Monday, February 23, 2009

Arctic diary: Explorers' ice quest

Arctic diary: Explorers' ice quest

Arctic expedition (Martin Hartley)
The team will be measuring the thickness of the ice
A team of polar explorers has travelled to the Arctic in a bid to discover how quickly the ice cap is melting and how long it be before the Arctic summer becomes ice free.

Pen Hadow, Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley will be using a mobile radar unit to record an accurate measurement of ice thickness as they trek more than 1,000km to the North Pole.

They will be sending in regular diary entries, videos and photographs to BBC News throughout their expedition.

This first entry from the Catlin Arctic Survey team comes from Resolute Bay in the Canadian High Arctic as the final preparations for the expedition get under way.

THURSDAY 19th FEBRUARY: WELCOME TO THE ARCTIC
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Meet the Catlin Arctic Survey team

With unusually heavy snowfall in Britain just before we left for Canada, leave-taking from our families was not quite what we had planned.

My family home on Dartmoor in southwest England was left inaccessible by vehicle for four days - and this meant that I had to collect all my most personal items for the expedition as well as say goodbye to my daughter, son and wife in just 45 minutes, before setting off for London and the airport.

Inukshuk at Resolute (Martin Hartley)
Welcome to the High Arctic at 75 degrees North. We love it.
Pen Hadow

Our departure from Heathrow was an emotional occasion for many of us, including our families, partners and relentlessly hard-working support team.

All understand the scale of the challenge we have set ourselves and we understand the daily challenges to be faced by those we leave behind.

Four flights via Ottawa, Iqaluit and Nanisivik have got our travelling party as far as Resolute Bay in northernmost Canada.

Next week, another three flights via an abandoned weather station on an uninhabited island and a fuel stop on the Arctic Ocean's sea-ice will get us to our expedition's start point hundreds of kilometres offshore.

It is a familiar physical and psychological metamorphosis that Ann, Martin and myself have become used to over the years travelling to the High Arctic.

The landscapes from the plane windows become bereft of cities, towns and eventually even roads. Agricultural scenes give way to vast forests before the basics of rock, snow and ice take over. The planes become even smaller, sunlight is but for a handful of hours each day, and the air temperature drops towards -40C.

The team's equipment arrives (Martin Hartley)
The team's equipment was delayed by several days

Welcome to the High Arctic at 75 degrees North. We love it.

After the team's frenzied work preparing more than 1.5 tonnes of equipment, clothing and food for shipment ahead of our arrival, you may imagine our horror to discover we had overtaken the entire shipment as we stepped out at Resolute.

But every cloud, however dark, has a silver lining. And for us, it was the chance for desperately needed sleep and some precious time to gather ourselves mentally for what lies ahead.

Ann has been outside for a couple of hours each day on the hills behind the village, enjoying the colour-washes of peach, blood-orange and plum cast over the snowscapes by the extended sunsets this far north.

As the team's navigator, with responsibility also for the management of the expedition's daily operations and communications, these excursions are a perfect way of gradually reconnecting with the most extreme of environments.

Resolute Bay
The team is based at Resolute before its expedition begins

For Martin, too, the prospect of committing his unique photographic talents to revealing the wonders of the Arctic Ocean is apparent.

I have never seen so many camera bodies, lenses, batteries, cables, meters and cases, all spread out on his double bed.

He prefers to sleep on the floor out of respect for the tools of his trade. The agonies he will go through in deciding what items will make the cut to head north with him.

Tonight, half a tonne of our cargo was flown in, so it's been "all hands on deck" to move it all down to our base by truck and unpack it.

Tomorrow, we get to work with our final preparations for three months in sub-zero temperatures, pulling fully laden sledges weighing 100kg (200lb) more than 1,000km of floating sea-ice to the North Geographic Pole.

Pen Hadow, expedition leader of the Catlin Arctic Survey

Route map (BBC)

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