Arctic Ocean 2000
Rune Gjeldens and Torry Larsen

12 May

"If we manage to kill a seal from time to time in order to survive, we can allow ourselves to drift in this way on the pack ice and reach Ward Hunt in about 200 days. We are giving this possibility serious and genuine thought. Rune still has a little tobacco with him, and in any event we could perhaps make some out of sealskin..."
In his call of 10 May, Torry Larsen - once in a while does no harm - was not joking. When he said that the two men could well let themselves be carried by the pack ice as far as Ward Hunt and give up the permanent effort against all odds to make progress that they had been making for what was now 86 days on the ice, he believed what he was saying. And his companion did as well.

It's because things have changed considerably since the first victory of reaching the Pole and the good humour that they shared with us during the first weeks of the expedition. They knew that the hardest part was still to come, and that after the Pole a new adventure would be starting. Well, it had now definitively started.

  • Firstly by a blow to the morale: in their call of 03 May, they highlighted the bad ice conditions, their extreme fatigue, the lack of distance covered, the doubts that were more and more besieging their frame of mind, Rune's Achilles tendon that was causing him pain and assuming worrying proportions, and the fact they no longer had an ounce of fat under their skin…
  • Then by major difficulties of progression: in the area where they were, that is to say 88 degrees of latitude, there were pressure ridges that were just as gigantic as the ones encountered by the expeditions leaving from Ward Hunt, exhausting to negotiate.
  • Finally by some simultaneous practical and physical problems: the soles of both men's shoes had come completely unstuck. They had to be re-sewn each evening, and they used parachute thread to do so. And then, one began to feel an enormous, deafening fatigue behind the words uttered by the two men in turn each day. Furthermore, they were not hiding from it. 08 May: "I had hoped to recover my strength after the halt", explained Rune, "but no, it didn't work. Devoid of energy, I felt entirely hopeless…"

2 May

The two Norwegians have arrived without any problem at the North Pole after 74 days out on the ice - and despite some serious drifting 7° to the west. Some ten days before arriving at this mythical point on the globe, on about 22nd April, they had to cope with a horrendous series of open water channels that they negotiated as best they could by using the sledge like a ladder - as mountaineers do when crossing a narrow crevasse - or by turning them into boats.
On 23rd April, they beat a small record by covering 24 km in the day 23. Five days later, they were only 14 km from the pole. And finally, on 29th April at 11.00 pm, they reached the pole after covering 1100 km from Cape Arktikschevsky in Siberia, which was 24 hours after the French, who went appreciably faster than they did (they left on 16th February, while Arnaud and Rodolphe, left Cape Arktikschevsky on the 27th, so they took 10 days fewer than the Norwegians). Rune and Torry made the most of the day's rest they had allotted themselves to change their underwear. It was the first time they had done so since setting out !

Having marked the occasion in the correct manner (by raising the Norwegian flag, resting in their tent and smoking an excellent cigar), they set out again - towards the south this time - to try and get back to Ward Hunt by the end of May or the beginning of June.
They have estimated that to be on course and reach their goal in the Far North of Canada, and taking account of the drift of the ice-cap, they need to head for 15º W of Ward Hunt's actual position! On 1st May, Torry fell in the water and had to ski all day with wet feet...

Having said that, it is surprising that they don't talk more in their radio transmissions about the French team that they must have run across while they were at the pole. The same thing applies to the Frenchmen, who have not even mentioned the presence of the Norwegians in their daily messages!

19 April

The last few days on the ice floe have been less cold, and, when they get under their tent in the evening, Rune and Torry no longer have to plunge into the immediate chore of lighting the stove to warm up the atmosphere a little. In short, spring is gently coming to the ice floe. Which of course makes thing easier and distinctly more agreeable. Except when they were surprised in the middle of the day by a layer of ice that was too thin and they almost took a forced bath in the Arctic Ocean, as happened to Torry on 15 April.