How to get to the North Pole from the drifting base of Barneo

Throwing a group on an ice floe.

This post was requested by Palomnik and those who supported him - “How to get to the North Pole by skiing” after a story about dogs that were bred for northern conditions.

Ski expeditions (as well as on dogs and others) will start from the Russian drifting base of Barneo. In fact, every year it is rebuilt for three weeks in April, while the weather permits, at the 89th parallel of north latitude. A suitable large ice floe is selected, samples are taken on it to determine the strength and thickness of the ice, then people and equipment for clearing the runway and everything necessary for building a base from frame and inflatable tents are dumped there from the plane.
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For three weeks, Barneo becomes a tourist and scientific center (Arctic research is conducted here) and an An-74 airport for Cheburashki. It is this transporter that is used for take-off under conditions of -60 ° C from pebble and ice unequipped airfields. At the base there are Mi-8 helicopters, which allow you to throw groups of travelers on routes and return them to Barneo from the point of the North Pole. The connection of the base with the big land is only via An-74 flights.

Since there are no other bases closer to the pole (the closest starting points are Svalbard Islands, the Russian Cape Arctic in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, the northern tip of Canada, northern Greenland), about a hundred people from different countries gather on Barneo. Most people come to ski under the guidance of guides from the last degree of latitude to the North Pole - this is 100-110 km. That is, you can order such a commercial trip.


"Cheburashka."




Photographs provided by the Moscow Travel Education Lab Center, which is led by polar explorer Matvey Shparo.

How to get to the North Pole

The usual route is this: from Moscow in a passenger plane - to Spitsbergen, there is a transfer to An-74, which serves Barneo. Disembarkation, getting to know the base, checking equipment, then getting instruction and "good" on the weather and taking a helicopter to the pole or to the start of the ski route. Since this is actually not solid, but frozen water, and under the ice four kilometers deep, he constantly drifts in the wind. It is important not to choose a route so that the ice drifts from the pole, so it happens that from the base itself the group leaves by helicopter to one of the pre-selected starting points for different weather.



On-site landing takes place from a helicopter, and from there the campaign begins.



The campaign is possible only in the spring, in the conditions of a polar day (at this time in the Arctic, the temperature rises to tolerable -15 ... -20 degrees) and in the presence of the Barneo base, that is, three weeks a year, usually in April. 100 kilometers is six to seven days skiing, depending on the direction of the ice drift, weather, hummocks or wormwood with open water on the road.



Alternative options are a two-month ski trip (faster on dogs or snowmobiles) from Canada or from Cape Arktichesky (and carry everything with you, because there are no intermediate bases with supplies on sea ice - they will be carried away by drift), or swim in comfort on a nuclear icebreaker from Murmansk, which is "parked" right so that the North Pole falls on the table in the wardroom.

A tour to Barneo, taking into account all the logistics (actually this is a round-trip ticket for the An-74, helicopter freight or accommodation at the base depending on the program) can cost 20-30 thousand euros (for sprinters: from Moscow to the North Pole and vice versa turn around in 26 hours, on the top of the planet you spend one hour), on an icebreaker - from 29 to 43 thousand dollars.

What the group takes with them

The hardest things are sleeping bags, a tent (5 kg of kapron, one for the whole team), two tourist rugs for each, a set of clothing: thermal underwear, running pants and a running light, thick pants for the evening, a thick jacket, thick boots, mittens, hat, balaclava. A kilogram of freeze-dried food per day. Half a liter of fuel per day per person for 10 days (gasoline or white spirit). Communication and navigation: several GPS devices, two satellite phones. Shovels for snow. Spare batteries for phones and navigators. Three special wetsuits to overcome wormwood. Remnabor to skiing and the rest. Spare ski or two. Spare sticks. Rope. Two thermoses for each. Gun. "Wasp" with signal cartridges. Hygiene products (napkins and camphor alcohol). Dishes. Primus 5-kg first-aid kit at the expedition doctor (one of the leaders of the youth "Great Arctic Expedition" Alexei Seykin, a professional doctor and climber).

Cameras - optional. Phones - optional (usually used as players and require a power bank, because there are no other power sources). Notebooks for notes, pens. A soccer ball or rugby ball at the pole (a long-standing polar tradition) and some oil to grease the axis of the Earth. Sometimes children take souvenirs, necessarily flags of their regions and schools to raise them at the pole. Once, a schoolboy was dragging a thick volume of Hemingway with him and reading it at rest.


