back home in Minnesota, our friends are celebrating this longest day with a huge solstice pageant. Have some extra fun for us.

The weather today wasn't very summery, either. We had a bit of snow in the morning, then a wet fog which turned into the worst whiteout we've had to date. We had to navigate by judging wind direction in relation to our bearing.

Speaking of which, our declination is now 92 degrees west. Which makes traveling north seem a bit odd as the red 'north' end of our Brunton compasses points a few degrees south of west.

We are still having daily battles with pressured ice. A few small lines slowed us down mid-day. Conversely, the morning was all water. We split between two of the largest leads that we've ever seen. The one veering to the west was so vast we couldn't see the opposite side. Both of us had close encounters with ice water as our skis slipped backward while trying to span large cracks.

Realistically, we are excited about this first day of summer. We want our first-ever expedition to be a wake up call to everyone around the world, but especially the United States. We have had to paddle our sled-canoes five different times today. Global warming is real and it's happening now. We are seeing its dramatic effects firsthand.

Since we are a little short on gift wrap, balloons, confetti and other celebratory accutrements, we honored the day by singing several 'summer' songs like: there ain't no cure for the summertime blues, hot town summer in the city, those summer days, California dreaming...

Today's picture: we call it 'thumb in whiteout.'

Word of the day: obstreperous - we're really quiet, we swear.

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