Polar Voyages

by Gray, Gordon

  We boarded the Antonov 74. This was a small Russian twin-engine plane with high wings and a cargo ramp at the back. The rear half of the fuselage was given over to cargo, and the front half given to seats and people. I managed to sit by a window but those in rows further back did not have windows. The Russians gave us each a small pack including a salami sandwich and a can of fizzy orange. There was no interest in the usual flight safety rituals. There were bags and parkas stuffed all around the exits and no concern as to whether we had seat belts on or not. There was nowhere to stow anything, yet as there were greater hazards ahead than the possibility of tripping over a parka, no one was really worried. There were more fantastic views of Spitsbergen as we flew north, then I could see the pack ice and the polar ice cap. There seemed to be a few thin leads but not much actual open water. After two-and-a-half noise-filled hours, the plane started to make a long slow and very gradual approach. It seemed to be flying low and level but was gradually losing height. Obviously this was one long-low approach to avoid slamming down hard onto the fragile ice and disappearing through into the ocean below. Would the new runway hold up? Would we crack it, or worse, just carry on down? We held our breath. Then we touched-down very, very gently onto the 1,200 yard-long ice runway. The touchdown was almost imperceptible, but the reverse thrust was not. The runway held, the engines screamed and snow and ice flew past the window as the plane braked hard, trying to stop before the end of the runway and the ice floe. We stopped at the very end by some oil drums which marked the limit of the runway. Just beyond them a deep crack showed the end of the floe.

  As I climbed down the aircraft steps, the first person I saw standing at the foot of the steps was Victor. He greeted me with a big bear hug and huge smile!

  ‘Welcome, Gordon!’

  ‘It is good to be here Victor’. Victor took charge. We all gathered on the ice, got our bags and Victor pointed the way to the tents. He told us to use the wooden bridging boards across the cracks in the ice that mark the edges of the ice floes. We set off towards the blue tents in the distance. The woman who had lost her glasses set off ahead of the rest of us, on her own, and stepped across the crack. Suddenly, a voice boomed out across the frozen wastes. We froze on the spot. ‘Do NOT walk over the cracks. I have just told you to walk on the board, so why you walk on the crack? It is very dangerous to step over the crack.’ It was Victor some forty yards away, where he was still supervising the unloading of the plane. The woman trudged on, looking chastened.

  Camp Barneo.

  From the landing strip the camp was just a collection of low, blue, rigid frame tents in the distance. Large letters shaped from blocks of ice spelt out Barneo with blue dye. As we drew nearer we could see that the tents were all surrounded by banks of snow, cleared for access round the camp and about 8 feet high. They also acted as wind breaks. Someone identified the mess tent and we headed there and waited. The tent was about 30 feet by 20 feet and had a thick padding material lining to it. The tables were set out canteen style and a serving table had both a coffee and a tea urn on it, as well as a basket of bread and some hunks of cheese. Victor arrived about ten minutes later and told us to eat, just as a short, thin woman wearing a white apron and a frown appeared through a door in the back of the tent, with a hot tray of stew. She put it on the serving table and vanished. This was dinner. No potatoes, no vegetables, just the stew. It was about 9 p.m. by now. I got some bread and cheese as the stew did not look too exciting.

  Victor then organised the beds. ‘Come with me to find a bed’ he called. We set off in a group round the camp which is made up of about six or seven ten-man tents. At each tent Victor went in and then called out ‘Room for three in here’, or ‘No room here try the next’. Gradually we all found a bed. I ended up in a ten-bed tent which had seven people already in it and in bed. The tent was dark inside. There were no lights as the twenty-four hour daylight provided a little light through the door. The beds were small camp beds with sleeping bags on top. I made out a number of bodies in the beds near the door. The only spare beds were right at the other end. A French man and his wife took the other two beds. Hot air was provided by oil heaters outside and these pumped hot air directly into the tents through eight- or ten-inch wide pipes that came into the tents about 3 feet from the ground. They only heated one end of the tent though, so those by the door froze while those by the inlets cooked. One inlet was right at my bed level. We learnt that the slumbering bodies were Italians, but we never discovered what they were there for as none of them spoke English and they always seemed to be in bed. Having found a bed for ourselves we gathered back in the mess tent. There were over a dozen people, some I recognised from the flight up, others I did not. Who they were, where they were from, was a mystery to me. But I didn’t care as I was at ice station Barneo! We started to relax and chatting with each other when Victor called for ‘Silence please. The weather is good now so we will go to the pole now. Please get coats on and come to the helicopter now.’

