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ExplorersWeb Week in Review
00:02 a.m. EST Mar 13, 2004
The week started out with a frightening battle for the North Pole and ended with horror:
Already the first dispatches from the ice reported problems: "The physical strain is immense, but it's the mental part that's hardest to deal with - the self-doubt, the monotony, the loneliness and the fear of failure," wrote Ben Monday.
And Wave: "It's very cold out, how cold I do not know yet. My thermometer stopped working at -35f, and it's colder than that. At these low temps every move is calculated and planned, from getting dressed to eating to going to the bathroom.
Next, disturbing news were published on Dominick's website: "In her earlier phone call Dominick told she had switched on her Argos-beacon, but so far we haven't received any coordinate data.."
Bettina Adler's team reported problems with their Argos positioning transmissions too.
More emergency beacons problems: Several North Pole teams now reported issues with their ARGOS positioning beacon. The beacons were working and transmitting data, but the problem was said to lie with a server in France – the data was received, but not relayed to the respective teams’ email lists. Yet added Wave; "My ARGOS is giving two timestamps, which is wrong. Ben Saunders unit us showing him farther north than he really is."
Ben had problems with gear. “I keep breaking things - my ski skins are coming loose, I've torn part of my left boot off, broken my sleeping bag zip, and bent a tent peg. And I'm only on day bloomin' four...”
The same day, Frederic narrowly escaped death Skiing a section of thin ice without his survival suit on (the suit slows the skier down) the ice broke and Frederic fell into the water. The skier spent 4 minutes in the freezing ocean before being able to haul himself up. Having lost his skies in the fall, Frederic managed to remain a float and escape death on his floating sledge. He managed to set up his bivouac and tried to stay warm, but severe frostbite had already affected his hands and feet.
Cerpolex issued a storm warning of 30 knot winds from the South for Tuesday. Now, in addition to the Argos problems, all teams also experienced problems with their Iridium satellite phones.
The storm hit with full force in the night. Wave Vidmar reported high winds on the ice. Ben wrote, “Last night was unreal - the kind of weather I'd expect in Antarctica rather than up here - howling, battering, tent pole-flexing winds and blown snow part-burying the tent.
Early Tuesday, Frederic was rescued "The wait after the disaster was extremely trying," Fréderic said. "Not knowing if and when rescue would come, with strong gusts of wind blowing around the tent and rocking the ice, made the stressful hours seem endless." Frederic has severe frostbite to his feet, hands and ears. The scientists of the collapsed research station were rescued the same day. Frederic's heli's swept the ice for Dominick, but found nothing.
Bettina and Jean Gabriel fell in next They braved the storm and made progress but with bad reward. They hit a narrow lead, around 3 feet wide and decided to jump it. Jean Gabriel went first, but as he grabbed for the edge on the other side, it turned out soft slush. The snow gave way and JG fell in the lead. Luckily, he was tied to Bettina in a rope, and she managed to pull him up. The team spent 5 hours of precious fuel to dry up in their camp, and JG escaped frostbite.
This was a poignant example of the difficulty involved in a solo and unsupported expedition. In a solo attempt like Frederic's, Ben's, Wave's and Domick's - a fall in the water can turn deadly or - at best - wreck the entire expedition. The danger to life lies in the absence of a team mate to help pull the other up. The other issue is that unsupported expeditions are very low on weight, and fuel is tight down to a few table spoons in the end. Where the supported team gets a refill at the next air drop, 5 hours of fuel means at least 10 days of fuel lost - the difference between success and failure in an unsupported attempt.
Ben and Wave weathered the storm in their tents, faster adrift than they could have skied "The good part is that the storm blew me TEN nautical miles north in 24 hours," wrote Ben. Unsupported North Pole teams nary make 3 or 4 miles sometimes because of pressure ridges and an unhelpful drift.
