Friday 05 avril (day 40) : " We don't know which way to turn … "
Alain and Dixie are right. Yesterday, and especially the day before yesterday, it was almost a total blackout with that infernal ice floe which closed in again (see 3 April); the men's spirits hit a new low.
Today, another sudden change in the landscape; first of all, it is the first time since the start of the expedition that they have not come across any open water (they didn't encounter any yesterday, either) and did not waste any time crossing leads of open water. Then the horizon cleared again, revealing a less hummocked ice floe and flatter expanses of ice. Finally, Alain and Dixie had the opportunity to get out the big kite and glide using wind power. It is true that this session did not last long, barely an hour, but it was enough to fill them with new strength, and let them enjoy the magic of the grandiose scenery that they are crossing. "You cannot take in the beauty of this ice, Hubert slipped in at the end of the satellite conversation (Iridium), but fortunately, we are filming a lot, and can share these delightful moments. Unforgettable …."
It is more towards the end of the day, when the team is considering the daily log that they notice, like every evening, that they are still 1240 km from the Pole, and then a hint of despair enters their minds. For the moment, even if they know that they will have to give up on the idea of a complete crossing of the Arctic Ocean, they are not going to be lured into the forecasting game. "We will have to wait another fortnight, explained Dixie, when we will able to analyse the different scenarios possible. Already, reaching the North Pole with the conditions that we have experienced since the start seems to be a very tough challenge".
7½ hours' walk, temperature -30°C, they can feel nevertheless that spring is in the air, with a slight south-east wind during the day, and no more wind this evening. Dixie hurt himself slightly in a fall yesterday, while Alain's feet are constantly wet, their skin is peeling and their muscles and joints are aching.
Tuesday 02 April (day 37) : "We have to toil hard every day".
You can see it on the photo published opposite (and sent today via Iridium and Compaq iPaq), the surface is becoming clearer and the ice is more practicable with every passing day. Today, for example, the two adventurers were able to wear their skis for nearly half an hour. Their progress is not really spectacular, but in a difficult adventure like the one the two 
men are undertaking, every detail that can be interpreted in a positive way counts. The terrain is still not favourable to faster progress, but the ice was better today (about 1.2 m thick) than the ice we were travelling on yesterday. "That is good for morale".
There are still leads of open water, like those they have just crossed (see photo), which block their route about every kilometre. So it is not worth getting out the powerkites yet, because the obstacles that would force the men to pack away their equipment and fold up the kites are still too plentiful. It would waste too much time.
Thanks to today's photo, we can easily gain a more accurate impression of the pace of progress. To cross the lead in the photo, a lead in the young ice that is only a few days old, and is about 10 cm thick or more, it takes them about an hour. That was the case today when crossing the lead in the photo. Just to attach and detach the sleds and convert them into a catamaran takes about twenty minutes. When the lead is really open and free of ice, and Dixie and Alain don't have to break the ice, it takes barely half an hour.
7 hours' walk today, -22°C on the thermometer, 8.13 km of progress, and the SSE wind is helping them by causing the ice to drift northwards.
Friday 29 March (day 33) : And now, ready for speed...
Each day the men get closer to the moment when they will be able to finally unleash their Identified Flying Objects (sails) and throw themselves into the mad pursuit of the clock, on an ice pack the size of Belgium.
Even if they don't speak openly about these intentions during the daily Iridium satellite link-ups, it is the overriding impression that is gained from their cold assessment of the ice, wind and weather conditions to which they are exposed daily. Here, in any case are some hard facts:
1/ The ice is beginning to change colour, which means that they are progressing onto the older ice, which has survived the annual melt for more than one year, and is therefore more solid and less given to breaking apart to form leads.
2/ The ice drift is gradually carrying them more towards the West, instead of pushing them South-south-westwards, as was happening in the last 72 hours, which is a bit of a relief. Today, they only lost a few hundred metres to the drift, against the two to three kilometers that they lost during the last couple of days.
3/ Yet another test of the sails, carried out early today, yet again proves that the technical aspects are at the peak of performance, and all that is lacking for them to be able to unfurl their magic sails and fly like the wind, is a small breeze of about 6 km/h.
4/ The team is in great shape, not judging from their mood during the satellite communications, but more from the photos that they have sent and which were posted on the site on Wednesday. It looks like they are raring to go. As for the morale, which is one of the most important elements of an adventure of this kind, it looks totally intact and even pretty high considering the frustrating last days of combating the drift. The Belgian public can watch the news on the TV channel VRT on Saturday at 1pm and 7pm, to judge for themselves and be re-assured of the physical and mental health of the pair.