  Victor led us out and over the ice to an old looking Russian helicopter. It was a faded orange colour with a thick blue band along the side. It was a Mil 8 Taimyr and could seat eighteen of us in the back. Its engine was already running as we scrambled in and sat on the metal-framed bench seats along the sides, like a van. The noise was deafening and conversation was impossible. There were no seat belts or safety briefings. We flew north for about half-an-hour or more over the endless ice and snow. The helicopter slowed down as the pilot looked for a flat area of floe on which to land. He finally found one and we landed, unexpectedly gently. We all got out onto the ice and looked around in a bemused, lost way. It was as if we all expected to see a brightly painted pole sticking up by the helicopter.

  Victor took the lead and we set out, walking across the flat ice and struggling through increasingly ridged and rough ice as we followed Victor in his red parka and white fur-trimmed Russian hat, with his GPS in his hand. The ice ridges were about ten to 12 feet high. They were tall ice crags with deep drifts and holes full of soft snow behind them. It was not easy to clamber over the ridges as they stuck up at all angles, yet it would be easy to slip or trip and crack yourself on the head or twist an ankle. We all slowed down and started to move more cautiously. Luckily the thick parkas and trousers provided some padded protection from the concrete ice. The helicopter was soon lost from view behind the ice and we were now dependent upon keeping Victor in view to avoid getting lost forever out on the ice.

  The ice and snow were deceptive and again I tripped over an ice outcrop that I could not see. Then, I stepped into a deep hole filled with soft snow but which looked like solid ice. I tried to look suave but gave up as we all seemed to be having trouble staying vertical. How on earth do you travel through this on skis and pulling a loaded pulk? The enormity of what I would have faced on the skiing trip dawned on me as I looked at the chaotic mass of jagged ice that stretched across the icescape. Here the ice floes had come together and thrown up these huge ridges and pinnacles as the forces of the ocean current beneath and the wind on the ice above drove the pack across the top of the world. After about twenty minutes we were strung out across the ice in a series of gasping, cursing bundles as we tried to keep up. Then we realised that, at last, Victor had stopped. He was staring at his GPS. As we joined him he said simply ‘We are there’. 89-degrees, 59.999 minutes north. The GPS readings seemed stuck. We scrambled a few yards further. Then, in between a confusion of jagged ice ridges and surrounded by deep snow filled gulleys, was a spot where the GPS readings flickered for a brief moment to 90.00.000 north. I was on the very top of the world. This was the climax of years of dreaming, months of excitement and days of changi ng plans, but finally I had made it.

  The GPS only showed 90.00 N momentarily, then flicked to 89 degrees 59.999 minutes north (it did not show seconds of latitude). As 0.001 mile is about two yards, and the ice is constantly moving, it only had to move two yards for the GPS to register it. It was 23.40 on the 20th April. We were all happ
y; we really had got to the North Pole. Victor called me over and pointed to someone standing nearby.

  Gordon and Victor at 90 North.

  ‘Come, give him your camera’ he said to me, then he grabs me by the shoulders.

  ‘Please, mister, take our picture’ he ordered the man.

  Victor and I had our picture taken together by a tall blue flag with 90 degrees N on it that Victor had brought along and planted in the ice. Then he took one of me alone with the flag.

  A low midnight sun was shining through a hazy deep red sky with bands of thicker cloud high in the sky. Wherever we looked we could see ice. Every direction was south. It was hard to imagine exactly where I was standing, looking out at the endless icescape and trying to picture a globe with me standing on the very top.

  A deep feeling of satisfaction started to creep over me, while I may not have skied the last 30 miles to get here, I was still here. It had not been without its frustrations, but now it was all worth it. Now I could say ‘Yes, I have been to the North Pole’.

