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Introduction
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 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.
On
28th April at 10.30 pm, Arnaud and Rodolphe reached the first objective
of their expedition without any problems: the geographic North Pole.
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.
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.
21
April: Arnaud went through the ice and fell into the water up to his
waist.
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…
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Week of 27th April to 4th May 
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)… 
