Back on land!

The team is finally back in Longyearbyen! After a party on the charter plane as it stood on the ice runway awaiting take-off the team flew the 2.5 hours back to civilization. They are now happily clean, warm, comfortable and enjoying the comforts of Longyearbyen, including an end-of-the-expedition celebration and a comfortable night in a bed!

The helicopter that picked the team up near the North Pole.

Loading the charter flight back to Longyearbyen.

The expedition officially ends tomorrow but the journey will continue on as each team member shares the adventure with family, friends, colleagues, and their greater community. The team wants to thank everyone for following the expedition's progress and for the questions and messages of support.

It has been our pleasure to work with each and every team member in preparation for this expedition. They truly have been a wonderful group of people to get to know and we look forward to future adventures together!

Make sure to listen to the final audio update from guide Keith Heger!

Poor weather and another night on the ice...

The team phoned in today to say that their scheduled pick up was delayed due to bad weather. When they woke they had very windy conditions (around 20 miles per hour) with low visibility and snow. They thought there might be a break in the bad weather but even though conditions did improve slightly the plan is to spend the night on the ice. They will check back in with the Borneo basecamp tomorrow morning, and they hope to fly back to Longyearbyen tomorrow afternoon.

The PolarExplorers flag in a lull between gusts of wind.



One day of tent time after skiing the last degree to the North Pole is nice, and relaxing. Two days and you start to get a little antsy. No doubt they are having visions of long, hot showers, and dreams of sleeping in a bed with clean sheets and a deep mattress. Ahhh.... The team has now drifted 4 miles from the North Pole in the 48 hours that they have been in this camp. Let's all keep our finger's crossed that they make it back to Longyearbyen tomorrow!

Make sure to listen to the audio post below. Nikki would like to pass along birthday greetings to her mom. Happy Birthday Nikki's Mom!

Maxin' and relaxin'...

The team phoned in to report that they were happy to be relaxing in their tents all day long. Reading, sleeping, eating, and chilling out were the order of the day. This was especially easy since the weather was very overcast with flat light and moderate wind in the morning. A perfect day for sleeping in!

Chilling in the tents. Thinking of ways to pass the time.

The team had drifted south 2 nautical miles overnight, putting their position at N89.58. Their plan remains to be picked up tomorrow by helicopter and flown back to the Borneo basecamp and then onwards to Longyearbyen. Hopefully the weather will cooperate!

There were a couple of questions that came in the last few days that the team wanted to answer:

Q: How do you navigate? Is it all by GPS?
A: Yes, we navigate mostly by GPS. At least we get our bearings that way. Oftentimes once we verify which way is north we will turn off the GPS and navigate by sun or wind. This is very easy to do. You just keep the sun at a certain angle to your direction of travel (such as at two o'clock) and use it as your guide. The sun travels across the sky at a certain speed and if you have a watch you can easily travel north just using the sun all day long (of course this doesn't work so well on overcast days). The wind is a little less predictable because it can shift, but in general if you know the wind hits your left cheek as you ski north you have a very good indicator of direction. When we got close to the pole we relied on GPS 100%. Even with the GPS it wasn't easy to find the North Pole! We can only imagine how difficult it was for the early explorers who used sextants and nautical almanacs to plot their positions. That would be very cold on the fingers!

Q: What happens if you get to the Pole and it is in the middle of water?
A: We are so glad that didn't happen! But if it did we would just have to hope that the ice would drift enough so that in a given amount of time 90 degrees North would again be covered by ice so we could at least stand at the very top of the world and celebrate.

Q: What is your main source of food and drink?
A: We are eating very well. Lots of fatty foods like cheese, butter, and for those of us that eat meat, sausage and bacon. Mmmmm... For dinner we usually start off with soups to rehydrate, then we have bagels fried in butter with cheese, or tortillas fried in butter with cheese, followed by our main course which is a dehydrated dish, but a very good one! Then on most nights we have a special dessert brought by one of the team members. Our lunches are generally energy bars or candy bars packed with nuts and chocolate as well as some other high-energy snacks. Everything we drink comes from collecting snow from around the campsite and melting it over our camp stoves. We are carrying an assortment of hot drinks (coco, tea, chai, coffee, etc.) as well as some cold drink powders like lemonade and electrolyte replacement mixes. Overall, the food is very good. But that could be the hunger talking!

We didn't receive an audio report yet, but if one comes in we will be sure to post it. Check back again tomorrow for another update from the team!

The North Pole!

