Will the Barneo Ice Camp finally open this year? It looks like it will, though the website is in Chinese, and getting there will require traveling through Russia. Whether or not we get a proper North Pole season for the first time since 2018, there will be a handful of interesting Arctic expeditions this year in Canada and Greenland.
Ellesmere Island
Polar veterans Borge Ousland and Vincent Colliard will head to Ellesmere Island for the next stage of their Ice Legacy project. They are aiming to ski across the 20 largest icefields on Earth. Last October, they crossed the Juneau Icefield in Alaska, their ninth of the 20.
Ousland and Colliard’s approximate route.
On Ellesmere, they’ll leave from Ward Hunt on the northern tip and ski south, almost the entire length of the island, to the small community of Grise Fiord. They plan to cover 1,000km over six weeks and use “ski sails,” which presumably means kites, for sections of the route.
They are due to begin in April.
Borge Ousland, left, and Vincent Colliard during a previous expedition. Photo: Borge Ousland
Baffin Island
A British team consisting of Tom Harding, Ben James, Leanne Dyke, and James Hoyes is planning a mixed-discipline trip on Baffin Island. In early April, the team will fly to Pangnirtung before a 60km snowmobile journey to their start point.
Pangnirtung, above, is the gateway to Auyuittuq National Park. Photo: Jerry Kobalenko
“From the Kingnait Fiord, the team will first ski towards the Rundle Glacier before traversing south to the Gateways Glaciers. The distance from our drop-off point back to Pangnirtung is approximately 110km, but we expect to cover more than this exploring the area,” they explain on their website.
The team will drag pulks on their ski traverse while also attempting to climb some of the region’s peaks.
A map of the British team’s route, including their main climbing objectives (marked obj. #1 and obj. #2 in the center) and several other peaks (red triangles) that they believe may be unclimbed. Photo: Ben James
Northwest Passage
Jose Trejo, Sechu Lopez, and Francisco Mira are planning a 760km ski and pulk expedition from Resolute to Gjoa Haven in the Canadian Arctic. They plan to pull 120kg sleds and are budgeting around 40 days for the journey.
“The three of us are normal people who simply do unusual things. We are not young…but we belong to the select group of old people who are well,” Lopez wrote of their team.
The Spanish trio will leave Madrid for Canada on March 22.
Francisco Mira, Sechu Lopez, and Jose Trejo.
Meanwhile, as previously covered, Anders Brenna of Oslo will set out in mid-March to manhaul 1,100km solo, from Gjoa Haven to Glenelg Bay on northern Victoria Island.
Ungava
In the Nunavik region of northern Quebec, Dave Greene and his partner are planning a 25-day, 543km ski expedition across the Ungava Peninsula from west to east. Starting in Hudson Bay, they will end in Ungava Bay, Nunavik.
The expedition is scheduled for March.
Kathleen Goulet, Chantal Secours, Julie Gauthier, and Roxanne Chenel are already into their 650km trek. Photo: Azimut Ungava
Also in Ungava, four women are already underway skiing 650km from Schefferville to Kangiqsualujjuaq. Kathleen Goulet, Chantal Secours, Julie Gauthier, and Roxanne Chenel are following a well-known wilderness canoe route down the Rivière de Pas and the George River to an Inuit town on Ungava Bay. They set out at the end of January when the rivers are solidly frozen.
The frozen George River in northern Quebec. Photo: Jerry Kobalenko
Greenland
A team of five, including Finn Jussi Uusitalo, plans to kite-ski from Kangerlussuaq to Qaanaaq, the last sizeable town in North West Greenland. Their trip should take about a month and cover between 1,600 and 2,000km.
Qaanaaq in early fall. Photo: Jerry Kobalenko
Another team plans to go south to northwest. Adeline Gervais and an unnamed expedition partner plan to leave the southern coast with 50 days of food (though they hope the expedition will take around 40 days) and travel over 2,200km. They will snowkite, with Gervais using a snowboard-splitboard and her partner using a more traditional kite-ski setup.
The pair plans to set off in mid-April.
