TRANSARCTIC 2000
Arnaud Tortel and Rodolphe André

5 March -> 12 May  |  12 May -> 10 June

Week of 05 to 12 May

On 06 May, Arnaud and Rodolphe had to negotiate a major polynya problem; the channels of open water opened up before them almost as far as the eye could see!
Furthermore, the ice was so soft that they had the impression of walking on an inflatable mattress.
During the night of 6-7 May, they regressed 4 km, entirely down to the drift of the ice floe. Last Sunday, 07 May, a repeat performance, but this time they regressed more than 10 km! In short, a new expedition was beginning. Without the slightest doubt, much more difficult and distinctly more dangerous than the previous one…

Week of 27th April to 4th May

Consternation at the North Pole! Although the two Frenchman had joy in their hearts when they had been replenished without the slightest problem at the North Pole (a Twin from Resolute had arrived both to carry out the operation and also to collect some tourists who had walked 100 km to the pole), Arnaud and Rodolphe discovered, when opening their little packets to check the food rations with which they had been supplied, that a theft had occurred. Indelicate hands, as the communiqué explained, had pilfered presents such as Easter Eggs, Dieulefit sausages (town of Arnaud's birth) and a host of small delicacies from Rodolphe's family and friends at Montpellier! Even the dried fruit that was essential for their polar diet had been stolen! In all, some 12 kilos of food...
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, and Arnaud fell up to his neck in water a few days later, when he was negotiating some ice that was manifestly too thin; fortunately, Rodolphe immediately grasped what was happening and ran to extract his companion from this mishap - a sprint of more than 60 metres! More fear than harm, then, but this type of misadventure offers nothing in the way of reassurance. The communiqué did not say whether or not he played the bear (rolling in the snow)… On 01 May, they were obliged to return to the Pole as the drift had taken them in the direction of the Bering Strait and they had at all costs to regain their bearing towards the lands of Canada.
Consolation for all these sorrows: on 02 May, they had the good fortune of seeing the polar phenomenon known as the Three Suns. The only difference being that on this occasion the Frenchmen saw 7 of them - 7 suns - all at once and in the same sky! Here are their feelings as communicated by their website: "7 ultra-bright suns taking up the whole of the sky. Each of these 'false' suns was reflected in the other half of the sky. Arnaud had already had the good fortune of encountering this phenomenon during his expedition to the Magnetic North Pole with Lycia in 1998. Rodolphe could hardly believe his eyes! They contemplated this marvellous spectacle for quite some time when the cold took advantage of the delay to stab them with its needles. To avoid being frozen to the spot, they had to get going again".

May 28th, evening time...

On 28th April at 10.30 pm, Arnaud and Rodolphe reached the first objective of their expedition without any problems: the geographic North Pole.
Here is a part of the message that day: " Rodolphe and Arnaud are not very talkative on the telephone. In addition to fatigue, they do not seem to realise what the situation is. But, little by little, the words start to come and gradually they reveal more about their achievement of the day, their spirits becoming lighter by the moment until, finally, it is impossible to stop them.
Today, they covered 38 km and hauled their loads until the evening in order to stand at the geographic North Pole. It is hard to imagine the effort required of them to do so. Just 10 km from the pole, they even experienced a situation that was far from the ordinary. In fact, they found a channel of open water in front of them 5 metres wide, which gradually encircled them. All that just 10 km from their goal! But there must have been a good fairy watching over them that day, because as they were preparing to find a way round the open water, they saw an enormous floating island coming towards them. Without hesitating, Arnaud and Rodolphe heaved themselves as best they could aboard this raft of ice and were able to reach the other side of the channel..."

