Børge Ousland

There is excitement in Børge Ousland’s voice as he makes his first satellite call from the drifting ice beyond Cape Arktichesky:

Hi, we’re finally on the move again. Our current position is N81°17’39″, E95°51’09″. Even though we’re drifting rapidly towards southeast, we decided to start today while the ice was in contact with land. According to the GPS, we’ve only progressed 2 km northwards, but I’m sure we have walked and paddled 10 km more than that.

Some time tomorrow, the wind is expected to turn and increase in strength – rewarding today’s efforts. We’ve put behind us some rather rough areas of difficult ice and open leads, and five or six times today paddled the dinghy across open water.

Where we are now, conditions are pretty good. Even though it is very dark – pitch black and snowing – we’re managing to navigate well. But we can’t see very far ahead. We’re staying alert, constantly scanning our surroundings. It’s very easy to be surprised by a polar bear wandering around in the screw ice.

I must admit that it’s exciting to be moving in this shifting landscape with only our headlights. Very exciting! So far we have been on the move for seven hours, and all is well.

I’m sure we’ll drift even further southward when we call it a night, as well as during the first part of tomorrow. Then the forecast is for a shift to a southwesterly wind, which will push us northwards. Time to carry on!

Ice conditions are very difficult, with a lot of slush ice that isn’t freezing properly. It would be very difficult to make much progress. But the main reason we’re staying put, is that the ice is drifting rapidly southeast.

If we tried to go out onto the ice now, we would just drift backwards. The guy in charge of analysing satellite photos tells us the ice moved 15 km south and 18 km east yesterday. So Mike and I are maintaining our camp here until the wind abates. As soon as the ice stops drifting so much, we can make real progress.

The weather forecast calls for colder weather Monday and Tuesday, which will freeze the open leads between the ice sheets, making it possible to cross between them. Right now we can neither paddle the dinghy nor ski in the area.

We are camped just 20 m from the point, in a spot that hasn’t proved opportune. Apparently all the polar bears that are wandering along the shore seem to be passing through. Last night, after our first visit, another polar bear came and ripped a gash in one of the rubber dinghies. With the strong wind, it took a while before we heard the bear and could scare it off with a new signal flare.

Since then, they have left us alone. Most of the day we’ve been busy repairing the dinghy. Seems we’ve succeeded – the glue is holding. We may not need the dinghy, but it’s good insurance in case we need to cross open sea to get to the ice.

We’ve placed the rubber dinghies right up against the tent, so we can hear the bears if they try again.

Naturally we’re not sleeping much with the polar bears nearby, but I think that will be less of a problem as we proceed.

A curious polar bear has circled our tent during the night. We hope he doesn’t return with any of his friends. Fortunately, we have seen no sign of bears the last eight hours, but we have had to repair a rubber dinghy that the polar bear ripped apart.

After 700 metres, Børge and Mike realised it was unwise to continue. The ice was unstable, slushy, and moving too fast. They returned safely to land and set up camp on the Cape.

The two of them had just settled into their tent when they received an unexpected visitor – a polar bear! He broke the zipper with his foot trying to enter the tent, before turning around to explore their pulks. A surprised Børge and Mike got out of their tent as the polar bear was walking away with a packet of their food. As they reacted quickly and lit a flare gun, the bear dropped the food and ran onto the sea ice.

Børge has already fixed the zipper. Most likely they’ll be sleeping by turn tonight. The wind is blowing so hard that it is difficult to hear a bear.

The warm westerly wind is blowing hard. A cold northerly wind or windstill would be far preferable, as it would provide better ice contitions. For now, all they can do is wait patiently. The position of their first camp is N81°16’29″, E95°39’54″.

Børge and Mike are on the move! We just received confirmation that their helicopter was able to lift off from Sredny this morning. Børge and Mike landed on the western side of Cape Arktichesky, just 1 km from its northern point.

Fortunately, the ice was touching the shore, so they are already walking northward. Ahead of them are leads of open sea, so the next hours and days will be critical. At the moment, it is –5?C in the area, which is probably a “heat” record for January.

We’ll give you an update as soon as we receive more news.

Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik

Two eager Arctic adventurers are now moving northwards on the ice. This photo of Børge Ousland and Mike Horn was taken a few days ago in Norilsk, where temperatures dipped as low as –40?C. Beyond Cape Arktichesky, however, they are experiencing what is tantamount to a “heat wave”: just –5?C.

