Ultimate Arctic Crossing - part 2

Alain Hubert on the subject of his preparation:

Alain Hubert on the subject of his preparation: "We have to learn to use our bodies better. Especially when we have to pull, for months at a time, a load of nearly 200 kilograms behind us. The body's muscles, for example: we know, this is a weakness of our time. And it's the same for me. I am 48 years old, and my back is not necessarily in the best of condition. I've run the machine pretty well in the course of my existence..."

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  • Friday March 1st - DAY 5 / Left at 10 am this morning (it takes them approximately 3 hours to strike camp), they stopped walking at 4.45 pm and spent, as they do every day, more than an hour brushing their clothes. First class food, excellent spirits...
  • Sunday March 3 - DAY 7 / The two men continue to make slow progress - 6.1km today plus 2.34km of drift to the North during the night - because of the leads that surround them all the time (this evening still, they had to stop in front of a channel which appeared to be really difficult to cross). But their confidence remains sky high as their sail tests turned out to be increasingly conclusive.
  • Sunday March 3 - DAY 7 / From the very first days, some of Hubert's fingers were frozen. Diagnosis of his doctor whom he contacted by telephone in Switzerland a few days later:
  • Monday March 4 - DAY 8 / Hell on Earth... Yesterday, the two men were in good spirits; today, they seemed a bit daunted by the enormity of the task. The surface on which they have to travel is infuriatingly like a minefield on which it is extremely difficult to slide. Not to say non-existent; Dixie and Alain have to join forces to draw their sledges in the difficult passages, which of course requires three trips instead of one.
  • Wednesday March 6 - DAY 10 / Yesterday was a truly frightening day; around two o'clock in the afternoon, a large polar bear was extremely threatening, approaching on two occasions to less than 20 metres from the two men. Alain had to frighten off the animal by firing two shots between its legs.
  • Thursday March 7 - DAY 11 / The pair covered, in spite of the wind and the difficulties of the terrain, 16.8km between 10 am and 5.30 pm (and with a large drift towards the west). Not bad for their morale. The men are satisfied with their work and find that they have finally done pretty well for these last 24 hours.
  • Friday March 8 - DAY 12 / From the first days of their progress, Alain and Dixie have had to face extremely dislocated pack ice with the presence of many leads which, on each occasion, bar their way. After a few days' practice, crossing a lead like the one shown on the photograph takes barely an hour (assembling and disassembling their craft included).
  • Sunday March 10 - DAY 14 / The men encounter bear tracks everywhere, they saw their first seal and have become champion lead-crossers. Furthermore, they are on form and the boss's frostbite seems to be (slowly) healing. This gives Dixie the opportunity of playing Duty Nurse... Today, bad weather, 7 hours of walking, another small but very conclusive sail test, light north wind.
  • Monday March 11 - DAY 15: Setting out at 10am, Alain and Dixie walked for 6½ hours today. No question of getting the skis out. Beneath the snow covering the ice, there was seawater that made sliding quite impossible. Real white mud... that tired the adventurers out. Many more bear tracks all the time (here in the photograph).
  • Tuesday March 12 - DAY 16 / This evening, the two men slept on a slab of ice as big as a basketball court With piles of broken ice all around and, one swallow does not make a summer, not the least sign of bear in the neighbourhood. But water, water everywhere...
  • Wednesday March 13 - DAY 17 / They have just experienced the hardest day of their first 17 days.
  • Saturday March 16 - DAY 20 / Yesterday, Dixie and Alain walked for only 4 hours, against 7 today; as the weather was fine, they benefited from it to make a few repairs - the zip of Alain's sleeping bag (resewn with fishing line), some holes in the canvas of the sledges - and waxing the sledges' runners, which was pointless.
  • Saturday March 16 - DAY 20 / In this 3rd week, HQ makes a rapid first assessment. Since the departure, they have progressed 172km and are still 1374km from the North Pole. This represents a daily average of 9.4km. Not a good figure when one knows that it was envisaged that, to make a success of the complete crossing, they had to achieve an average of 25km per day... That said, the men are on top form.
  • Alain Hubert on the subject of his preparation:
