NORTH POLE 2000
Haraldur Orn Olafsson and Ingtor Bjarnason

Weeks of 05 to 12 May

06 May: after experiencing a fair amount of trouble with channels of open water and pressure ridges that were tricky to negotiate, Haraldur covered 21.7 km in a single day. His second best day's progress, which brought him to within 100 kilometres from the Pole. Already, in his communiqués, he was thinking of his imminent victory and recounted that this length of stay, alone on the ice of this infernal ice floe, had been an extraordinary experience. According to his reckoning, he should reach the Pole on the 11th…

07 May: the weather was improving and the ice conditions were good. The Icelander's morale was sky high. The thought of finding his hearth and home again never left him for a second. The whole of Iceland was behind him. A 100-strong committee was preparing to leave the island to go to Resolute Bay to provide an appropriate welcome for the first Icelander to have accomplished such a feat.

07 May: despite a strong drift southward, Haraldur believed that he would finish today. What's more, he confided on the radio that he would no longer stop nor sleep before reaching his final goal. 

And in the evening of this Wednesday, 10 May, at 21.27 as the communiqué said - it's crazy how adventurers like to be accurate to the minute, at times even to the second, to record their exploits! - he reached the Geographical North Pole. From our calculations, he had taken 65 days to complete the journey. His website shows that - in all - he had walked 712 km.

Weeks of 27th April to 4th May

Lots of wind on the 29th. On the 30th, after setting a new personal record - 20.2 km in one day - Haraldur is now only 200 km from the pole. Lots of open water channels along the way. The wind blowing hard makes the snow harder and so easier to ski over, says Haraldur during one of his radio transmissions. On 1st May, he has to negotiate five channels with no ice; manoeuvring is delicate but not too dangerous.

While the Icelander may be able to cross these completely dislocated areas of the ice cap without any problem, it does not augur well for the Norwegians and Frenchmen who don't arrive in the area for another fortnight or so. And if the temperatures are gradually rising, they are likely to find the ice even more broken up ahead of them.

Week of 19th to 26th April

After being successfully resupplied by First Air on 20th April (new sledge and food supplies) and with his unfortunate companion having to abandon the trek on 28th April, Haraldur is continuing on his way as he gets used to his new harness. On 23rd April, he declares to his HQ that the weather is so fine that he had to unzip all of his clothes as he was sweating a lot. The next day, he was obliged to take off one of his pairs of trousers and his jacket; on that day, he still had 300 km to cover. On the 25th, after covering 16.3 km during the day, he passed the landmark of 500 km already done.

Week of 11 to 18 April

As his sledge had been seriously damaged, Haraldur could no longer negotiate the areas of open water by navigating over them as all polar explorers have been doing for years. He had to go round them. Which of course made his route longer.

This fifth week of the expedition had nevertheless seen some greatly improved progress: 18.8km covered on 11 April, 16.3km three days later and 19.1km on 15 April. Haraldur was certain that he would get to the end of his journey. When in touch with his HQ, he finalised the last details of the re-supply that should be taking place in a few days time.

Week of 3 to 10 April

The period of acclimatisation to the frightful conditions being over, Haraldur was now making better progress, and the compression zones were less frequent. On 03 April, he had already covered 180km and he had a further 590km to go before reaching the pole. The next day, a stroke of bad luck: his sledge broke in several places. With the consent of his HQ, he decided to have himself re-supplied and to replace his sledge; this operation should occur around 17 April.

Week of 26 March to 3 April : Ingtor Bjarnason gives up

The intense cold was without doubt taking its toll: Haraldur's companion was again suffering from serious frostbite on all his ten fingers. He could not go on in this condition, and the expedition decided to call up a Twin Otter of Air Canada to come to his rescue. On 28 April, the unfortunate Icelander was flown back to Resolute Bay.

Haraldur Orn Olafsson decided to go on alone. But, even though he took advantage of the plane's arrival to lighten his sledge by a few dozen kilos, things were not going to be easy. Because he only had 22 days of rations left. From now on, the project's autonomy was no longer practically possible. On 03 April, when he had just passed the point of 100km covered, he advanced 18.9km in the day. He was suffering from solitude but his morale remained good.

Week of 19 to 26 March : message from the President

The conditions were gradually improving for the polar explorers. There were still hummocks here and there, but they were less high and the wind seemed to be dying down. The cold, on the other hand, was still intense in this season (-50°C) and seriously damaged the ski-pelts, which came away and could not be re-glued in the evening during the halt. Too cold.
That said, they were nevertheless making satisfactory progress and, on 23 March, they succeeded in covering 9.15km in a day, their first record. Two days later, they received a radio message from the President of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, congratulating them on their exploit and wishing them well them in their venture.

Week of 12 to 19 March : fearfully cold

This is a question of a classic attempt to reach the Geographical North Pole on foot, and without external assistance. Haraldur Orn Olafsson (a friend of Alain Hubert) and Ingfor Bjarnason set off from Ward Hunt Island (in the Great Canadian North) on 10 March. They were each pulling behind them a sledge weighing 130 kilos.

The first days' progress was made more difficult by the fearful cold (-40°C without the wind chill factor) and by the compression zones that they had to help each other negotiate. Furthermore, the snow, which had been falling copiously on the Arctic ice floe for the last few weeks, was so deep that with each step they sank in up to 40 cm. "It's a though we had to pull the sledges through flour", explained Haraldur Orn Olafsson during his daily communication with HQ. On 19 March, the temperature was so low (-67°C with the wind chill factor) that they could not even take time to pause every hour.