  Who was first?

  Who really was the first person to stand here? Polar explorers had tried to get to the North Pole since the 1800s when Parry led a British expedition north. Others followed. Americans, mostly up through the west side of Greenland and the Davis Strait, and the Europeans from the Atlantic and Spitsbergen, all tried, but no-one managed it and many died in the attempt. Nansen did get within about 240 miles in 1895.

  Great mystery has existed since the American Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole on 6 April 1909. His claim was countered by Dr Frederick Cook, another experienced American explorer, who claimed to have reached the Pole a year before Peary, on 21 April 1908. Both claims have been extensively researched and both found wanting. Cook’s claim was found wanting in the lack of accurate navigational data to support it. Cook also claimed to have been the first to climb Mount McKinley in 1906, but that claim was later proved to be false, so his credibility was flawed.

  Peary’s claim was doubted as it seemed impossible for him to have travelled as far and as fast as he claimed, to get to the pole and back, in the time he claimed. Experts have since said that his navigational data got less detailed the nearer he got to the pole. He would have had to have travelled at three times the average speed of his whole march north, up to the point of sending back the last support party, to do it; the experts felt this was highly unlikely. In fact, on his return journey, he overtook some of his support team who had started back days before and from well south of the pole. Although he had a No. 2, Henson, and four Inuit with him, none were navigators and so were not able to confirm or challenge Peary’s navigation. Peary claimed to have travelled in a straight line the whole way, but Henson states in his diaries that they had to make many detours to avoid ridges and open water leads. Tom Avery carried out a replica trip in 2004 and actually beat Peary’s claimed time by five hours. Avery concluded that Peary could have done it. However, Avery’s fastest run over five days was 90 miles. Peary claimed to have done 135 in five days. Peary had spent his life in the Arctic, mostly Greenland, where he mapped vast areas of the northwest and northern coast. He had tried to get to the pole twice before and failed on both attempts. This was to be his final chance as ill health and injuries were already dogging him, so he had every incentive to get there.However, the doubts remained and well-researched books have been written supporting or disputing both claims.

  Nansen tried to sail across the pole in Fram, but the ice took the ship well south of the pole and Nansen and Johanssen then tried to ski there from the Fram but they had to turn back 240 miles short.

  In the twentieth century many people have claimed to have flown over the pole, only to have their records proven inaccurate. Roald Amundsen is the first man to have proved that he had actually been over the pole when he flew over it with Ellsworth in the airship Norge on 12 May 1926. However, they did not stop and flew on to Alaska. A team of Russian scientists flew there by plane and landed in 1958.

  What is known for certain is that the first properly documented expedition to the North Pole on foot was by an Englishman, Wally Herbert, in 1969. Wally Herbert’s expedition crossed the Arctic from Canada to Spitsbergen via the pole. There have been nuclear submarines surfacing here, nuclear icebreakers visiting with tourists and of course, Victor’s team and expeditions from Camp Barneo, since 2002.

  G gets to 90 North

  We stood and savoured the feeling of being on top of the world, a place where only a few hundred have stood before us. We explored the immediate area, trying to take in where we were and absorb the ice scenery. After a few minutes Victor called to everyone that it was time to go. As we set off back across the ice and ridges towards the helicopter, I caught sight of something in the distance moving behind an ice ridge. I watched for it to come into view again. A dog team with two skiers emerged from behind the ridges as they arrived at the North Pole. They were moving quickly, as if the dogs already knew a secret route through the ice. Victor went over and spoke to them but we never learnt who they were, only that they were Russian.

  We got back to Barneo at about 2:30 a.m. As I got off the helicopter Victor took me aside and told me that the others on the helicopter were going back to Spitzbergen in a few hours, but he would like me to stay until Sunday so we can chat and I can see what goes on at Barneo. I thanked him as he has enough problems without me hanging around.

