OSLO, Norway – After 64 days of walking, skiing, climbing, swimming across ice openings and dodging polar bears, a Norwegian and South African have reached the North Pole on foot in the darkness of Arctic winter, their team said Friday.
Mike Horn, 39, of South Africa, and Borge Ousland, 43, set off from Cape Artichesky in northern Russia determined to make the 620-mile trek without outside supplies or help from dog sleds.
The professional adventurers pulled everything they needed in sleds that started off weighing about 300 pounds. On Thursday, they completed the trek – most of it in complete Polar darkness.
“This journey has been so tough that I think it will be a very long time until someone tries to repeat our expedition,” said Ousland, who previously skied alone and unaided across the Antarctic.
According to the team, no one had previously attempted to cross the ice and snow-covered wasteland on foot during the six-month Arctic winter.
The two swam across openings in ice – called leads – in special waterproof suits and pulled their sleds like rafts, only seeing what the headlamps could illuminate.
“I must tell you it’s a strange experience to cross these leads in the darkness with only our headlights while the snow is falling. Pretty exciting, really, but very strange,” Ousland wrote in his Internet diary.
Along the way, they faced temperatures as low as minus 40 and strong northerly winds, and had to make their way through blinding whiteouts of snow.
At times, they were carried backward on ice floes that were drifting faster than they could walk. They had to drag their gear over pack ice that was 25 feet high, and suffered frostbite and infections.
They also had to be on constant lookout for polar bears, which have no natural enemies in the Arctic and regard anything that moves as a potential meal.
On their first day out, a bear attacked their tent.
“Borge and Mike got out of their tent as the polar bear was walking away with a packet of their food. As they reacted quickly and lit a flare gun, the bear dropped the food and ran onto the sea ice,” the team said.
Horn previously had completed a more than 27-month solo trek around the Arctic Circle in 2004.
Ousland was the first to ski across Antarctica alone in a 62-day, 1,767-mile journey in 1997. In 2001, he was the first to ski solo from Russia to Canada over the North Pole in an 82-day, 1,068-mile trip.
In 1990, he and Norwegian teammate Erling Kagge were the first to ski unsupported to the North Pole. In 1994, Ousland repeated the trek as the first person to do it solo. In 1996, he reached the South Pole on a solo trek.
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