Wednesday 27 March (day 31) : " We have reached a different landscape "
Finally, the ice is becoming more open. The floes on which the duo are travelling are becoming more extensive and thicker. There are fewer ridges which characterise the hummocks (areas where the sheets of ice have collided), and areas of open water are fortunately less frequent. That is what made Alain say a little while ago that they have "reached a different landscape". Reassuring news for adventurers and backup team alike. Alas! The terrain remains riddled with ice sheets (bigger than in previous days but still dangerous) which are moving, and which have to be crossed nevertheless; they crash together, overlap and sometimes even get forced under another sheet. All that is happening live, while the men are trying to walk across them.
And then, there is the wind which, for a few days now, has stayed stubbornly from a northerly or north-easterly direction. That is a source of worry for the two men, because they were expecting to be able to get out their traction kites in the next day or two (the clock is ticking away, as Dixie put it), and they are wondering if this infernal headwind will continue to foil their plans.
Finally, they have to take account of the drift of the ice floe which, instead of helping them to move north as predicted, is taking them westward and even south-westward.
7 hours' walking today, -32° C (the coldest day since the start of the exhibition, because of the wind), splendid weather. The day before leaving, Alain Hubert took an hour off at HQ, switched off his mobile and ruminated a little on the situation as a whole. This short break enabled Alain to talk not only about his training methods - often comparing them with those of his expedition partner - but also about the feelings he was experiencing at such an important moment in his adventure, as well as his job as boss and expedition leader. It was a recurring theme of the expedition/adventure/business.
In particular, he spoke about the anguish that always comes before moments such as this. He also said that the hostile environment of the Arctic is second nature to him, almost as though he had been born into it. "There's a side to me like an animal," he explained, "and I just adore the Arctic's terrain of moving ice, where you have to have your wits about you at all times, scanning the slightest new horizon..."
Tuesday 26 March (day 30) : In the catacombs, 9 - 4 = 5 !
That's the limit! While Dixie and Alain are experiencing the worst conditions for making progress that you can imagine (since the start, exactly 30 days ago, they have worn their skis for a grand total of 4 hours!) they are now facing a totally unexpected obstacle: a North wind and a negative westward drift, i.e. a drift that is "pushing them backwards" towards the Siberian coast. Not content to toil away like slaves in the time of the pyramids, now they have to fight to avoid going backwards !
Today, having walked for 7½ hours, they calculated that they had progressed by about 9 km but they realised that at the end of the day, when they checked their GPS (Global Positioning System), that a strong North wind combined with the movement of the ice had taken them about 4 km backwards. 9 km - 4 km = 5 km/
You can imagine that during the satellite link-up, the two polar explorers were in a rather bad mood. "It's hell here, you don't realise the efforts that are required of Dixie and me all day long to drag these damned sleds and cross the ridges", Alain explained two hours ago. "I call it the catacombs of the Arctic. There is no other word for it. Bye ! "
Saturday 23 March (day 27) : Dixie falls in the water, Alain goes fishing for a sled
Despite the tremendous difficulties encountered every minute and every hour, one could even say every step of the way, Alain Hubert and Dixie Dansercoer are in great shape. Of course they are tired, exhausted even, because they were not expecting to have to walk across the ice like this, and facing such an ideal, but they are still in perfect physical condition.
A mere fall into the waters of the Arctic Ocean is hardly likely to cause them to falter; Dixie was looking for a way round some open water (it was about six p.m.), and was prodding the ice here and there with his stick. Suddenly, the ice broke, pitching both man and sled into the water. Alain had the choice between pulling the sled (and Dixie at the same time) or taking care of the man immediately; of course, he chose to pull his companion out first. When he turned round to get the sled, it was already drifting away on a small river full of enormous blocks of ice. By improvising a fishing rod (a shovel with a piece of string tied on one end), Alain was able to bring the sled back to the site of the fall, after trying for about half an hour. One hour later, the men were pitching camp.
Saturday 23 March was another difficult day because the duo were constantly surrounded by open water, that has to be negotiated with all the risks you can imagine. It is not the leads of open water that are holding them up; it is the old encrusted snow (winter snow) in which they sink halfway up their calves every step, and across which they have to pull the sled.
Eight hours of walking (they are gradually extending their walking time, which proves that their physical fitness is totally unaffected), -35°C in the tent at night, slight North wind (first North wind since the start of the exhibition), very tired, superb Northern lights.
Friday 22 March (day 26) : the fright of their lives
After mimicking the bear … Close-up again on the bear. This time, it was no laughing matter. Last 6 March, a bear came within twenty metres of the Hubert-Dansecoer duo.