  Sleeping was hard, even though it was 3 a.m. and my end of the tent was warm. I lay fully dressed on the top of the sleeping bag. In the night, however, it suddenly got much colder, and very quickly. Someone had propped the tent door open to cool the tent down! The Italians soon woke up and discovered this and closed it again as their end of the tent was now freezing. I lay there absorbing the fact that I was actually sleeping, or trying to, on the polar ice cap and that under me was just one- to two-metres of ice, then 1000 fathoms of the cold Arctic Ocean. The following night the generator that provided the hot air for the tents stopped. I awoke to find I was shivering and the world had gone silent. I lay there, trying to curl up inside the sleeping bag to keep warm, but failed. In no time I was freezing as the Arctic cold reclaimed the tents and draped a heavy blanket of very chilled air onto everyone. It took the engineer some time to get it going again but thankfully he did. The hot air was soon blowing again.

  Day 7, Saturday 21 April 2007

  After a sleepless night, I got up at 7 a.m. The sun was bright and I met Victor walking out on the ice. He and I were the only ones up. It was clear that everything that happened here was run and controlled by Victor. He himself was as friendly and approachable as ever. There was no evidence of a No. 2 or any hierarchy other than Victor and the rest! We had a coffee and chatted for a while. He said he was hoping to get Eugenie and his two skiers up to Barneo later that day. He said I was right to change my plans and he was glad I had.

  The meals in Barneo were basic. A pan of porridge was put on the serving table at 9 a.m. and left there. Lunch at 2 p.m. was a pan of soup. Dinner at 9 p.m. was some form of meat. When I was there it was chicken pieces and rice, or Frankfurter and mash. I could only assume Victor had his own supplies as he was never seen eating in the mess tent. The ‘glasses woman’, who turned out to be a New Zealander, decided to leave lunch until later as the tent was looking ‘a bit full’! Someone suggested to her that this might not be a good idea as once the cook cleared it there would be nothing to eat until tonight. She looked at him as if they were an idiot. ‘Of course they will give me lunch later’, she snorted loudly as she left. She came back at about 3 p.m. and found that there was no food left out, so she marched up to the door through to the kitchen and called out for the cook.

  ‘Can I now have my lunch?’ she asked.

  ‘Niet. You too late.’ replied the cook.

  I managed to suppress a smile.

  I walked out to the edges of the camp area, past the runway, where I could feel the true scale of the ice cap and its beauty. On one side of the
camp there were high ridges and deep ice holes stretching out into the distance, I tried to climb through some of these to see what lay beyond but found that the ice, heavy gloves, concrete-hard edges and all the angles that the ice takes up made it a thankless and punishing exercise, so I returned to camp. Also, although polar bears were rare this far from the ice edge, they were not unknown and we had all been told not to stray too far from the camp.

  Out past the ice runway, marked along its edges by black bin liners filled with snow, or by oil drums, the ice was flatter, but even out here it had big undulations and looked like snow-covered fields rolling gently into the distance. The light and the sun played tricks on the ice. In the sunlight the edges and depressions in the ice were clear, shadows showed you where things were and how far away. When the sun went in, everything merged into a cold, grey-tinged white mass and it was impossible to see any definition or depth to the ice forms. The ridges were softened by snow drifting up their faces but they showed their true selves by the hard translucent ice shining on the sides.

  Icescape at 89 North.

  The ridges ran into the distance, like snow-covered hedgerows. The wind had made sastrugi form where it had blasted loose snow away from the ice and the hard ridges flowed in gentle curves across the surface. Out here, away from the ice station, I really felt that I was at the very end of the world. The only sound was the continual moaning of the wind and the gentle slosh of loose snow being blown across the ice. The sky was everything. The heavens formed a vast dome over the polar regions and the ice station could have been a million miles away. At the ice station end of the runway the floe ended in a clear, deep edge about a foot wide. Here, small leads existed where the edges of the floes didn’t quite meet with their neighbours. They looked so innocuous. At one point you could step across without even thinking, but a few yards away where it might be 3 feet wide a simple jump could, with a slip of a boot on the ice, easily turn into disaster. Out here, with the wind blowing, no-one back in the tents would hear a yell from the icy water down between the floes. The ice at the edge is smooth and hard and rises eighteen inches above the water. To climb out unassisted in a heavy parka and boots would be impossible. A gentle walk could, in seconds, turn to death and no-one would ever know.