TRAVEL MELTDOWN
Climate change has made it much different to visit the North Pole
The North Pole is a destination without a marker. Unlike its southern equivalent, which is located deep within the frozen continent of Antarctica and delineated with an actual pole and a nearby scientific base, the North Pole is in the middle of a constantly shifting mosaic of ice atop the Arctic Ocean.
It is a place that as recently as 1846 was described by Sir John Barrow, an English statesman who midwifed the Victorian age of Arctic exploration, as “the only thing in the world about which we know nothing.”
For decades, men and women have striven to reach the top of the world; they have struggled on skis, hauled sleds and endured a litany of miseries — including death — in pursuit of that goal. But when I went to the North Pole, all I had to do was board a flight to Helsinki and catch a charter to Murmansk, Russia, where I boarded a ship. From there, all that was required of me was to kick back and enjoy the scenery, the wildlife and the three multicourse meals per day.
After we reached the Pole, that ship, a 500-foot, 28,000-ton, redand-black nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker called 50 Let Pobedy — or, in English, 50 Years of Victory — towered over us, about 130 fee-paying passengers from around the world, accompanied by a small handful of scientists and journalists, each of us wearing expedition-issued bright yellow parkas.
The ship’s captain, Dmitriy Lobusov — tall, grey-bearded and looking every inch a Russian sea captain — spoke into a microphone, his words translated by an aide by his side.
“Congratulations to you all on achieving your dream,” he said. And if none of us could lay claim to any achievement even remotely on the scale of those who had danced with death as they battled to be where we now stood, just the very fact that we were standing at the top of the world placed us in rarefied company.
Less rarefied, however, than it used to be.
In 1977, another nuclear-powered icebreaker, the Arktika, became the first surface vessel to reach the Pole. The journey has been completed multiple times by several vessels in the four decades since; our voyage was the 123rd.
Its accessibility is not the only way in which the Pole and its environs differ from half a century ago — a difference that was evident during our journey.
“I have been working in the area for 30 years and been doing North Pole voyages for 24 years, and I’ve seen many changes in the ice conditions,” Lobusov said during the voyage north. “As we approach the North Pole, you can see we have many stretches of open water.”
To travel to the North Pole is, increasingly, to consider the future — to wonder whether, just as the window of accessibility is cracking open, the opportunity to see the North Pole as we know and imagine it is already starting to close.
Victory makes only five trips to the North Pole with paying passengers each year, chartered alternately by Quark and Poseidon Adventures; it spends the bulk of its life breaking through the ice of the Northern Sea Route, opening pathways at the head of convoys of cargo and container ships. It is a working ship, not a cruise liner, and the accommodations — notwithstanding the journey’s starting price tag of $27,000 for the 11-day round trip — reflect as much. Still, if the cabins were not ornate, they were functional — the one I shared with friend and fellow Arctic obsessive Geoff York had a pair of bunks, a desk, a small bathroom with shower and plenty of storage — and replete with nice touches, including daily housekeeping service topped with a nightly treat of 50 Let Pobedy-branded chocolate.
Initially, our wonderment was at Victory’s immense strength, a product of twin nuclear reactors driving engines that generate an almost-unfathomable 75,000 horsepower.
The passage through open water on our first couple of days had been effortless. But our expectation was that such effortlessness would ultimately be tempered the farther north we travelled and the thicker and more extensive the ice became. Instead, onward Victory barrelled, barely breaking a metaphorical sweat. In open water, its daily average speed was between 18 and 18.5 knots. On the day of our approach to the North Pole, it was still clocking an impressive 13 knots as the would-be resistance yielded meekly before it.
“It really drives home how quickly the ice responds to even slight changes in temperature,” said Colin Souness, a Scottish glaciologist who works on board as a Quark guide.
“At one degree below freezing, ice is resilient and quite rigid. But as soon as it gets to zero (Celsius), it becomes so much softer, and you can see that with the ease with which the ship is just gliding through it.”
As ice thins, it becomes easier to melt. It is a vicious cycle: A warming climate causes old sea ice to shrink and thin during the summer, to be replaced by thinner sea ice that is more vulnerable to further melting, and so on. Which is why, although sea ice extent numbers grab the headlines each year, there is at least as much scientific concern over declining sea ice volume.
According to the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington, 2017 had the lowest annually averaged sea ice volume on record. (In total, sea ice thickness in the central Arctic Ocean has declined by more than 65 per cent since 1975.) Not that we knew that at the time, of course.
Ranjan Sharma, a well-travelled allergist from North Carolina, had flown to the South Pole in January and now, with his partner, Stacy Lawson, was adding its northern equivalent. But, he said, “I just hope there’s enough ice for us to stand on at the Pole.”
We would find out soon enough. By the evening of the fifth day, the goal was in our grasp, and with just a couple of hours to go, Solan, in the wheelhouse, began counting down the remaining time and distance over the ship’s PA system. A crowd swelled on the bow, where Quark staff stood ready with glasses of champagne and shots of vodka. At a little after midnight, we came to a halt, to several long, loud blasts of the ship’s whistle and an eruption of cheers from the passengers.
The passengers partied into the night; as they did so, the ship got underway again. If anything, the ice seemed even thinner and more scattered at the Pole, and Lobusov was forced to spend several hours overnight steaming around in search of an area that was suitable for him to park the ship.
Once he had done so, and while the rest of us slept, the Quark team set up the site to be as safe as possible for passengers to disembark. Flags marked a trail deemed sufficiently secure, across thick enough ice and away from treacherous water. For the more daring sorts, an open patch of water next to the ship provided an opportunity to leap — while securely tethered — into the freezing Arctic Ocean and emerge as swiftly as possible.
Once we descended on the ice, most of us took short walks. At lunchtime, we sat at picnic tables and had a barbecue. A hundred yards or so from the ship, a replica British phone booth marked the spot at which Quark staffers stood with a satellite phone, so every one of us could call a loved one — briefly — from the North Pole.
We had been parked at — or, more accurately given the ice conditions, as close as possible to — the Pole for 12 hours or so; we would remain for only a few hours more until we began the journey south.
On the first day of our way home, we encountered an iceberg, looming in the distance. As we approached, the sun punched its way through the haze, shining a spotlight on the cathedral of ice.
It was immense, and had almost certainly travelled hundreds of miles, breaking off from an ice shelf in Greenland and drifting east until it stood before us, a vast, solitary sentinel of ice.
It was undoubtedly ancient, an emissary millenniums in the making, and its size suggested it should exist for millenniums more. But once it had broken free, it was doomed, slowly shrinking day by day until, in a matter of years, it would be gone.