Introduction

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From 21 May to 02 June

With the passing of time, Arnaud and Rodolphe are making slower and slower, and harder and harder, progress.
They are hampered, as one might imagine, by the gentleness of the temperatures that are oscillating around -2° and -5°C and melting the ice cap and blocking their path with all the open water they have to cross by transforming their sledges into amphibious boats.
To cross a stretch of water of about a hundred metres takes about three quarters of an hour: and there are an increasing number of them in their way. On 28 May, they took two hours to cross some open water that was only 80-metres wide.
The most tiring aspect of these open water crossings is that, sometimes, they still have to use their paddles to break the thin film of ice that is not completely melted and which is still covering the water.
The watercourses and the ice that is getting forever softer. Unskiable, evidently. As they said in their communiqué of 24 May, "At each step, our feet sink into a mixture of snow, ice and water."

Other obstacles arrive to add to these difficulties; the days of whiteout that seem increasingly numerous, the unwelcome drifts taking them in the wrong direction (on 30 May, they again regressed 6 km!), the ever-sharper hunger pangs because if they want to reach their goal they have to ration their food supplies, despite the three revictualling operations that they had on the way. On this subject, this is what their three daily rations were reduced to: I spoonful of oatflakes, I spoonful of sugar, 8 nuts, 4 raisins and 1 cereal bar that they had to divide in two!

And then there was more terrible news: when contacted by Lycia, the Resolute Bay meteorologist announced that there was no more ice cap near the shores of the Great Canadian North. The Norwegians did not seem put out by this situation although they no longer had sledges for negotiating the liquid element - all around Ellesmere was the Arctic Ocean in all its blue splendour! So how were they going to get across?

On 02 June, they were still about 220 km from their goal.

Week of 13 to 20 May

If the two Norwegians were suffering pain and paralysis from the weight of their backpacks - I would remind those that do not necessarily follow all the polar expeditions that the two Vikings had abandoned their sledges in order to make faster progress over the ice cap - the Frenchmen, for their part, were thoroughly fed up with the drifting of the ice, which was costing them precious time.

A situation at the very least difficult to tolerate when they were already up to their teeth in the fight for survival on the ice cap: on 14 May, they walked for 10 hours and covered 20 km in the day. Good progress. But when they were making their calculations, the GPS displayed a different position: instead of covering the 20 kilometre-markers as expected, they had only covered 10 as the ice cap had taken them back … 10 kilometres! Exasperating, to say the least. This meant that the daily average was 1 kph! Not overly reassuring, especially when one had a further 500 km to go to reach their target and, with the help of the season, the ice cap was breaking up more and more. The previous day, the same thing: in 9.5 hours of walking, they only progressed 11 km. On 18 May, during the first 5 hours of progress, they gobbled up 13 km, during the next 5 hours, only 2 km…

And then on 21 May, there was Tortel's fall into the water… Up to his neck, this time, and with skis on his feet! The extract from the communiqué is worth reading: "They were however walking very well but were stopped not by the whiteout but by Arnaud. This time, he really went through into the water. He was advancing in front of Rodolphe, when suddenly the ice gave way beneath him. He fell into the water with his skis on his feet and with his sledge. He was up to his neck in water. To get something to hold on to, he tried to get to a block of ice that was floating nearby . He succeeded by making little movements like the breaststroke. But with his skis on his feet this was very difficult. At the time, he was not really afraid, but had a funny feeling realising that the water was 4,000-meters deep beneath his feet. He remained immersed in the Arctic Ocean in this way for a good twenty seconds. Fortunately, Arnaud did not feel the cold of the water because it hadn't had time to penetrate all the layers of clothing. Helped by Rodolphe, he managed to reach the edge, him, his skis, his straps and his sledge. Tortel of course had had to undress to dry himself. To be more exact, to allow his clothes to freeze so that he could brush them clean as the water doesn't evaporate, it freezes. Picture yourself in your birthday suit in the icy cold. It takes a long time to dry. So they had to set up camp."

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…