A very big congratulations to our 2011 North Pole Last Degree Ski Expedition for reaching the North Pole today at 17:30 Longyearbyen time. Of course at the North Pole all lines of longitude and all time zones converge so they can pick any time zone they want! They can also walk around the whole world in just a couple steps.

Everyone is thrilled to have reached the North Pole. Upon arrival they jumped up and down, took pictures, got out various country flags (Australia and Ireland), college flags, banners and made calls to friends and family back home.

Finally they can stop skiing!

The team had very flat light today, with visibility near zero at many times. Luckily their ice conditions were good with mostly pan ice that was flat and old. It was very warm, perhaps around -10C. They made incredibly fast progress. In only 6 hours they covered the remaining 9.5 nautical miles! That's very fast! Nikki was able to take the lead for the last hour, navigating out in front, which she found exciting and fun. Once near the North Pole Maria, Alexey, Niall and Nikki all went searching for precisely 90 degrees North with GPS's.

Finding exactly 90 degrees North can be surprisingly difficult! Even when you are within a few feet of it! The reason is that the ice is in constant motion and it's a little like trying to reach and maintain a very specific point while you are on a conveyor belt. It's easy to have the GPS read a coordinate such as N89.99.96 (only a couple steps from the North Pole), but to get it to read exactly 90.00.00 can be a challenge - and when you get it, it usually only lasts for a split second before you drift back to N89.99......

The North Pole can be very elusive. Just ask Maria, Alexey, Niiki and Niall.

The team is extremely satisfied and the mood in the camp is festive. We imagine that there will be some partying going on in their tents tonight! They will most likely not get picked up by helicopter until April 24, so they have a full day to relax, sleep in, eat, drink and be merry. No doubt that is very appealing after all their hard work!

Again, a HUGE congratulations to the team on a job very well done! We are proud of each and every team member, and we look forward to sharing more news from the team tomorrow and hopefully some more photos too. Make sure to listen to the audio report below and check back again tomorrow for another update from the North Pole!

Getting close!

The team phone in today to report a long day with challenging ice conditions, but good progress. It helped that they made 2 nautical miles overnight with a north drift! They are currently at N89.50.01, E142.

They awoke to discover that the rubbly zone just to the north of them had opened up into a giant mass of water. Guide Keith Heger named it "Lake Heger" and was trying to sell "lakefront property" to Niall and Alexey all day. The open water ran in a NW direction and though it took them half the day to find a way across it, they were at least able to make some northward progress while they searched for a crossing. In addition to Lake Heger, the team also had some very large pressure ridges that they had to navigate. One of them was approximately 20 feet wide and took at least 20 minutes to get across.

Open water like "Lake Heger" can be very hard to cross.
Sometimes a team will ski many miles out their way, just to find a decent crossing.

Even if a lead is frozen it may not be strong enough to bear the weight of a skier.
Here the team finds a good spot to cross a frozen lead.

The team was delighted to learn that the bird they saw yesterday was a Black-Legged Kittiwake. Thanks to Andrei Pyatibratov and Tyler Keenan for sending in the same identification. We relayed all the information about the bird's characteristics to the team.

To add to the bird sighting the team saw polar bear tracks today! And right next to the polar bear tracks were fox tracks! It's rare to see a fox this far north (almost 450 miles from land!). It makes sense that the fox tracks would be next to the polar bear tracks because the arctic fox is a scavenger and it is likely following the polar bear looking for a seal carcass. The team estimates that the track is about a week old. With all the open water the team will be more on the look out for seals as well as polar bear (and fox!).

Polar Bear footprint!

Given any luck the team could reach the North Pole tomorrow! Of course any number of obstacles could prevent this from happening, but certainly as the team gets closer to the Pole their enthusiasm and energy will increase. Sometimes when you are close to the Pole it's hard to stop skiing!

Make sure to listen to the audio report below, and check back again tomorrow for another update from the team!

A visitor in camp!

The team phoned in to report that they had very warm temperatures today and virtually no wind. The coldest it got was -12C! This is unusually warm for April and the team had to stop several times to make adjustments to people's layering systems - they were too hot! The team encountered a mix of nice ice pans and rubble zones and in the end they made 10 nautical miles of Northward progress.

Nikki making miles!

This pressure ridge required a bit of teamwork.

