Arctic crossing by balloon

The recent news that Jean-Louis Etienne has made the first Arctic crossing by balloon, provides an excuse to mention Salomon August Andree's ill-fated 1897 attempt. The New Yorker has a big feature about how the Swedish explorer and two companions set out on the first flight to the North Pole, from Spitsbergen in the well-equipped balloon Ornen. They were never heard of again although their remains were discovered in 1930, along with Andree's diary. This revealed that the balloon had been forced down 500 miles from the North Pole.

Previous posting here, but for fascinating insight into the expedition, I'd recommend the Andree chapter in Geoff Powter's We Cannot Fail. Picture below from the Guardian, November 25 1930.

Global warming and the Arctic

'Global warming is crap' - so said UK Independence Party Leader Lord Pearson of Rannoch in a press release, last week. Each to their own and other views are available. I mention this as someone sent me the UKIP email while I was reading about explorer Pen Hadow's new expedition to the Arctic to research the acidification of the oceans caused by emissions of carbon dioxide. His team will cross more than 1,000 km of ice pans, frozen ridges and open ocean to help scientists discover how long it will be before the Arctic sea ice disappears due to climate. Video of Hadow can be seen here.

Of course the expedition may well discover that Lord Pearson is indeed correct and 'carbon really ain't pollution' but let's wait and see. Read about the team's training regime here, and more about the expedition itself on the Catlin arctic survey site. Meanwhile an Irish team is about to set off on an endurance trek to the North Pole.

While on the subject of climate change, I was recently searching the Guardian/Observer digital archive for early references and came across the following piece by the Astronomical Correspondent (May 17 1932).

(click to enlarge)

Pole position

With the melting Arctic in the news, it’s worth rembering that it is just over a hundred years since someone claimed to be the first to reach the geographic north pole. On September 1 1909, the American explorer Dr Frederick Cook declared that he had reached it, in April 1908. However, four days later, another American, Commander Robert Peary, announced ‘Stars and Stripes Nailed to the north pole’, thus making his own claim. For months controversy raged as to who was telling the truth with the New York Herald backing Cook and the New York Times, Peary.

In the end Cook failed to produce credible evidence and Peary was declared the winner, going to his grave as the undisputed discoverer of the north pole. Later in the century suspicions were raised as to whether he too failed to make it and while many believe that he was probably close, the explorer Wally Herbert is now thought to have been the first to make it in 1968-9. Peary’s expedition is now remembered as much for the fact that Matthew Henson, his assistant, was black.

As I discovered whilst researching Those Who Dared, the story regularly featured on the pages of the Manchester Guardian. This useful map appeared on September 10 1909.

Floating to the north pole

The days of polar explorers hauling sledges over icy wastes could soon be numbered as a pioneering expedition has suggested that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer, within 20 years. The Catlin Arctic Survey, led by polar explorer Pen Hadow, found that the area covered by the survey was made up almost entirely of ice less than a year old. The region, in the northern part of the Beaufort sea, used to contain older, thicker ice that formed over several years and was more resistant to summer melting.

Hadow is quoted in The Times as saying: "A hundred years ago explorers used dogs to haul sledges and then we went through the stage of people hauling sledges," he said. "Now we have people wearing immersion suits and needing to swim, with the sledge floating. I foresee a time when the sledge will become more of a canoe."

Video and graphics about the change can be seen at environmentguardian.co.uk

Hot air balloon

Explorer David Hempleman-Adams has broken two more world records after spending 14 hours in a laundry basket-sized capsule attached to a hot air balloon, it was reported, last Sunday. The 52-year old British adventurer flew more than 200 miles from Butler, Missouri, to Cherokee, Oklahoma, smashing the record for the AA-01 class balloon, which had stood for more than 26 years, and also breaking the record for the bigger AA-02 class of balloon. According to some reports the tiny seating capsule was in fact a £78 Ikea laundry basket.

In an earlier adventure, Hempleman-Adams attempted to fly over the north pole in a secondhand basket previously used to take tourists over Bristol. This expedition was in part modelled on that of Swedish explorer and balloonist, Salomon August Andree, who, in July 1897, attempted to drift, along with two companions and 35 carrier pigeons over the north pole to America. The expedition ended in disaster and it wasn't until 30 years later that their remains were discovered, a story included in the Polar chapter of Those Who Dared.