You may recall Lewis Pugh and his laughable “expedition” in Kayaks last summer to plant flags of nations on the ice. I came a little more respect for this group, since at least they are attempting some science. But given the media coverage and the problems they face in getting any meaningful data, I have my doubts about this project as well. – Anthony
“Occasionally it’s disheartening too when you’ve slogged for a day and then wake up the next morning having drifted back to where you started.” – Pen Hadow
A team of polar explorers has travelled to the Arctic in a bid to discover how quickly the sea-ice is melting and how long it might take for the ocean to become ice-free in summers.
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 to the North Pole.
The trio will be sending in regular diary entries, videos and photographs to BBC News throughout their expedition.
The Catlin Arctic Survey team started its gruelling trek on 28 February.
From Pen Hadow’s online journal: Conditions have been hard.
We have been battered by wind, bitten by frost and bruised from falls on the ice.
Occasionally it’s disheartening too when you’ve slogged for a day and then wake up the next morning having drifted back to where you started.
The Arctic sea ice is constantly moving, breaking open and reforming into different shapes – which means we can end up moving several kilometres in any direction while we are asleep in our tents.
The wind chill today will slice us up – it’s taking the temperature down to below -50C, so we have decided to take a day’s rest to recharge our batteries and soothe the aches and pains.
We are resigned to several weeks of daily discomfort and general misery, safe in the knowledge that conditions, our progress and general well-being will improve over the coming months.
See a video and audio report from Hadow at the BBC website here
B Kerr (15:33:05) :
Neil Crafter (11:35:20) :
B Kerr (11:07:14)
Is Pen his real name or is it a nom de plume?”
Its obviously a pen name!
Thanks!!!
Is Neil your real name??”
Yes it is.
Is ‘B’ yours?
As a New Zealander we are well used to the dangers of the great outdoors and every year see blind foolishness punished by death many times over in our mountains and on our seas.
These clowns are heading the same way. The only thing left going for them is that the BBC can’t afford to abandon them otherwise they are dead meat.
Ed Hillary took farm tractors to the South Pole BUT he knew exactly what he was doing. These guys obviously don’t have a clue.
B Kerr and Jim B: No matter what, they will report thinning ice.
I agree, they are going to either lose fingers & toes or die up there trying to survive in -50 temps. If it were that easy to simply walk to the pole, Scott and his party would not have perished. They are probably in more trouble than they realize. Finding yourself several miles away from where you slept over night come morning is not a good sign. Stupid idea.
Bring them home.
The fact that they are using the best equipment modern technology can provide says it all. Modern fibres are not as warm as animal furs and igloos are an essential survival shelter in the high Arctic. Tents, as I can attest from one miserable night near Resolute Bay, are at best a temporary shelter until an igloo can be built. They should have taken an Inuit guide, but they probably wouldn’t have found one foolish enough to go along with this nonsense.
“Bill Illis (15:57:19) :
I think these three are all very experienced polar explorers (daredevils that is).”
Bill, your follow-on points seem to indicate otherwise? 🙂
B Kerr:
Ok…I don’t get it. I read the article you linked to…and aside from some pretty amazing claims, (like the team will have taken millions of measurements during the trip?…how man would that be per day?/per person? They better get busy.)
So if they walk for 3km, and the ice where they stop moves sideways 4km, what value is the measurement? They can’t come back to the same spot of ice in a week, a month, or a year and determine what the difference in thickness is.
It’s a waste of time and a giant publicity stunt.
As for writing to the sponsors?…nah, not me. These people are “experienced arctic explorers”, and it’s a free country. They’ll be heroes to the AGW crowd when they return, whether that happens tomorrow or a month from now.
And Ann sounds like a clod. I’d kick her off the island just for spilling the stew, let alone almost burning the tent down.
JimB
“jack m (16:48:17) :
B Kerr and Jim B: No matter what, they will report thinning ice.”
I agree. And part of the trouble the expedition is encountering is undoubtedly due to the increasing dynamics in ice translocation caused by increasingly thinning ice masses caused by the much-faster-than-anticipated rise in the global kliffenguter thermal layer which is directly tied to the inverse C02 forcing and it’s causal relationship with the arctic WillyWahs, which has, as we all know, caused the ice to get thinner.
Now…where do I pick up my $1million in grant money?
JimB
The confusion about Arctic ice is astounding. There have been many recent expeditions to the North Pole, including by solo travelers. An excellent account is “On Thin Ice” a woman’s journey to the North Pole by Matty L. McNair (1999), a guide who lives in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut on Baffin Island.
http://www.northwinds-arctic.com/matty.html
It looks like Brit explorers need to re-invent the wheel and avoid doing proper research and preparations…
and…
If they really wanted to get this done?…give the equipment to a bunch of Navy Seals, drop ’em off on the ice, and tell them you’ll be back to pick them up at the pole, in a month.
She spilled the stew.
Done.
JimB
OK. For anyone who buys into getting them off the ice, the sponsors are the target. Here is a list of e-mail addresses I assembled from the sponsor list. Put this into your own words and make it passionate. These 3 could die (and for what – bad data?), and I want to know that you hold them responsible for not pulling the plug. The whistle has been blown if they want to ignore it!
catlininfo@catlin.com
questions@wwf.panda.org
patrick.birley@ecx.eu
press.services@nokia.com
tburgess@hillandknowlton.com
hasan.abdat@polarcapital.co.uk
info@jenrickgroup.co.uk
contact@triplepoint.co.uk
enquiries@prometheusmed.com
info@hidalgo.co.uk
reception@canadiannorth.com
mayday@bitc.org.uk
serge.viranian@climatefriendly.com
lwaters@london.newsquest.co.uk
info@sickchildrenstrust.org
“Bill Illis (15:57:19) : Things break at -40C like the circulation to your fingers and toes, equipment and like Martin’s tooth on day one when he bit into some frozen chocolate.”