Several people have emailed to ask the team if they have seen any wildlife so far and they are happy to report back that today this morning they had a visitor in their campsite. No, not a polar bear... a bird! Seeing a bird so far north is extremely unusual. In fact in all the years that PolarExplorers has been guiding expeditions to the North Pole we have only seen two birds! The bird seemed quite comfortable in their camp and Keith was able to walk within one foot of it to take the picture below. The team is curious where it came from and where it is going. They have asked for your assistance in identifying the bird. If you have any ideas what kind of a bird it is please email me and I will forward it to the team. It looked like a gull to them, but what kind?

Help us identify this bird!

When the team phoned in they were just shy of N89.40 but as you'll hear in Niall's audio report it sounds like they might have drifted the tenth of a mile north to pass the magical "two-thirds of the way there" marker. Everyone is doing good and spirits are high. When we talked to the team they were just settling down for a good night's rest. They enjoyed a special dessert from Nikki (chocolate Koala bears from her home country Australia). Mmmmm..... Last night the team eagerly ate up Bob's special dessert which was sugar coated easter cookies from his hometown. As you can guess food is a big deal for the team!

Make sure to listen to Niall's audio report from today, and Keith's audio report for yesterday, and check back again tomorrow for another update from the team!

A beautiful day, and answers to your questions!

The ski team called reported today that they had beautiful weather and good traveling conditions. They are nearly half way to the North Pole, only .5 nautical miles from N 89.30. They plan to have a mini celebration tomorrow when they pass the half-way point. Most of their travel was across pan ice today, with occasional rubble zones that they navigated with relative ease.

A small pressure ridge requiring the skier to take a giant step up to the next ice pan.



Clear skies and relatively flat ice

The team has received a few questions from blog followers and they wanted to send the following responses:

Q: How is it sleeping under the 24 hour sunlight?
A: We're pretty tired at the end of the day and we can usually fall right asleep with no trouble at all. It helps sometimes to pull our hats over our eyes to make it dark. But really, we're zonked!

Q: Do you have any drift? Either working for you or against you?
A: Not really, not yet. We had a very slight northern drift in the first couple days, but nothing worth mentioning. Then yesterday we had a very small south drift, but again, not big enough to be worth mentioning. We have had some drift to the west which is neither working for or against us. The ice has been very stable, and not moving very much. Let's hope it stays that way, or if we get any drift we hope it will be to the north!

Q: How long do you ski for at one time?
A: We started out skiing for 1.5 hours at a time, but as we are growing stronger we have pushed our breaks back to once every two hours. Depending on conditions and our timing we'll usually do 4 of these "marches" every day. If we get a southern drift, or if for some reason we get behind schedule (there isn't really a schedule up here) but if we need to really push ourselves we'll do 5 marches, or maybe even more!

Q: What do you do with your toilet paper?
A: There are two ways to handle our used toilet paper. Most people wad it up and put it in a small plastic bag (each person carries their own plastic bag) that he or she will throw out once we get back to Longyearbyen. The second option is to burn it, but that takes some time and depending on the temperature it's no fun to sit there and wait for a wad of toilet paper to burn! We don't leave it on the ice or bury it.

Q: Are you getting our messages?
A: Yes! We love getting messages! But sometimes we don't get it word-for-word. We are all in separate tents and we get the messages at the end of the day when one of the expedition guides calls in to report our position to the PolarExplorers office. Annie will read the guide the message and that guide usually shouts out "Hey Chris (or Bob, Niall, Maria, etc.) your friend Joe says...." Sometimes if the guide is in the same tent as the person he will hand him or her the phone and Annie will read the full message. The support we are getting from our families and friends means the world to us! Thanks :)

We're happy to have the team answer additional questions, so feel free to send them along. The audio report for today hasn't arrived yet so we will post it if and when we receive it. In the meantime, check back again tomorrow for another update from the team!

11 nautical miles. One-third of the way there!

The team called in today to share they had another excellent day of travel, and they made 11 nautical miles North. Their current position is N89.23, E137. That's more than one-third of the way there!

The team had several pressure ridges in the morning, one of which was challenging enough that everyone took off their skis and they trekked over on foot. Though this is easier than skiing when blocks of ice are big or at odd angles, it consumes both energy and time to take skis off, carry them over a pressure ridge and put them back on. Still, sometimes it is the best option.

Taking off skis is sometimes the only way to surmount a pressure ridge

The last six miles of the day were much faster because the team hit some large pans of ice that were relatively flat and open. Getting out of an area of high pressure and onto a big pan of ice is a little like driving a car in traffic jam and then finding an open lane of travel where you can go as far and as fast as you like. It's very satisfying!

