The North Pole (90° N)MapApril 13–14, 2006 The flight from Spitsbergen to the North Pole takes approximately one and a half hours. ![]() Remove locking pin before flight Everyone except the radio operator in the cockpit reads their newspapers. The radio operator just sits there with his hands folded on the table, like a schoolboy. ![]() The plane arrives at the requisite ice floe. This is the Barneo Ice Camp. A few tents, radio masts, and a Russian flag on a crooked stick. ![]() Next to all this is a signpost with directions to the closest places of interest. Although it says “North Pole” at the top, the actual pole is about a hundred kilometers away from here. ![]() The camp is rebuilt from scratch every year. Helicopters fly in from Norilsk a few days in advance to do reconnaissance. Once they find a suitable ice floe, they call in a plane, which airdrops a tractor and fuel onto the ice. The air traffic controllers live in their own separate tent. ![]() Visits regarding personal matters: Friday 13 This year, the parachute on the first tractor failed to open, and all that was left of it was memories and a few fragments of caterpillar track. They had to airdrop a second one—made in the 1930s, judging by the look of it. ![]() The tractor is used to create an airstrip so that planes can actually land here. The ice floe is fairly sturdy (it’s several meters thick), but a backup airfield is also built just in case. Two hundred meters of the runway already floated away earlier this year, for example, although they attached themselves back on later. The smoke (which is created to see which way the wind is blowing) makes pretty swirls as it hits the Antonov An-74 descending for landing. ![]() The toilets are outdoors, à la russe. All the tents are heated with diesel furnaces. The living conditions on the base are quite comfortable. ![]() Cryogenic baths The food is also good. An Italian winemaker, who was at first apprehensive about the mess tent, then about the bench, then about the plate, then about the contents of the pot, ended up tracking down the cook to profess his love to her in English and praise the soup. “Very good, soup. Very good!” “Come to visit us in Ukraine!” she replied, happy. That very same day, Prince Albert II of Monaco set out from Barneo towards the North Pole with a dog sled team. Two FSB helicopters stayed behind to wait for him at the camp, separated from the rest of the tents by ice hummocks. They also had their own tent over there, with an armed FSB agent stationed outside. Which is exactly right: a good agent has “a cool head and a warm heart,” as Felix Dzerzhinsky once famously said. ![]() We board a regular helicopter to beat the Prince by four days. ![]() The Italians unpack a new compass, eager to see it go haywire. I had to disappoint them and explain that the magnetic pole is located some distance away. ![]() The flight takes about 20 minutes. ![]() So, What’s It Like Up There, at the North Pole?I didn’t see Santa, but there was a polar bear. And lots of snow. ![]() The outdoor temperature is a mere −10 °C. Using a GPS receiver, we located the right coordinates—here be the pole!—and stuck the only tourist attraction, which had come with us, into the snow. ![]() The ice floe drifts at a speed of approximately three hundred meters an hour, so everyone who comes here sees a slightly different landscape. But overall it looks more or less like this: ![]() Standing on the pole is an unusual sensation: you feel as though you’re in a small circle with meridians radiating outwards in all directions. I let go of the signpost and stepped out of the circle. The tip of the South Pole arrow fell off. ![]() We were supposed to fly back around midnight (incidentally, this is the time of year when you get the midnight sun here, so it’s impossible to tell midnight apart from midday). But the weather worsened, and we were forced to stay for the night. The tent provided more than enough warmth for sleeping. It only got chilly towards morning, when the heater broke. For me, the most memorable part of the trip was the mess tent schedule. ![]() FSB, staff, Monaco expedition, cleaning |
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april 2006
North Pole
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