Things can turn nasty quickly. Reminds me of a documentary I saw, “Touching the Void.”
pt.1
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjY3ODYyMTY=.html
pt.2
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjY3ODYyNDg=.html
I wonder if this expedition knows Arctic ice is in a growing trend, and the earth is in a cooling trend?
To Jim B,
Ann has been to the south pole and the north pole before. The others have had similar experience.
The problem is, when you are frozen solid, mistakes happen.
Leaving a fuel bottle sitting at an angle, leaking fuel out on the tent floor and then eventually setting the tent and fuel bottle on fire when the leak hits the fire source is not a rookie mistake as much as it is something that happens when you are in temps of -40C and you are frozen solid.
The next problem is you need a heat source in the tent for periods of time, at least for periods of time at night, to get the temperature down to -10C or so or you continue getting more and more frozen solid.
-40C is shock to the system, no matter what clothing you have on. When that shock continues for days at a time, crucial fuel sources get mishandled. When the shock to the system occurs, maybe you bite into that chocolate you had stored away rather than letting small bits melt in your mouth the way you are trained to and the way your experience tells you, you should.
And when you are 7 years old and you come off the ice after hockey and it is -40C in the natural ice rink and you take your skates off … the whole dressing room is crying.
“Llamedos (08:23:05) : Oh and apparently it’s cold. But to be fair, who could have expected that?”
Nice. Very nice!!!
My favorite pinnacle of British exploration was “Travels amongst the great Andes of the equator”, when Edward Whymper explored mountain peaks in Equador while also examining altitude sickness. It takes some kind of nerve to look into why people get sick by doing the same thing they do, in a remote foreign land (the trip to Quito alone was a quite a trek in bad conditions).
Arn Riewe (15:38:11) :
“Is anyone else concerned with the lives of these people? I’ve e-mailed most of the sponsors and the WWF telling them I hold them responsible for the safety and safe return of these people and that three human lives are not worth their silly marketing and PR programs.”
Sorry, can’t agree. I have seen no evidence that these people have been forced to go on the trip by anything other than heir own free will. They have pulled-in the sponsors, not vice versa.
In many fields of human foolishness people put themselves at risk in order to draw attention to a perceived problem. Far too often, in my opinion, the most fundamental motivation is to draw attention not to a perceived problem but to themselves. Whether these silly so-called explorers are undertaking this pointless mission for what they can get out of it in terms of interview fees, book deals and the other lucrative accoutrements of contemporary egotism, or because they want to prove a point, it is solely their responsibility to decide when enough is enough.
I don’t like to see the vainglorious dying through cold any more than I like to see them dying through crashing a car or motorbike while racing at 100mph. The simple fact is that people take stupid decisions and they are responsible for the consequences. If they lose digits, limbs or life I will utter a sanguine sigh and say to myself “well, what did they expect?”, but I won’t shed a single tear.
“To Jim B,
Ann has been to the south pole and the north pole before. The others have had similar experience.
The problem is, when you are frozen solid, mistakes happen. ”
That being said?…I’d still kick her off the island.
JimB
I hate to suggest this, but couldn’t an AWACs plane provide this data, in more detail, in about 5 hours?
@AnonyMoose (09:31:52) :
“A few days ago they blogged that they found a polar bear’s tracks.
Their website’s equipment page does not show a rifle.”
That’s not a good thing if true. When unarmed, one does NOT mess with polar bears.
Uh oh. Polar bears are always aggressive, and they hunt anything smaller than them. If the Polar bear catches thier scent, it will surely find them and begin to stalk.
I predicted this when the expedition started off. Spooky!:
http://margosmaid.blogspot.com/2009/03/should-they-pack-cardigan.html
I wrote to the 1st one on that emai list. caitlininfo.
I cannot bear the thought of an Arctic trajedy and I didn’t do my part to try and sound the horn. Life is too precious, even if they are badly misguided in their mission.
I doubt there would be a tragedy here. They have communication and can get picked up within hours.
Ventana (18:50:51) & JimB (17:25:28): (SEALs & AWACs) Good ideas, but both are part of the Establishment.
Aviator (17:08:39): Exactly. Qiviut longies, for starters! And maybe some ermine. Synthetics were designed to mimic natural fibers but be easier to launder, lighter weight, more consistent in their take-up of dye, etc. I sincerely doubt that laundry is a big consideration on Pen’s trip.
I’ve [lived and] prepared meals at neg45F ambient (in my kitchen) and it does take some planning and care, but it’s not that hard. I think what they’re up against is their minds aren’t conditioned to prolonged exposure so their judgment is off. It’s a bit like being tipsy and trying to drive home. You have to have set routines that have been drilled into your gray matter.
For instance, do not use the Japanese carbon steel knife when slicing the vegs you’ve been keeping warm inside your parka because the knife’s edge will shatter. Don’t assume that snow/ice is flat. *Do* assume that whatever you’ve been holding will be warmer than the snow/ice and will thus melt the surface and then refreeze so you’ll have to break it free to pick it back up, and if you set it on a tilted surface, that little bit of melt will lubricate the interstice and the poor object will tip over. And make sure you phone home for retrieval before you become so blurry-minded that you cannot remember what home is.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”
~Einstein