It was another beautiful day with little wind, clear skies and warm temperatures (approximately -20C). The team skied for 2 hour stretches at a time followed by a 10 minute break for snacks and drinks. Though an observer might think, "that's a short break!" the team is usually ready to start moving again just to stay warm!

A typical break will find people sitting on their sleds with their back
to any wind, eating and drinking.

Alexey taking a quick break from the skiing.

Dessert tonight was provided by Alexey who brought delicious baklava from his hometown. He also wants to send a special birthday wish to his Mom. Happy Birthday Alexey's Mom! Make sure to listen to the today's audio report from Alexey and check back in tomorrow for another update from the team!

Off to a great start...

The team called in today to say that they made 10 nautical miles North. They traveled over varied terrain, with half of it being on big pans of ice and half of it being across areas of rubble. Big pans of ice are ideal for skiing because they are generally flat and you can head due North. Areas of rubble usually require a good amount of zig-zagging and sometimes the team will have to stop, take their skis off, and scramble over the largest pressure ridges.

The weather today was warm (for the North Pole!) with a temperature of around -18 C and a very slight wind from the SE. The sun was shining all day. Of course the sun circles overhead 24 hours a day at this time of year. At one point the team skied past a huge block of ice that had been driven out of the water by sheer pressure. It had beautiful formations on it, similar to stalagmites in a cave, and the team stopped to take pictures.

Flat pans of ice were separated by areas of rubble.

When the team phoned in they were comfortable in their tents after having soup, chicken quesadillas, and a delicious dessert from Niall's wife Sarah ( a big hit Sarah, thanks!) Ryan sends a special Happy Birthday wish to his father Dean. Happy Birthday Dean!

Make sure to listen to the audio report below and check back tomorrow for another update from the ice!

They're on the ice!

The team departed Longyearbyen today on schedule and landed at the Borneo basecamp under clear skies and calm winds. The dinner they had in the mess tent was delicious, but a bit of a mystery. About half the group thought it was chicken, and the other half thought it was fish! They had a little time to spare at the basecamp and they filled it by dressing Maria in an immersion suit and having her get in a hole in the ice. Immersion suits are sometimes used on long expeditions to get across short "leads" of open water. After a couple hours at the basecamp the team loaded the MI-8 helicopter and headed south to 89 degrees even. From there they skied 1 nautical mile in 45 minutes (no bad for the first day!).

The Borneo basecamp from the air.

The group sleeps in 2-3 person tents, where they also cook and eat.

When the team called it was late, and they were all settled in their camp and ready to hit the sac. The team is in good spirits and everyone is looking forward to the coming days on the ice. Make sure to listen to the audio report below and check back again soon for another update from the team!

More pre-expedition training and logistics...

Today the team spent the day reviewing important expedition procedures and routines, and prepping their kits for the expedition. As a team they discussed everything from satellite communications and first aid kit contents, to the most effective ways to pack a sled. They went through all their food and split the group gear so that each person's sled could be packed and transported to the airport for tomorrow's flight to the ice.

Energy bars, oatmeal, cheese, chocolate, nuts.
The team will eat close to 5,000 calories a day.
(Photo by Heather Ross)

Sleds are packed and ready to go!

Now the team is relaxing with at will be their last "indoor dinner" for some time (delicious Thai food). They are prepared, eager, excited and likely a little nervous for the coming adventure. Tomorrow they plan to fly to approximately 89 degrees north in the afternoon. Make sure to listen to the audio report below and check back soon for another update from the team!

The expedition begins!

Today is the official start of the North Pole Last Degree Ski Expedition. We are delighted that the day has finally arrived! After much training, preparations and anticipation the team members have assembled in Longyearbyen, Norway and everyone is together for the first time. Several of the team members arrived early to participate in our Polar Shakedown Training, which included 2 days of skiing with their sleds in the frozen wilderness near Longyearbyen. They had a great time despite very windy conditions, and they are all looking forward to the journey ahead.

Taking a break during the Polar Shakedown Training.

Tonight the team enjoyed getting to know each other during a welcome reception followed by dinner. Tomorrow they will spend the day reviewing expedition procedures, doing a final review of their kits, and packing their sleds for transport. They plan to fly to the ice on April 16 at which time they will start skiing North to the pole!

We are excited to have you following the expedition, and we encourage you to send messages to the team as well as questions about their expedition. Stay tuned for more from the 2011 North Pole Last Degree Ski Team, including audio reports and photos from the expedition.