Expedition 2015.

All this is on a sled: each skier does not carry a backpack, but loads a sled and drags along.

Group Day

A polar day - therefore, the rise is not with the dawn, but by the alarm clock.

The first on duty wake up. In the evening, the tent is usually around +2 ... + 3 degrees, because the warm breath of people raises the temperature, plus the primuses work. By morning, the temperature may drop.



The duty officers' duty is to heat the water for thermoses and preparing freeze-dried rations (who has never seen them: they are very distantly similar to cereals in bags). The rations are packed in separate packages for each, you can choose the menu for today yourself.

Attendants collect snow. It is important to collect snow from the top layer. The main thing is not to dig deep snow: on the ice from above, the snow is fresh, a little deeper - already salty. It is also important to ensure that you do not collect yellow snow: the toilet at the pole is usually 30–50 meters from the tent. You just need to move away, quickly (because of frost) do your thing and come back. Experienced instructors teach a special technique how not to freeze at the same time.

It is necessary to wash with napkins with camphor alcohol. Teeth are cleaned without water or with a minimum amount of water.





Then the group prepares cereals for breakfast, eating biscuits, lard, sausage, drinking sweet tea. Of sweets most often - halva or honey with lemon (this is a traditional polar product). In thermoses, of which two are each, hot tea or cocoa is poured. Thermoses are then packed deep in the middle of the sled inside things.

A snack ration is distributed - small sweets and nuts to stuff into your pockets and eat during the transitions.

Clothes are being cleaned (about this - a little further).

Further, the group collects equipment, folds the tent, packs the sled. In the evening, a leader was appointed (in the expeditions of Matvey Shparo every day becomes a leader) - he paves the route on the navigator in accordance with the weather and the characteristics of the ice. The movement in the Arctic is not direct: sometimes it is necessary to bypass the wormwoods, sometimes they are easier to cross, sometimes very heavy or impassable sections of ice come across. The ice itself is not smooth.



Hikes from the 89th degree (100 kilometers) are usually done without dogs. The distance is not very large, the ice is such that the dog must be very accurately commanded, and the preparation for such control takes from six months to one and a half years of practice. The variant with the dog as a pulling skier (not a sled) does not work for the same reason: it accelerates, the skier immediately falls due to the peculiarities of local ice.







The leader of the day sets the direction of the path segment. Usually the segments are “50 minutes we go, 10 rest” or “45 we go, 15 we rest”. Leaders close the movement of the group.

After each walk, the leader indicates the direction to the next halt.


On the GPS screen - 3 meters left to the pole.

Five walkers - lunch. The tent is not set up, you need to drink tea from a thermos (still warm, about 25-30 degrees Celsius, since it was lying wrapped in rugs in a sleigh), they eat lard.

Then another three or four transitions until the evening.

A place for a tent is selected (smooth, without wormwood and hummocks). A tent is set up, a primus stove lights up, snow again gathers, it melts. When the tent becomes warm, stories are usually told, games, tests are held. If you need to discuss something on the campaign - it is discussed. Matvey always finds something to talk with children. For example, his favorite story is how in polar trips he met polar bears (once a bear stuck his nose into a tent, and his nose was the size of a 10-liter bucket). You won’t kill him with a gun the first time, but hurt him. What to do? Matvey shot over the bear’s head to scare him. The bear ran away.



I want to sleep after the transition almost immediately, so no need to persuade anyone. At night, the fire is removed. Participants sleep in thermal underwear and thick downy sleeping bags.

Camping clothes set out to freeze. The fact is that in the Arctic, nothing dries normally, so the moisture that has got into clothes will remain until the end of the trip. And she will always be wet. Therefore, if it is wet - you have to endure. In one of the expeditions, an instructor fell almost to the waist, who went first on a particularly dangerous section. They immediately got him. But it is impossible to dry things, just change.

Therefore, the most important thing in equipment is a brush, an ordinary clothes brush. Sweat freezes, turns into frost on the surface of the clothes and is removed with a brush. It is necessary to bring as little snow as possible into the tent, because it melts and settles during the night with moisture.

In move

Fields of thin or incorrect ice are visible; they can be identified by color. When they are approached, they stop, look. If the ice breaks out with three hits of a stick, then they do not go on it.

