86.8552N, 076.6805W

Imagine walking up a steep hill with a harness rigged to your back with a bunch
of bungie cords. Now imagine someone yanking as hard as they can every
other step you take while you are trying to go up that hill. Practice
that in the deep freeze, strap on a pair of skis and you’ll begin to
get a sense of what it feels like to pull a heavy sledge across the
ice! I figured today that we take approximately 25,000 steps a day out
here. This would then mean that the sledge yanks on our backs about
12,000 times today. It can get extraordinarily frustrating! This of
course does not factor the up and down of the terrain.
We traveled
through relatively flat pans today, and ended riding right into the
midnight sun. (Our rotations have us now ride into the “night”, which
of course makes little difference now as the sun no longer sets up
here). We covered 13.25 nautical miles in about 11 hours. We crossed two
newly frozen leads.; one of them was in motion while we crossed it–a
large frozen section was being pushed onto another one. This is one of
the more incredible displays of the power of the tides, wind and
current: to move hundreds of billions of tons of ice and crumple blocks
of ice the size of trucks, piling one on top of another. Such is the
power of nature. Our focus must be on harnessing that so sustainable
energy.
We are now tucked in our sleeping bags.
Our current position is N86°51.093 and W76°41.010.
Good night.

86.631N, 76.604W

Eerie and ominous, with the profound beauty of the simplicity of
void. That is what the “big lead”‘ conjured up upon walking to it this
morning. A “melt way” frozen over from this summer, this lead spells
out the future of the Arctic ocean as it breaks up; its ice thickness
further threatened by the exponential factors of warm air and warmer
water. This lead was enormous: two miles across and its length unclear
as it stretched East/West well beyond what the eye could see. Imagine a
white, vast surface almost perfectly flat–like a salt flat–fractured
by steamy black veins snaking in the middle of this dreamy whiteness.
The cracks reveal the ocean below, but here they feel like a taste of
Mordor, and foretell things to come; like new forces are at play. The
Arctic ice is rapidly changing, and I wonder if generations to come
will have the chance to do what we’re doing. Will people celebrate the
Peary bi-centennial by attempting the pole? I think not…

We treaded carefully, as the open section which had stopped us
last night had thinly frozen over. Once we skied over a two foot open
section of black Arctic sea. Walking on this gigantic lead felt like
being in a dream, or the computer generated set of a sci-fi movie: just
ice and sky! My one great privilege which will undoubtedly live to be a
great frustration is that whilst witnessing such unique sights, I also
know that it is impossible to capture its scale and breadth on film.
Besides, shooting here is so challenging–each shot a production, each
with cold exposure to fingers–that most shots are not taken. They are
committed to my memory bank, but I will not be able to accurately share
what I see with others. So goes the frustration of photographers
everywhere: for every shot taken, they are thousands that screamed to
have be shot!

Today was a great travel day, across changing terrain, but mostly
big pans, and relatively flat. We pulled for 11 hours and covered 12.3
nautical miles, our personal best. Temperatures were mild–around – 25°F.
Our current position is N86.37.896 and W76°36.268. We stopped and camp
next to a small, narrow open lead, book ending our day. We will cross
it tomorrow. Good night.