The Last Degree / Spring 2010 (part 1/2)

24 pictures posted on the 14.05.2010

The Antonov 74 is THE ideal plane for the Arctic. It needs pack ice that is only 1.5 metre thickness and a runway of 1 kilometre to land.

The Antonov 74 is THE ideal plane for the Arctic. It needs pack ice that is only 1.5 metre thickness and a runway of 1 kilometre to land.

© Alain Hubert

  • LYR is an old mining city created at the beginning of the 20th century in the Svalbard Archipelago, a thousand km north of Norway
  • The city has grown in a area protected from the strong wind and dotted with a myriad of wooden typical Scandinavian houses
  • LYR is situated along a fjord at 78°N
  • We used to stay at the Mary Ann’s Pollariggen Guesthouse, a place previously used by miners and restored with a particular atmosphere. Just behind, the shed with all our equipment.
  • It’s a Russian Antonov 74 plane that flies us to the middle of the Arctic Ocean at Barneo, at about 110 km from the geographical North Pole.
  • The Antonov 74 is THE ideal plane for the Arctic. It needs pack ice that is only 1.5 metre thickness and a runway of 1 kilometre to land.
  • Barneo is a temporary drifting platform that is only set up in the month of March. A few years ago it used to close in May. Nowadays, it closes at the end of April.
  • From the Barneo base, we will walk 'unsupported' to the Pole, where an MI-8 helicopter like this one will come to pick us up.
  • The pack ice is constantly subject to the forces of the wind pushing the ice or creating long open water leads that literally design this amazing ice maze through which we will have to walk.
  • At the end of the day, we set up our tents together in order to get some rest.
  • Marching through the ice compression, also called hummocks, will soon become something of a ritual.
  • Everyone is pulling a small sledge weighing 35 to 40 kg.
  • When the open lead is too large to be crossed and small enough for using a sledge as a kind of bridge, we can cross it easily.
  • Depending on the state of the pack ice, we used to encounter such leads more than a dozen times a day.
  • Strange to feel yourself suddenly on a moving footbridge.
  • For obvious security reasons and efficiency, we usually stay together when walking.
  • One does not have to worry about: the guide (myself) will always be there to help you to keep confidence in yourself.
  • Quite often we crossed a passage without using the sledges as a footbridge. We pull them behind us in order to save time.
  • Water is produced by melting some snow. So we need the fuel and the stoves in order to prepare the evening meal
  • Being together at night for dinner allows everyone to relax. This is the only moment of the day for really talking and also for making sure that everyone is OK.
  • Living on the ice will become a succession of technical movements designed to overcome the difficulties.
  • The ice is sometimes too thin to walk on but there is a possibility of getting across a few hundred yards away without the sledges.
  • So we chain them together to a train for crossing the 'river'...
  • Sometimes it looks easy, but this is a real ocean with a depth of more than 3000 metres.