Hedrich Defers the Continuation of his Expedition
Published on 10.06.2009 - General Info
Hedrich/Tortel's "World First" was announced a tad prematurely. The Hubert/Dansercoer duo had done it before them.
A rectification before giving our readers some information on the continuation of Charles Hedrich's adventure. Last week an announcement of the feat that the Tortel/Hedrich duo had just pulled off was trumpeted from the very rooftops: the North Pole Greenland Coast route, "a world first", their websites announced. However, two years before them, the Belgians Alain Hubert and Dixier Dansercoer had pulled off the same feat, the only difference being that the Belgians had accomplished the entire Siberia-Greenland crossing, via the North Pole, of course.
The Hedrich/Tortel team's confusion stemmed from the fact that the website that was following the Belgians (our Explorapoles website) had itself made a positional error. The Belgians had in fact had one resupply, at position 87°37', 16 days before their arival at the Pole. However, at the time of that resupply, Viktor Boyarsky had quite simply forgotten to load the expedition' fuel that should have been part of the convoy, but which had remained in Barneo. As the two Belgians were unable to continue the trek without fuel, Boyarsky then suggested that they should take some helicopter fuel and see whether or not that could replace the fuel that he had forgotten in Barneo. That's what happened. But the result was worse than bad and Alain had then to ask Boyarsky by satellite to bring, at the time of one of his rotations to the North Pole, the fuel that the Russian had forgotten in Barneo. And that is what led to the confusion; because although the MI8 had indeed brought the right fuel to the expedition after the Pole, it was not under any circumstances a resupply. The Brussels HQ, it too, had confused resupply and fuel replacement (it should be said that there were a fair amount of difficulties with the satellite connections). We apologise post hoc for this error and hope thus to turn the page - while congratulating the two men on what they have achieved between the Pole and Greenland.
Now for the latest news: as Hedrich and Tortel have been unable as planned to climb up to Greenland's icecap via a fjord and a glacier (the ice was melting too much) and thus to continue their expedition, Charles Hedrich has decided to postpone the continuation of his adventure. That's all we know about it for the time being.