The search for Dominick was delayed for Thursday She had now been missing for 6 days. A spark of good news came that Argos in France had done new calculations that showed some movement from her on Saturday. The question was if the movement was caused by Dominick or by the ocean drift.
In good weather conditions, two helicopters swept the ice for 7 hours Thursday. The area searched by the rescue flights included the distance she could have covered if skiing unaware of the failure of her positioning beacon. The helicopters were scheduled to continue the search Friday.
Both Ben and Wave reported poor conditions at their end that day “At first the weather was somewhat decent, but within an hour or so the light got flat. Soon after that it was thick, kind of like fog but not quite. Visibility dropped to about 200 feet and it was hard to distinguish the sky from the ice,” wrote Wave. The whiteout gave teams a hard time to distinguish sections of thin ice and they also drifted south. "Today, as is often the case in the Arctic, I was going up the down escalator...” wrote Ben.
Later that day, came news of found tracks and campsite. Cerpolex reported that the search flights found tracks and a used campsite of the missing skier Dominick Arduin.
Her initial plan was to speed to the 85th degree as fast as possible, as she was very motivated to reach the North Pole this time. There, she would get her resupply drop. Cerpolex said there would be no more search flights conducted for her Friday, instead the flights are preparing to meet her up at the previously determined resupply drop point, early/mid next week.
Plea for search technology went out The organizers desperately need search equipment to maximize their efforts. Infra-red sensors and such to make it at all possible to find the skier. Requests have been made to the Finish and French officials, but they have not yet been able to supply the technology needed. Pleas are now out to professional rescue organizations around the world for gear.
Friday, Ben was next in the water. After lots of rubble, he encountered a lead 100m wide, “Click... click... splosh*. Too thin to ski over...I clambered into the orange suit and headed off on all fours. The far bank seemed a million miles away and the surface was like a badly inflated airbed...A few meters out, my knee went through, followed in slow motion by the rest of me. It sounds scary, but the water is warmer than the air, and the suit keeps me stone dry. It was like swimming in crème brulee.” Ben made camp and waits for the lead to freeze over.
The same day, Cerpolex issued a press release They described the exact turn of events since past Friday, and details of Thursday's search: "On March 11 the two helicopters went up to the zone where Dominick was calculated to be, a rectangle of 100 km of latitude and about 20 km of longitude, without locating Dominick or her equipment. They have found evidence of her camp from the evening of March 5."
But the message ended in disappointment: When following the traces of skis you eventually reach the point where she disappeared; at the border between the fast-ice and the new ice (new ice without traces so probably less than five days old). After that no more traces. The helicopters have gone down again to Khatanga in order to get Frederic medical attention and to send him towards France.
In other news - Madrid rocked by explosions. Esp.MountEverest.net, Our Spanish language sister site headquartered in Madrid, is off to a rocky start. Early Thursday morning ten powerful explosions rocked three Madrid train stations just days before Spain's general elections, killing at least 173 rush-hour commuters and injuring more than 600 others. Word from our Madrid Office: "We are OK, but this is (at this time of the day) kind of a nightmare. There are threats of new bombs all over the town; the police have controlled-exploded two of them until now. Everybody is trying to give blood for the transfusions, but they cannot get to the hospitals. Roads are collapsed. We'll continue the news work if the internet is working."
Solo sailing record shattered "Words cannot express what I feel" said Jean Luc Van den Heede when he set a new record for a solo circumnavigation "the wrong way", East to West. The new record is 122 days, 14 h, 3 min, and 49 sec. Jean Luc beat Philippe Monnet by 29 days. This was Jean Luc's fourth attempt against the winds and currents.
Ghost rowers made it - Against all Odds The Ghost Team arrived Barbados, and are staying at the Sugar Cane Club, courtesy of Jan Meek, herself an Ocean Rower. Read their incredible story in a two part interview next week.
For these stories and more - go to ExplorersWeb.com
Image of North Pole skiers tracks covered by new ice, ExplorersWeb files.
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