The runway is solid and the Antonov-74 lands
The extended runway is solid and the Antonov-74 was able to start making up for lost time.
Some skiers already finished their programs, with guides Bengt Rotmo (Borge Ousland Polar Exploration) and Dixie Dansercoer (Icetrek Expeditions).
New guides on the ice are Norwegian Inge Solheim and American Keith Heger, guiding for Polar Explorers. The British Trio, Mark Langridge, Paul Vicary and Mark Wood, reported polar bear and fox tracks. Latest is that they covered 10 nautical miles and moved away from open water. They had their share of rubble and fractured ice.
Divers led by Ivan Kronberg worked out their program at the North Pole reported Barneo. All the marathon runners got on the ice and ran their marathon. British David Hempleman-Adams reportedly launched a balloon flight. Barneo reported on April 17 that he had covered 76 km from the Pole 3 hours.
April 18 @ Barneo:
Temperature -23ºC, wind 3-5 m/s.
Barneo is a drifting ice base in the Arctic, which is annually established under the aegis of the Russian Geographical Society expedition center “Polyus” Russian Association of Polar Explorers.
It is a temporary Ice Camp, built by the Russians every North Pole ski season. The camp is built on a suitable ice floe inside 89 degrees North. Primarily the ice floe should be suitable to build a runway of at least 1200m long for an Antonov-74 to land from Longyearbyen, Svalbard. They, therefore, need a floe of at least 2km long and at east 40 meters away from the nearest open water (lead).
This year, when the ice floe was found on March 25, an Ilyushin-76 flew from Russia, dropped two tractors by parachute, as well as staff and other equipment to start clearing the runway. The tent camp that is built every year, serves as a base camp for skiers, tourists, runners and scientists.
The town of Longyearbyen is situated on the biggest Island of the Svalbard archipelago, Spitsbergen, inside the Arctic Circle, and under Norwegian rule. Svalbard had a total of 2,654 residents on January 1, 2016.
The Geographic North Pole is at 90 degrees North.
A degree of latitude is 110 km / 70 miles / 60 nautical miles.
Follow updates in the Daily Dispatch Streams of skiers, Barneo and more on Explorersweb and pythom.com (teams with RSS blog feeds).
Check Polar Jargon as explained on ThePoles.com
Barneo Ice Camp:
https://rgocenter.ru/blog/ RGO = Russian Geographical Society
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