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Canada’s Arctic ice shelves have almost halved in size over the last six years.
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Utterly utterly miserable
March 16, 2009
Given the recent light hearted website entries highlighting Pen’s talk to DfID and the use of underwear for navigational purposes, it is easy for us here in civilisation to assume that life on the ice is comfortable, or at least bearable. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Every living moment currently hurts for the Ice Team. I believe it was Robert Swan who once said, “Antarctica wants you dead,” and the same is most definitely true of the Arctic. There is a reason that nothing lives far out on the floating sea ice. The conditions are simply too torturous.
For Ann, Martin and Pen, body temperatures are currently bordering on hypothermic, exposed skin freezes in seconds, sledges weigh over one and a half times their own bodyweight and the terrain underfoot each day resembles a frozen rockfall. Even the tent offers little sanctuary, since the team’s breath freezes to the tent inner overnight and they wake up entombed in a cavern of ice crystals, whilst their low temperature-rated sleeping bags struggle to offer even a modicum of warmth during the bitter Arctic nights.
As predicted, bits of equipment are breaking daily and despite putting in long, hard days, there is still the feeling that they are going on nowhere, on account of the strong winds and ocean currents that are pushing the ice (and therefore the team) away from the Pole.
So to describe the Ice Team’s current situation as utterly, utterly miserable wouldn’t be an overstatement. They have all been in this situation before, however, and they continue to battle on. And this is the reason, more than any other, that we use members of the explorer community for data gathering, rather than expecting the scientists of this world to perform such a task themselves.
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