Weather Finally Breaks To Get Resupplies To Explorers On Ice Thickness
05 May 2009
The Catlin Arctic Survey Ice Team currently surveying the thickness of the floating sea ice on the Arctic Ocean are this morning heading northwards again after a successful re-supply flight finally reached the increasingly hungry team who had been waiting for eleven days at an ice landing strip high in the Arctic Ocean.
The team, Pen Hadow, Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels has been forced to wait far longer than expected after the flight was consistently grounded by bad weather. Although they had rations to last, they were relying on 90 grams of food a day (1,000 calories) which had begun to affect their morale.
Speaking by satellite phone navigator Ann Daniels said:
“I can’t tell you how happy we are that the plane landed, rather than just did an air-drop of food. It meant we had some human contact, were able to receive messages from home and handover everything we needed to return to our support team. And we’ve been able to have a feast to get our energy levels up.”
Chip Cunliffe, Head of Operations at the team’s UK headquarters said:
“It’s great to get to them. Because the weather needs to be right at each take off and landing point on the route out and for the return, there are a lot of variables which can affect the flight.
It is fair to say that we have been dogged by the weather for some time. With this consistently frustrating us and a technical problem with one plane causing us to turn back on one earlier attempt to reach them, it’s a relief to get the team moving once
again.”
The supply flight reached the team on Monday (May 4th) using a special Twin Otter plane with two additional Ferry Tanks providing enough fuel for a direct flight from Resolute to the Ice Team’s ice landing strip at 85degrees 16′ 46″ N 124?degrees 57′ 04″ W, some 685 nautical miles away in an operation which took 11 hours.
The landing strip had been chosen with help from imagery provided by MDA’s RadarSat2 satellite. The Ice Team had been able to clear and maintain the strip after verifying themselves that it was ideal for a landing.
“We were able to drill to check it was good ice - and it turns out it was far thicker than the 60cms minimum needed” said team leader Pen Hadow.
“Our spirits are restored. Now we just need our bodies to catch up,” is how Daniels put it.
Daniels added that when her colleagues left the tent to drill a few days into the wait, they came back feeling sick and wobbly and took longer than usual to warm up.Â
“We had to stop drilling and undertaking scientific observations for a few days because it simply wouldn’t have been sensible, given the cold, the energy that the surveying demands and the lack of calorie intake”, says Hadow.
The team had no hot food for several days but are making up for it now - though for Hartley, the can of beer handed to him by one of the pilots has
been the highlight of the re-supply.
“All we wanted to do was lie down and do nothing, not even sleep. It got to be incredibly boring especially as we simply wanted to get on with our
work.That said, if I had to spend ten days in small tent with anyone, I’d choose Ann and Pen as companions”.
The team has been on the ice for 65 days. The expedition team will be uplifted from the ice later this month.
Tags: Ann Daniels, cas, Catlin Arctic Survey, Martin Hartley, Pen Hadow
