| Getting
Busy at
the North Pole
The
Straits Times
Posted May 1, 2003
 CAMP
BORNEO (In the Arctic Ocean) - The top of the world is a frigid
realm where milling ice floes form a white cap atop an ocean
more than 3 km deep.
Unlike
the South Pole, where 29 countries have set up bases for research
on snow-cloaked earth, up here all is fleeting.
The
Arctic is a shifting sea-ice carousel that guarantees any
visitor is granted only a short stay. If you camp at the pole
today, you will be 6 to 8 km away tomorrow.
But
the North Pole is rapidly becoming busy.
Humans,
ever the adaptive, inquisitive, risk-taking species, are crisscrossing,
probing and camping out in increasing numbers on the ice veneer,
particularly in the window from mid-March to early May, when
winter's cold has ebbed but summer's thaw has not yet turned
surfaces into knee-deep slush.
The
northward rush has been simplified by satellite phones and
global-positioning devices that allow trekkers and scientists
to know their position even where compasses spin uselessly,
the sun rises in March and sets in September, and the icescape
shifts moment to moment.
Since
1992, almost everyone who ventures to the pole first stops
at this seasonal, floating way station, run by entrepreneurs
from Russia and France for tourists and scientists.
It
has rows of tents with thermostat-controlled heat, two Russian
helicopters and a runway big enough to accommodate 20-tonne
planes coming from northern Canada, Siberia and Norway.
Any
notion that this is a comfortable place, however, is jettisoned
when one spots the slug-loaded shotguns set here and there,
lest a polar bear seeking seals stumbles upon a skier or oceanographer.
Of course there is the cold, which even now rarely rises above
-5 deg C.
About
200 visitors have been coming each season since the late 1990s,
said Ms Christian de Marliave from Paris who was a co- creator
of the camp 10 years ago.
Tourists
and adventure seekers spend US$9,000 (S$16,000) to US$15,000
to pop champagne corks and pose briefly on the ice or ski
for a week across the ragged frozen seascape.
Many
are drawn by the same force that pulled hundreds of explorers
to ice-locked deaths over the last three centuries.
Some
crave risks, crossing the shifting ice on skis and diving
beneath it with scuba gear. Other visitors come to 'collect'
the pole like a medal. But scientists remain a minority here.
The
Straits Times
-
Back to News Home -
|