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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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More Seals?

Jun 30, 2006
morning sun, overcast, 34.2 F, 9.5 nautical miles
Day 60. One more step. One more step. One more step. It has become our mantra.

It was a long day - physically very difficult, but mentally a nice break from yesterday as the threat of an icy death seemed slightly less imminent. Still, we finagled a few risky moves to get the ol' adrenaline pumping. Several face plants in the wet snow were especially invigorating as well.

We slogged over 10 hours trying to gain at least a small toe hold on our attainment of the Pole. The snow was the same mashed mess we waded through yesterday and slowed us to a crawl.

At 6 p.m. we took a short break from pulling sled-canoes to call in to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Kert Davies from Greenpeace facilitated the call. We have been sending the NSIDC, via Kert, our data on snow depth and density and ice freeboard. We were able to answer a few questions from scientists there clarifying our information. We also talked about some of the qualitative observations we've been making on the state of the Arctic ocean. We look forward to continuing our sampling.

The more we know about the condition of snow and ice on the Arctic Ocean right now, the better scientists will be able to predict future change. However, make no mistake, the minimum ice extent (in summer) will be less than last year's record. Global warming is happening now and its first victim will be the polar bear.

Further evidence: We saw three seals today; the last only 11 miles from the north pole.

Word of the day: supercalifragilisticexpealidocious - why not?

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