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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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Laughing All The Way

Jun 22, 2006
overcast, whiteout, snow 33.3 F, 8 nautical miles
Day 53. All we can do is laugh. When it's another whiteout, the fog is so thick that all we need to do is open our mouth to get a drink, the snow is soft as sugar and no longer supports our weight on skis... These conditions are so over the top and ridiculous that all we can do is laugh at ourselves.

A popular phrase of late: 'What were we thinking of when we decided to go to the North Pole in summer?' To which the other replies, 'Are we having fun yet?'

The good news is that the snow hasn't been sticking to our skis. So, that's one less problem to deal with. We've got other solutions, too. Our remedy for the bad visibility: We're switching back to traveling days. The fog tends to burn off somewhat around noon and if we can squeeze an hour or two of actually being able to see, we'll take it. Perhaps we can even get a few pictures with some sun in them...although we're not holding our breath on that one.

We hope our non-vampiric schedule will allow us to communicate better with John Huston at base camp in Minnesota, the folks at Greenpeace and press as we zero slowly in on the pole.

We have devised an exciting new sport. We set up the sled-canoes to be catamaraned at a lead, hop on top, then use our paddles to push us down into the water. The ensuing half-second ride and splash rivals any water park feature attraction.

The boat bridge is back in action as well. We haven't had much need for the technique until recently. The procedure is relatively simple: Shove the sled-canoe so that it spans a wide crack then, with skis still on, walk or crawl across. It's loads of fun. Try it if you get a chance.

It was announced today that the leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Sens. Bingaman and Domenici, reached an agreement with Sens. Stevens and Kennedy on the threat to Cape Wind in the Coast Guard Reauthorization Bill. They have dropped the Massachusetts gubernatorial veto power for this important clean energy project. Cape Wind is a proposed off-shore wind farm in Massachusetts and an important component of our clean energy future. We are pleased to hear this newest development.

To learn more about how you can support Cape Wind, the proposed wind farm off Long Island and other clean energy projects, click here: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/capewind

Today's picture: Skiing into nothing. Conditions like these are difficult to navigate in, to say the least. It's almost impossible to see even the horizon line.

Word of the day: agog - eager to reach the pole.

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