  • Each evening, at the time of the satellite link with the HQ in Brussels, the first information given relates to the counting of the number of leads that the two men have had to cross during the day. Not a single day has passed since the departure without their having to negotiate this type of obstacle. First observation coming from the pack ice: these leads seem more numerous than in 1994. A sign of global warming?
  • Saturday March 16 - DAY 20 / Excellent satellite link today, which has enabled us to get to know Dixie and Alain's new travelling companion; an enormous, superb walrus. The animal arrived to break the ice that they had just crossed with its tusks...
  • The weather was no better this morning, but one mustn't moan about it. It is indeed one of the only things that has run true to course since the beginning of this adventure. The wind is coming from the south, gently, and the temperature is, all in all, reasonably clement: -18°C. No numbed fingers in prospect. Nothing extravagant, a grey-white atmosphere. (Extract from Alain Hubert's notebook).
  • The powerkites were the key to the success of this great crossing. Up to now, the men had got them out a few times but not for long enough to improve their daily average. Today, they once again covered a few kilometres under sail. 4 hours for a distance of 13.2km.
  • Tuesday March 17 - DAY 21 / Traction sails or powerkites are currently the ideal tool for all major polar treks - Arctic and Antarctic alike. Borge Ousland, Eric Philips, Jon Muir and the others were all equipped with them in this spring 2002 season. Dixie and Alain were carrying three sizes of sails in their sledges: 8m², 21m² and 32m². At the time of their Transantarctic, the sizes of the sails were a little different: 6m², 12m² and 21m².
  • Naturally, when the pack ice was more or less flat, the two adventurers brought joy to their hearts but also risked a great deal because, often, they profited from their high spirits to run, with their sledges, up to the small leads and jump quickly over them...
  • Monday March 18 - DAY 22 / Our two adventurers move up a gear. Benefiting from a flatter terrain but one that was nevertheless fissured with dangerous little rivers of ice-free water, Alain and Dixie fitted the fine-weather sails - the 21m², the ones that they controlled the best. Thanks to a south wind of 10 to 15kph, they slid over the pack ice for 4½ hours. Assessment: a dozen kilometres in the bag.
  • Tuesday March 19 - DAY 23 / The ice is getting ever thicker and more compact. The fact that they saw an iceberg for the first time perhaps proves that they are little by little entering a more straightforward area of pack ice. Therefore more stable. Temperature -24°C, 7 hours of travelling, 1.5m of ice beneath the tent. very good drift today. Two hours of sail this morning.
  • To cross the leads of the Arctic Ocean, polar travellers, when there are two or more of them, use a technique that consists of joining two sledges together in order to form a craft that is something like a catamaran.
  • Fully loaded, that is to say in the first weeks of the expedition, the two men could then go on top together, and there still remained - in the lowest part in the middle of the sledges - approximately fifteen centimetres above the water line. In this shot, you can see Alain using the ice shovels as paddles for advancing the craft.
  • Here an spectacular phenomenon of refraction and reflection of the solar rays by crystals of ice suspended in the atmosphere, which appears especially in the Polar Regions: the
  • Wednesday March 20 - DAY 24 / For the first time since the departure, a man has fallen into the sea. On two occasions yesterday, Hubert slipped and found himself half in the water of the Arctic Ocean. The first time, he was able to get support from the ice and lift himself back on to it almost immediately. One hour later, he had to stay for about ten seconds immersed up to his chest.
  • So what does one do? Answer supplied by the Frenchman, Arnaud Tortel:
  • Friday March 22 - DAY 26: Encounter with bears. It was first a young male that suddenly appeared from the other side of a compression ridge and which came to examine Alain's sledge from close to hand. Alain had to shoot twice to get rid of the animal. ©Photo : PolarBearsAlive.org
  • Friday March 22 - DAY 26 (continuation) / Some minutes later, Mummy Bear came to ask the two men to explain themselves. Why frighten the little one so? Stronger than the cub and more than two metres tall, the female came to lick Alain's sledge, no less; the animal was therefore less than 3 metres away from him.

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