Late last night an excited Børge Ousland called us from Sredny. We could hear the wind howling in the background, as he stood exposed to the Siberian winter; his satellite phone had no coverage in the warmth of the weather station.

“We hope to leave tomorrow. Cape Arktichesky is waiting.”

According to plan, the helicopter will lift off at 10am, flying the intrepid Norwegian and his South African partner Mike Horn to Russia’s northernmost point. If we know these extreme adventurers right, they did not sleep much last night. Most likely they were making a final evaluation of their equipment, fine-tuning their packing. This was the duo’s last chance to do so.

The next four or five days will truly be some of the most challenging of the entire two-month expedition, with dangerously shifting ice and open leads. It may take 100 km before they have “firm ice” under their feet.

* * *

This evening (16.45 local time) Børge called us with a new, brief message:

“Visibility was too poor for takeoff today, so we’re still in Sredny, where it’s snowing and relatively mild. But the problem was the cloud cover. Our departure is delayed until tomorrow, and we’re hoping that we can really leave then.”

Now we are in Sredny, one of the northernmost meteorological stations in the world. The temperature here is 27 degrees below Centigrade, and that’s milder than we want. We were hoping for really cold weather that would reinforce the ice by Cape Arktichesky. Well, it’s milder than usual for this time of year, and the Russians are reporting relatively mild temperatures from the North Pole as well. But after this there is a strong cold spell coming, which will thicken the ice and make it safer to proceed from land.

Our plan is to spend tomorrow organizing various details, starting from Cape Arktichesky on Wednesday, 18 January.

The ice is closing outside Cape Arktichensky. Now there is a super thin ice and relative mild temperatures in the area. But the ice has to be thicker for us to be able to walk on it.

We have purchased two inflatable boats, se we’re optimistic about being able to leave at 10.00 tomorrow morning – and finally flying onward to Sredny. It’s a four-hour flight by helicopter. There we’ll get updated information on ice conditions and our prospects, and decide whether or not to start the expedition proper on Tuesday.

The weather conditions are causing a few days delay. A southerly wind has pushed the ice away from the shore at Cape Arktichesky, where there is now several kilometres of open sea. Well, there is no point in sitting there peering northward and just waiting, so Mike and I have decided to delay the helicopter flight to Sredny until Monday. Here in the city of Norilsk there is better communication and it is far easier to fix practical matters.

Today we looked for a large inflatable boat. We’re considering paddling from the Cape to the edge of the ice. This alternative does, however, pose some challenges. There is a lot of ice sludge on the leeward side. In order to meet the challenge, the RIB has to be powerful enough to carry us far into that ice sludge, and big enough that we can spend the night on board while the ice freezes around us, thick enough that we can continue onward on foot.

Yet another possibility is to wait for the wind to shift, pushing the ice against the shore, so we can continue in the manner originally planned.

Fortunately, these delays are well within the allowed timeframe of our expedition.

Yesterday we came to Norilsk, the northernmost city in Siberia, but these two days have been a bit hectic. We’ve been working with equipment and fine-tuning our packing. There are a lot of details that have to be taken car of, things we didn’t have time for before departure. Sponsor logos have to be sewn on or attached, every piece of equipment large or small has to be controlled, the pulks have to be checked and re-checked. So far we haven’t really had any surprises.

It’s between 35 and 40 degrees below here in Norilsk, so this is a very realistic taste of what awaits us on our voyage north. And so it is in these conditions that we test everything.

The day after tomorrow we leave for Sredny, on the west coast of the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago. By helicopter it’s seven hours from Norilsk, with one brief fuel stop. There is a weather station here at 79?N, but we don’t plan on staying much more than 24 hours. And so far everything is proceeding according to plan.

Finally we’re on the move! For me an expedition like this always starts when I close my front door and realise that I won’t be home for several months. We left Oslo for Moscow this morning. A pleasant surprise awaited us at the airport – Aeroflot immediately upgraded us to Business Class and were really helpful with our great quantities of baggage.

Now we’re sitting in our hotel in Moscow, surrounded by all of our equipment. We worked until 4am last night with last minute preparations and packing. Mike Horn and I are feeling fine, relaxing with our good friends Sebastian and Kjell Ove. Finally we can get a bit of sleep, and tomorrow we have a day off. Our flight doesn’t depart for Norilsk until 11pm. The weather forecast tells us it’s 40 below Centigrade. It will be a cold shock, but that’s just as well.

Greetings from Moscow, where all is well with us and our equipment.