A Plymouth-born explorer has been forced to abandon his bid to become the fastest man to walk solo and unsupported to the North Pole.From Saunders' web site:
Ben Saunders, 30, is to be rescued after his equipment failed in 'appalling' ice conditions.
The main bolts which attach the binding of his boots to his skis sheared off and the damage was beyond repair.
The ice conditions I have encountered have been the worst I have ever seen, and worse than I could have imagined. I am witnessing at first hand the disintegration of the last of the Arctic’s multi-year pack ice. If climate change in the high Arctic continues at its current rate, I may be one of the last to be able to attempt this journey on foot.So the Arctic ice was flat and stable until human carbon dioxide emissions ruined it?
Maybe not.
Check out the New York Times article here, where Commander Peary talks about Arctic conditions in 1909.
Excerpts from Peary himself:
The difficulties and hardships of a journey to the North Pole are too complex to be summed up in a paragraph. But, briefly stated, the worst of them are: the ragged and mountainous ice over which the traveler must journey with his heavily loaded sledges...Another excerpt from the 1909 article:
...the open leads already described, which he must cross and recross, somehow...
Five flags were planted at the the top of the earth, and a bottle containing records was deposited between the ice blocks of a pressure ridge.
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