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Tag: North Pole

  • Rowing to the Pole

    Rowing to the Pole

    Row to the Pole boat

    Arctic adventurist Jock Wishart is trying to make history by rowing to the magnetic North Pole. A crew of six started their journey in the beginning of August and anticipates rowing around 450 miles in a race against time – their route will freeze in September.

    They are on board a specifically designed boat seen on the picture. They will sail through Canadian waters to the Pole.

    The CNN reports the crew will row for around 18 hours a day.

    “This is probably one of the most difficult exercises ever done in the polar region since (Edmund) Hillary took tractors across Antarctica. It’s no light feat and it’s no job for the faint-hearted,” Wishart told CNN.

  • The Arctic Fox Mission arrives at the North Pole

    The Arctic Fox Mission arrives at the North Pole

    Arctic Fox team on the North Pole

    The Arctic Fox Mission reached the North Pole today. The group is now at the top of the world, where all time zones converge and all lines of longitude meet.

    According to the Arctic Fox Mission website, the weather was good when they arrived at the North Pole or as the state on their blog “It was another beautiful day with a bright blue sky that made the snow sparkle like diamonds in the sun“. When the explores reached the North Pole, the team celebrated with hugs, handshakes, laughter, tears, and plenty of photos to document the occasion.

    After celebrating their achievement and internalizing the moment, the team set up camp and prepared for a continuation of the festivities. A green dining tent was converted into a special salon for the first-ever official North Pole Poetry Slam in honour of the Arctic Fox Mission team leader and acclaimed poet Mr. Nubo Huang. Each team member shared a special poem (or two, or three…) and together the team celebrated friendship, poetry, family, adventure, and the Arctic, whose 24 hour sun was circling overhead.

    The group encountered some problems finding the exact North Pole and described it as a challenge:

    “Strange as it may sound finding the exact North Pole can be a challenge, even with a GPS. Sometimes it is possible to look for 5 or 10 minutes within a 20 square foot area! There is no sign or post marking the spot (it would drift away in a few minutes) and all the while that a person is looking for 90.00.000 N to appear on their GPS the ice beneath them is in constant motion. Thus, it is like searching for a precise location while on a moving treadmill. It makes it all the more special when the GPS flashes that special number 90.00.000. The North Pole“.

    The Arctic Portal congratulates the Arctic explorers with this great milestone and wishes the group a safe journey back home.

  • Royal Arctic Charity Expedition

    Royal Arctic Charity Expedition

    Prince Harry

    Britain’s Prince Harry will join a team of wounded military servicemen at the start of their expedition to trek unaided to the Geographic North Pole.

    The Prince – Patron of the charity Walking with the Wounded – will join the group at their base camp in Longyearbyen, north Norway on 29th March, where he will undertake three days of training with the team. The Prince will then trek with the team for five days as they commence their expedition high above the Arctic Circle. Prince Harry will depart the ice on 5th April, to return to the United Kingdom for continued military training.

    The Walking with the Wounded team includes four wounded soldiers, who have suffered life-changing injuries during active service, including two amputees. They will be accompanied by two expedition leaders and a Norwegian polar guide. Their four week expedition will see the team covering up to 200 miles of the frozen Arctic Ocean by foot, pulling their own equipment in sleds weighing in excess of 100kg and in temperatures that can drop to minus 45° celsius (-49°F)

    The Walking with the Wounded Expedition supports other charities that help injured soldiers rebuild their lives. The money raised from this expedition will be used for educational courses and training programmes to aid rehabilitation back into ordinary life.

    Source: The Prince of Wales

  • Arctic current warmer than for 2,000 years

    Arctic current warmer than for 2,000 years

    arctic lake

    A North Atlantic current flowing into the Arctic Ocean is warmer than for at least 2,000 years in a sign that global warming is likely to bring ice-free seas around the North Pole in summers, a study showed.

    Scientists said that waters at the northern end of the Gulf Stream, between Greenland and the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, averaged 6 degrees Celsius (42.80F) in recent summers, warmer than at natural peaks during Roman or Medieval times.

    “The temperature is unprecedented in the past 2,000 years,” lead author Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature in Mainz, Germany, told Reuters of the study in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

    The summer water temperatures, reconstructed from the makeup of tiny organisms buried in sediments in the Fram strait, have risen from an average 5.2 degrees Celsius (41.36F) from 1890-2007 and about 3.4C (38.12F) in the previous 1,900 years. The findings were a new sign that human activities were stoking modern warming since temperatures are above past warm periods linked to swings in the sun’s output that enabled, for instance, the Vikings to farm in Greenland in Medieval times.

    “We found that modern Fram Strait water temperatures are well outside the natural bounds,” Thomas Marchitto, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, one of the authors, said in a statement. The Fram strait is the main carrier of ocean heat to the Arctic

    Source: Reuters / Alister Doyle