If it is impossible to get around the dangerous section, then hermetic life suits are unpacked (there are three of them for a group of nine people), the first three dress up in them, go to the “other shore”, then the costumes return in the sleigh tied to the rope, and the cycle repeats several times, until the group moves all over.






Here the instructor (in a wetsuit) found a suitable ice floe and pushed it to the bottleneck of a wormwood, now it acts as a bridge.

Sleds have positive buoyancy and can (without load) also be used as boats in calm water.



Sometimes the ice is such that it no longer breaks, but the skier can not stand it yet. Then on the ice, clad in wetsuits, crawl in a plastubsky way.

When the wormwood is ahead and it needs to be crossed, they swim in suits or in a sleigh.

About schoolchildren: what is it and how can I send a child to the pole

“Applicants have been preparing for the trip for several months. Of the forty candidates in the camp "Big Adventure" in Karelia, seven members of the ski team who conquer the North Pole are selected. Another seven schoolchildren who defended school scientific projects before the commission at the competition make up the Barneo scientific team and remain at the base to study the nature of the Arctic. ”

To get into the expedition of Matvey Shparo free of charge for the participants, one must pass the selection. A few years ago it was an all-Russian program, but then the capital's Department of Education took charge of the project, so only students from Moscow schools can apply for participation.

Children starting from the 10th grade (age of participants - 16-18 years) are allowed to be selected. The competition is usually about 300 people, of which 40 are selected “by paper” for training in Karelia. This is a full-fledged ski trip, the complexity is higher than it is at the pole, and sometimes in the north of Russia there are more severe conditions than in the Arctic. Based on the results of the training, seven out of 40 people will be selected who will go on an expedition. A trip to the training camp is free for all candidates. Parents at the selection stage sign and notarize consent to the child’s participation in the Arctic expedition.

There are no sexual preferences, only the motivation of the participants, physical fitness and psychological attitude are taken into account. The last groups were four boys and three girls, five boys and two girls, but there was also a team in which three boys had four girls.

To participate in the training program, the child must have a credited hike of the 1st category of difficulty in any type of tourism, take part in at least one mass ski competition (this is confirmation of sports training), take part in the Arctic Dictation online quiz, then send the application form and write an essay.

The theme of the essay was, for example, this: "Write your expedition diary." This checks the intellectual level of the participants and their motivation.

Any campaign of a category from 1st to 3rd is suitable for documents (because schoolchildren do not go higher) - no matter what: mountain bike, water, ski, pedestrian, with dogs and so on. The main thing is that the Turkclub or other organization gives a certificate. During regular summer vacation programs in the three Big Adventure camps, children take part in at least one such trip.



In February, training begins. The selection in Karelia is usually led by the honored trainer of the Russian Federation, professor, doctor of sciences Alexander Pavlovich Buslakov - the former head of the physical education department of the Institute of Steel and Alloys. The program includes a ski trip 100 km for 10 days. In the Arctic, there will be no snow to the waist, but in Karelia there may be such a thing, and you need to track the path. In February, there may be frosts below 30 degrees. In April, the temperature in the Arctic is softer, from minus 15 to minus 25. In a campaign, you learn both skills that are useful for the pole and those that are needed only for this trip: for example, you train firewood skills (which will not be necessary in the Arctic).

Camp instructors and psychologists check the moral readiness of children, the ability to work in a team, the ability to be a leader, the ability to put their desires in the service of the team. Teenagers write psychological tests. The bravest ones jump into the hole (after warming up in the bath), as walruses are also a kind of test, so that falling under the ice is not a shock and cold water does not cause panic. So seven people who go with Matthew Shparo to the pole are selected.

For these seven, the final training cycle is held in Moscow a few days before boarding the plane. You need to learn how to swim in a wetsuit, be able to put up a tent in thick mittens.

With the help of PSS Strogino rescuers, they cut ice on the Moskva River, make a lane and a track, and train in equipment (journalists are very fond of shooting this, because in wetsuits everyone is almost like astronauts). Children get swimming skills in thick puffs, boots so that water does not fall behind the collar of the suit.

In parallel, a scientific group is being prepared. The methodological center of the Moscow Department of Education selects seven teenagers who remain at Barneo's drifting base. They study wind, current, temperature, and plankton. Two years ago, this scientific group caught a red ctenophore in the ocean: scientists from the biology faculty of Moscow State University could not catch it for 10 years. And the students caught it the first time.




The same ctenophore.

