Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Nearly There

After navigating through more challenging conditions--ridges, rubble and deep snow--the team pitched camp after covering about 6.5 nautical miles in as many hours. Their current location is 89 north 89 degrees, 53 minutes. The team had the energy to continue on further, but they came upon the largest open water lead that they've seen so far. A lead is the open water between two or more plates of ice that have drifted apart. Leads can sometimes resemble rivers with clean, well defined banks that stretch on for considerable distance, but they often have irregular edges and narrow sections where teams can cross by building ice block bridges.

Sometimes leads force teams to ski east or west to find a safe place to cross.


The team opted not to cross the lead tonight because it's often easiest to simply wait for narrow sections to freeze up to the point that they can support sled toting skiers. If they continued on tonight, they may have found a way across the lead and through the rubble, but they would have had to expend A LOT of energy to travel a short distance, compromising their energy stores for tomorrow's push for the Pole.

Finding safe routes across rubble-filled leads is a crucial skill.


The night before possible "Pole days" is an exciting time. You can never take tomorrow's goal location for granted, but it's hard not to dream about standing on top of the world! To make the evening even more exciting, the team has already seen one seal in the next door lead. It's a bit colder today (-22 C), but seal watching provides a lot motivation to leave the warmth of a cook tent.

To celebrate the team's proximity to the Pole, PolarExplorers is holding a photo caption contest on our facebook page. Find the the photo of a past team member taking a dip in a lead on our facebook wall and post your caption as a comment. The author the best caption will receive a phone call from our team at the North Pole!



1 comment:

  1. Hoping for a successful pole day tomorrow! keep up the great work team. say hi to Keith Heger for me on top of the world. Congrats. Aaron from sweetser.

    ReplyDelete