North Pole 2011

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POLE TO POLE RUN
Stage 1: North Pole to Canada

When Clark was still in Papua New Guinea, about to embark on his Sepik River expedition with mate Andrew Johnson, he got an email out of the blue asking if he'd like to ski from the North Pole to Canada and film the expedition. Having spent weeks in the humid and suffocatingly hot jungles of PNG, Clark didn't hesitate in saying yes.

It turned out his job was not only to help film the expedition (as well as the whole skiing to Canada thing) but to send one minute of video each and every day to be streamed on the internet and broadcast on national television. It was a feat that had never been done and Clark quickly learnt the difficulties of sending video from the North Pole. The extreme cold, being bashed around inside a sled and of course lack of WIFI make this quite the task.

After much deliberation and plenty of help from various experts around the world (many thanks to Luis Soltero from GMN) Clark finally came up with a system that worked. The gear survived the rigours of expedition life, and nearly 45 minutes of video was sent live from the expedition to the rest of the world, over the course of the 40 day journey.

The four man team (Pat Farmer, Eric Philips, Jose Naranjo and Clark) dragged their 85 kg sleds across the frozen arctic ocean with a single re-supply after 20 days. They set foot on Ward Hunt Island - one of the most northerly points of land in Canada - 800 kilometres later. The team came across everything from pressure ridges two stories high to open expanses of flat hard ice, leads of inky black water, thin ice and thigh deep snow. Despite having two members fall through the ice, enduring temperatures as low as -37 C and dealing with constant gear breakages, the expedition was incredibly fortunate, considering the rather sobering statistics for full length North Pole expeditions.

The North Pole to Canada expedition was only part of the journey for Pat Farmer, who is currently running down the east coast of Canada, on his way to the South Pole (via the Americas) on his Pole to Pole Run expedition.

Check out the photos from the expedition in the North Pole 2011 gallery.

The Team:

Expedition Guide - Eric Philips
Runner - Pat Farmer
Communications/Camera - Clark Carter
Cameraman - Jose Naranjo


Visit the Pole to Pole Run website