They have a serious scientific program for the study and collection of materials. Typically, the samples are then processed at Moscow State University. In the last expedition, the scientific team was led by the Moscow Teacher of the Year Ivan Smirnov. How intensively skiers prepare according to the sports program, so intensively “science” is prepared according to the research program.





The ski hike to the pole from Barneo according to the classification of sports tourism has the 2nd category of difficulty (there are six in total: from the 1st - the simplest, to the 6th - the most difficult). By itself, a 100-kilometer trek fits even into the “unit” of sports ski trips, but “the difficult conditions of the Arctic trip allow you to upgrade to the 2nd category”. That is, there is nothing supernatural in the campaign for teenagers, nor are there any supercharges. Everything is complicated only by the weather and special conditions with communication, timing and abandonment.

In Shparo camps, you can go through basic programs (they are on Tutu Adventures here ), just by sending a child. More complex ones are available only to those who have already completed the first training course. A few years ago, a group of one of the summer "entertaining" trips sent a report on their rafting to the Russian Federation of Sports Tourism and became champions of the Russian Federation in sports trips, so this is far from a "beach-forest" vacation.

What are they doing at the pole

Scientists and tourists fly to Barneo. Tourists can go skiing, or jump to the pole with a parachute, or just fly to the pole and take a selfie on top of the planet. The northernmost marathons in the world run on Barneo (the British make 42 laps a kilometer around the tents), they are engaged in diving and celebrate the most exotic weddings. It is a tourism center in the Arctic.



At the very pole, the Japanese world champion was spinning her figure skating program. Here came the Prince of Monaco Albert II and the British Prince Harry. Next year they plan to organize a hockey match with the participation of President Putin.

The youth expedition of Matvey Shparo puts the flags of Russia and Moscow at the North Pole, the guys raise the flags of their schools and tourist clubs. Then the polar tradition, dating back to the time of the expedition of Ivan Papanin in 1937, is repeated: then the flight mechanic of one of the aircraft poured engine oil under the “earth axis” and thereby lubricated it. Now every youth expedition is adding oil to make the Earth rotate better.

Playing football. Also a Soviet tradition.

They make a round-the-world trip in a minute - a usual round dance around the earth's axis.

Pancakes are baked - this is a new tradition, and it requires only about a kilogram of extra cargo.

Lay the capsule with a note for posterity. Suddenly, someday she will sail with ice to Greenland or Canada.

They take pictures and wait for the helicopter. Next, the Mi-8 takes the group to Barneo.

From there, by plane - home.


These are not children for the campaign, they are older, they are in the foreground sleeping leaders of the expedition Matvey Shparo (left) and Boris Smolin (right).

Communication

Parents sometimes ask which operator catches there. No. Communication - only satellite phones. Every day, the group contacts Moscow and reports on the status, coordinates, well-being of the participants and details of the expedition. At this moment, the team in Moscow updates the informer on the site with the group’s route, otherwise the parents will call immediately.


The scientific group in Barneo uses radio communications.

At the very pole, children are given a call to their parents, to send them greetings from the top of the world. One minute per person.

The most stable connection is Iridium, the satellites of this group hang above the pole, the rest cover more southern areas.

Phones are physically located in two different people in different places in the group. Batteries - in two more.

From the unexpected: at the start of one expedition in a helicopter they forgot a sleeping bag. And found it only in the evening. 16-year-old Sasha thought that they would call her a helicopter for evacuation, but the leaders found a way out. Matvey Shparo and Boris Smolin had old proven sleeping bags from a super-extreme expedition to the North Pole on a polar night, which took place in the winter of 2008. Sleeping bags consisted of two parts. The leaders divided them and gave them away confusedly in one layer, they themselves slept in slightly colder conditions, but then the weather was relatively mild.



Three to four weeks after the discovery, Barneo sailed far south from the pole, the ice became thinner and could no longer take heavy planes. We need to rent a camp and leave: the weather will not allow us to further maintain the runway. Campaigns are planned so that you don’t be late for the pole, and keep up with the plane until the ice airfield closes: there is a margin of time. The base collapses and people leave the Arctic. Until next spring.

Other Tutu posts Adventures: husky sled dogs , unusual tourism , about yachts , about vaccinations , about going on tours , about travel health insurance , about our adventure platform . We also have tours to the North Pole . And again - a link to the camp of Matvey Shparo. And here is our adventure search platform .