Having left of 27th February, the two men took 10 days fewer than the Norwegians (who arrived at the North Pole at 11.00 pm on the 29th, or 24 hours afterwards) to complete their trip between Cape Arktikschevsky and the North Pole. They are now going to take a day or two's rest before continuing their adventure and heading for the Far North of Canada. It is surprising - and we made the same remark on the "Live" page for the Norwegians - that they never at any stage in their almost daily messages made any mention of the presence of the two Norwegians whom they must have met when they were at the pole. It is true that the Vikings arrived at the pole 24 hours later, but as they had decided to stay there for at least one day, they must have come into contact with
one another.

Week of 19th to 26th April

Arnaud witnessed a spectacle on 18 April that can only be described as apocalyptic: they had been advancing in line over the flat ice for several days - 28 km on the 16th, 25 km the 17th - when their way was once again blocked by channels of open water. Nothing too special about that. But there was also a wind screaming across the ice floe like a bat out of hell. In fact, Aeolus was so violent that it was forming large waves which were being released from those zones of open water and which furthermore were letting off plumes of water vapour due to the intense cold… One can picture the sight…

A corollary to this situation: the wind was blowing in the wrong direction and was making the ice floe drift in the opposite way from which they were going. In short, in the communiqué of 20 April, Arnaud said that they getting further from the pole at a rate of 1kph! Assessment: 3 days trapped under canvas - 18, 19 and 20 April. Boxed text: On the 21st, Arnaud went through the ice and fell into the water; as he had seen bears roll on the ice after their baths, he did the same and came out of it all right.

On the 21st, Arnaud went through the ice and fell into the water; as he had seen bears roll on the ice after their baths, he did the same and came out of it all right

21 April: Arnaud went through the ice and fell into the water up to his waist.
Fortunately Rodolphe managed to save him very quickly. Once out of the water, instead of thinking about getting dry as quickly as possible, Arnaud rolled for a while in the snow. Unexpected behaviour, one would have thought! That in any event was Rodolphe's reaction when he saw his companion writhing about on the ice. But that is what Arnaud did: he had seen bears behave in the same way, (immediately rolling in the snow on coming out of the water) and reckoned that this technique was not a matter of chance and that it could equally be applied to human beings! Indeed, the snow absorbed the water, and, as far as this particular incident was concerned, worked wonders.

35 km covered on 23 April, 29 km, on the 24th: despite an extremely fragmented ice floe - consequently very dangerous as the thickness of the ice beneath the skis could not always be identified - the two Frenchmen were making good progress. They had 90' (hundred-odd kilometres) to go to the pole. On 26 April, the North Pole was only 71.5 km as the crow flies. But there was broken ice, open water, and the wind was howling at 80 kph…

Week of 10 to 18 April

21km covered on the 11th, 23 on the 12th, and 20 on the 14th: Arnaud and Rodolphe seem to have reached a fine cruising speed. On the ice floe - which from now on is flatter and therefore easier to negotiate - it is not so cold, -25°C instead of -35°C as it was earlier. We still have no news about the replacement sledges.
We don't know either whether they are continuing to make progress by putting the skis underneath the sledges, which would force them to proceed on foot. Or whether they have been able to make other arrangements so that they could ski nevertheless.

Week of 3 to 10 April : they step on the gas

28 km covered on the 9th, and 25 the following day. That's one way of lifting the two men's spirits. Today, Arnaud and Rodolphe were witness to a rare phenomenon: the formation of a compression ridge not 20 yards away! The crashing noise was so loud that it was frightening. The ground trembled. When the two sheets of ice met, they were compressed, and were smashed by their moving force into creating a wall of ice with serrated edges. They had the presence of mind to film this natural happening.

Week of 26 to 3 April : sleeping in ice...