Today, the meeting with the bear was more lively. First of all, it was a young male, which had already reached an impressive size, and suddenly appeared (at about 4 p.m.) when they were crossing a ridge (compression area where enormous blocks of ice accumulate like lumps of sugar that have been piled up at random), and who came to take a closer look at Alain's sled. In fact, a very close look, because he stuck his snout on the red canvas. Picking up his gun as a precaution, Alain fired a first shot into the air, which did not seem to perturb the animal unduly; then, as he was heading dangerously for the front of the sled, Hubert fired a second shot, this time between his paws. Scared, but not excessively, the animal wandered off with all the calmness in the world. The two men were not home and dry yet, though. A few minutes later, Mama Bear came to ask the two men what they were playing at. Why had they frightened her son? She was much bigger than her offspring, at over 2 metres tall, and came up to lick Alain's sled; that meant the animal was less than 3 metres from him.
Hubert needed quite a dose of courage and, above all, self-control ("This isn't a day out at the zoo!", he says on the audio of the day) and repeats his actions from the first meeting of the day, shooting at the last minute between the bear's paws. To scare it off.
The other news of the day seems rather tame by comparison with these dangerous incidents. Clement weather, fine at the end of the day, cloudy the rest of the time, very bad night for Alain last night (he woke up soaked in his sleeping bag, when it was -30°C in the tent), serious hummocking of the ice whereas the men were expecting the pack to become more open (flatter terrain). Temperatures going down again (?30°C). The ordeal continues.... For 25 days so far, and we can say that the men have been in a survival situation all the time.
Wednesday 20 March (day 24) : Man overboard ... 
These are certainly not common or pleasant situations, but they handle them like real pros: for the first time since they started out, a man has fallen in the water. Twice today, Hubert slipped and found himself half-immersed in the Arctic Ocean. On the first occasion, he was able to grab hold of the ice and heave himself back onto the ice floe almost immediately. An hour later, he fell again: this time, Hubert stayed immersed up to his chest for around ten seconds. But they didn't panic: the adventurer had already experienced similar situations in his raid to the North Pole in 1994.
As he had left the zips of his pockets open, the water had been able to seep in as far as the inside of his body suit, but did not have time to penetrate any further. So he did the right thing: he rolled in the snow for a few minutes in order to remove the maximum quantity of moisture. Then the pair of them continued on their way unperturbed.
Another striking event during the day: their encounter with a couple of walruses who were courting in the middle of a small lake. "They are really enormous animals", said Alain. "It was extraordinary to be able to observe such animals in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. But you wouldn't believe how awful they smell. Incredible …"
A short day today, with only 5 km covered northward in six hours of walking (they spent nearly an hour observing the two walruses). The terrain was once again broken-up, but according to the two men, their hope of reaching more practicable terrain soon is not misplaced. There are more expanses of relatively flat ice, the terrain is clearer and the zones where it really disintegrating are less frequent.
Tuesday 19 March (day 23) : Iceberg in sight...
The satellite link was very short today, as the men had "worked" very hard, and wanted to rest. The ice is becoming thicker and more compact. The fact that they have seen an iceberg for the first time shows that they are perhaps gradually entering a more solid area of ice-floe, which will be more stable.
"Those who believe that we were mad to attempt this incredible crossing", said Dixie just now, with a mood of defiance in his voice, "will have to watch out because once the surface improves, we will be moving like the wind. And everyone will be astonished at the distances we cover."
Temperature, -24°C, 7 hours on the trail, gliding slightly easier, very tired in the evening, minor repairs to the kites, 1.5 m of ice under the tent. Very good drift today. Two hours of kite-sailing this morning.
Monday 18 March (day 22) : Alain and Dixie step up a gear!
Fed up with being bogged down, our two adventurers have stepped up a gear. Taking advantage of more open and flatter terrain - albeit it criss-crossed with small rivers of open water - Alain and Dixie got out their best parafoil - the 21 sq.m. sail, the one that they can control most easily - and, thanks to a southerly wind of 10 to 15km/h, they glided over the pack ice for 4 hours and 30 minutes.
The result: a dozen or so kilometres. Then, if we add the distance covered during the other two and a half hours on foot, the total for the day was 14.6 km.
Which is a good result. But a big risk at the same time. "We had to get ahead," explained Alain on the telephone. "So we decided to risk the 21 sq.m. parafoil. But it wasn't easy, because while the ice was smoother, the way was scattered with small rivers of water about a metre across; but with the speed we were doing with the sail, we simply flew across. You can just picture it, Michel, with the sledge tagging along behind - but which is also about 20 kg lighter as we are losing about 1 kg a day - it's just a hop, skip and a jump to get across any open water: all of which is great fun, but a little on the crazy side, don't you think? But we were fed up with crawling along like snails. We've got to get going and keep on rolling..."
Horrible weather this evening, very tired, fresh bear tracks during the day, a little water in the sleeping bags, temperature minus 30°C, 7 hours on the go. Very good morale.
