Arctic explorer Richard Weber has travelled across the surface of the Earth to the North Pole seven times.
But his latest trip, completed in April with his older son, Tessum, 21, and two other adventurers, may have been the last – not just for Weber, but for all who want to visit the top of the Earth. As polar ice melts away, the chance to travel by foot to the North Pole will be relegated to stories from the past.
“The seasons are shortening,” Richard said upon returning from his latest expedition. “April used to be clear and sunny, now the weather is much worse.”
In 1986, Richard, a cross-country ski champion, made the first expedition over the ice on foot since American Robert E. Peary claimed to have reached the pole in 1909. Three years later, he started taking people to ski the last degree of latitude.
“It was the extreme leading edge of adventure tourism. People said I was crazy,” recalls Richard, who, with his wife, Josée Auclair, Tessum and younger son, Nansen, runs Arctic Watch Wilderness Lodge.
For Tessum, it was typical family life. “My family has been in the North for eons. Going to the North Pole is normal.”
His first polar experience came strapped to his mother's back at just six weeks old. At the time, it seemed polar expeditions would be feasible well into the future as traditional scientific models indicated the polar regions would remain frozen until about 2100. Quickening warming trends have shattered that expectation.
“Even the most pessimistic models didn't predict ice free conditions until 2050,” said David Barber, associate dean of research at the Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth and Resources at the University of Manitoba, and the Canada research chair in Arctic-system science.
“The melting is pretty clear, but the surprise is how fast it's happening,” Barber said. “The rate … is picking up speed. Observations now suggest the Arctic will be ice-free by 2030, perhaps as early as 2013.”
Weber says it is “shocking how much change has happened in the last 10 to 15 years.” At the same time, North Pole expeditions have become “more commercial, more competitive.” The famed adventurer – who set the speed record for a South Pole trek with no outside support with companions Ray Zahab and Kevin Vallely in 2009 – says this North Pole journey was his last (though he will still consult for others hoping to make the journey).
Fearful for the future of such adventures, South African Howard Fairbank joined Weber's April expedition. Fairbank has sailed solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and has pedalled more than 25,000 kilometres on his bicycle, crossing Europe, Africa, North and South America and Australia. Still, he hoped by reaching the North Pole he would reach deeper into his understanding of himself and others.
Because there's no peak, no signpost, no trailhead and no landmark at the North Pole, this expedition, Weber explains, is unlike any other. “The route is drifting pack ice all the way, the view is exactly the same, so it really is about the journey.”
Each day, wind pushes ice pans into each other, crushing and grinding loudly in the unmarked surrounds. Pressure ridges made of jagged blocks of ice form between ice sheets at impact. As pans separate, stretches of open water, known as leads, are revealed. The drift is non-stop, a fixture of the partly frozen and constantly changing Arctic landscape.
A trained eye is needed to determine the varying kinds of ice in the Arctic, from older, thicker ice to barely formed stretches of slushy ice that easily disintegrate. The differences can be mere feet apart. While one lead may freeze over to allow an expedition to pass, another may open up, blocking the team's progress.