The cold was becoming ever more intense on the Arctic ice floe, -30°c, -35°C. For several days, the two men had been sleeping badly and recovering less quickly from their daytime exhaustion. Their duvets were filled with ice, which is not easy to bear.
On March 29, Arnaud and Rodolphe assessed their situation: after setting off 32 days ago, they had covered 280km, which made an average of 9km per day. This slowness was mainly due to the drift of the ice floe which made them lose part of the distance that they had had so much trouble covering. As for the geographical North Pole, the first stage of the expedition, it was now some 660km from the two men. Because they were finding it harder and harder to make progress, they seriously envisaged replacing the sledges. A request had been made to the expedition's logistics expert. On this subject, it was Alain Hubert who, already a few weeks ago (in fact, as soon as the sledges had been damaged by the cutting edge of the ice) had made new ones for them; these new ones had already reached Cape Arktikschevsky.

Week of 19 to 26 March

Despite their steadfastly high morale, Arnaud and Rodolphe felt increasingly unsafe because of the presence of bears that more and more frequently came prowling around their tent during the evening and at night. During the night of 22 March, a large female came circling around the encampment yet again. As had now become customary, they fired shots (blanks) into the air, which was enough to frighten the animal off. The next day, Arnaud was up to his waist in the snow that had collected between two enormous blocks of ice. More fear than harm, then. Despite the fact that both his feet slipped and water got into his left shoe. Assessment of 24 March: 230km covered.

Week of 12 to 19 March : more bears and high temperatures

Extract from the release : The end of the day was extremely busy: after setting up camp, Arnaud and Rodolphe prepared their meal, entered the number of kilometres covered, examined the map and telephones our base in France to log their report for the day. Suddenly, amid the icy silence of the Arctic Ocean, we could hear strange noises.... Arnaud and Rodolphe recognised the call of the polar bear. Attempting to stay as calm as possible, they poked their head outside the tend and saw, behind them on a block of ice, a bear squatting on its haunches with its front paws in the air. This position indicated that it was about to leap on to the tent. Arnaud and Rodolphe shouted out and used their shovel to frighten him off. The bear then stood up, fixed them with a steely look and then wandered off, nodding its head.

How do they protect themselves from bears during the night? By installing an anti-bear fence all round the camp. This is a thin rope strung between four posts, each of which has a smoke-producing rocket that is set off when the rope is moved. Usually, the rocket alerts whoever is sleeping in the tent. Although you wouldn't think so, the fact that the temperatures are high for the season (they have observed temperatures of up to 20°C) is a destabilising factor for the expedition, because it melts the ice, which is also becoming thinner at the same time. Hence the formation of many areas of open water, which helps with access to fish. This is no doubt the reason why there are so many bears - they have already come across five of them.
Distance covered by the evening of 19 March: 170 km. 1630 km left to do.

Week of 5 to 12 March : bears already ...

During these first few days of their journey, Arnauld and Rodolphe have already had to deal with three major difficulties : stretches of open water, the truly chaotic condition of the ice fields, with hummocks over three metres in height, and the danger associated with encountering polar bears, which seem to be present in this part of the pack ice. Extract from the log : "The bear charged them immediately. Rodolphe had the presence of mind to take the rifle out of the sledge, while Arnaud banged his two skis together to make the maximum amount of noise possible. Seeing that the two travellers had not retreated a single inch, the bear preferred to halt his charge 5 metres from them. Standing on his back legs, he sniffed in the direction of his prey and the marks they had left on the ground. Not recognising the scent of seal, he left the same way he had arrived. The bear was a young male of 400 kg and standing 3 metres (10 feet) tall."

Another obstacle : the drifting movement of the pack ice that is pushing them back the way they came. "It's like a real travelator under our feet," said Arnauld on the telephone. The releases published on their site also provided news of a Danish woman, Betina Aller who left from the same place, Cape Arktikchevsky, with the aim of reaching the pole on her own. But on 7 March, confronted by a bear that would not leave her alone, she had been forced to shoot it. The following day, after unfortunately twisting her knee, she asked to be picked up and taken out.
Early problems : the sledges do not like the cutting edges of the blocks of ice and their undersides are cracking. So they contacted Alain Hubert who is having new ones built for them. The new sledges will leave Brussels for Siberia on 22 March.