Goodbye and see you next year…
Published on 21.04.2009 - Christina Franco North Pole Solo
Christina Franco is back home already. Despite that, she still managed to cover a few dozen miles over the Arctic pack-ice and is raring to go again in 2010.
On 15th April, Christina reached the North Pole in the company of several other tourists, all accompanied by their guide Jason De Carteret. The group had just competed the Last Degree, which is just over a hundred kilometres on the ice.
However, it took another four days before the MI 8 chopper operated by Viktor Boyarsky's logistics team could fly in and pick the group up. Franco writes: "The ice was thick enough for the MI 8 helicopter to land. But as it landed, it hovered just a few centimetres above the ice so that one of the co-pilots could jump down and check that the ice really was thick enough for the aircraft to land. And even though it was, with an operation like this, things have to move very quickly because the pilots don't want to take the risk of the ice suddenly breaking up under them and taking an unscheduled dip in the ocean...."
Christina's blog also tells us that the Easter holiday went well at Barneo, with a bunch of Russian ministers and officials dropping in from Moscow.
