With the seven-foot sled half inside the tent, Ousland took a four-inch formwork nail, chosen for its double-head that makes for a surer grip with a Leatherman, and heated it over a stove flame. Journalists rushed onto the ice as the adventurers emerged from the polar night with cold-scarred faces and ice beards. A passing Norwegian icebreaker happened to be in the sea north of Svalbard and would briefly be in position to serve as a refueling platform for a helicopter to reach them. The last degree of latitude, from 89 to 90 degrees north, or 69 miles, took the men 11 days. After a “harrowing night” and five hours of dexterous work with discolored, swollen fingers, Ousland produced a functioning sled. The Polar Star suffered ship-wide power outages twice over the next 11 days. Meanwhile, Pangaea’s captain, Bernard Stamm, was reporting unusually hazardous ice conditions in the seas north of Norway. Given the danger of potentially heading onto the ice to meet Ousland and Horn alone, Rotmo recruited another Norwegian polar heavyweight to accompany him, Aleksander Gamme, who’d once skied 1,400 miles alone across Antarctica. They knew Ousland and Horn were exhausted. Two years later, he even married his wife at the North Pole. With the explorers running low on food, members of their team back in Norway dispatched Lance, a steel-hulled vessel that was able to pick up Ousland and Horn farther north than Pangaea could travel. On Christmas Eve, a young boy embarks on a magical adventure to the North Pole on the Polar Express, while learning about friendship, bravery, and the spirit of Christmas. After nearly two years of preparation and three decades wringing some of the final great geographical feats from this planet, the veteran explorers were now headed out for a final Old-World expedition. Thirty years ago, these fissures, called “leads,” were small and sporadic enough simply to ski around them. “I know what I’ve done, and I know what I’ve accomplished. Slush dragged him down like quicksand. Ousland’s biggest history-making trips had been decades earlier. Being in a hurry is easier said than done when you’re towing hundreds of pounds of food, stoves, 56 liters of fuel, spare skis, a tent, sleeping bags rated to minus-40, and a single nail, a seemingly odd choice that would prove crucial later in the trip. The South Polar Times was produced by the men of Robert Scott's two journeys to Antarctica: the Discovery expedition of 1901–04, and the Terra Nova expedition of 1910–13. Although Wilson was the principal illustrator, officers and crew often contributed in creating illustrations to be published alongside poems and other written work. As they hooked up to their sleds the next morning, a couple hours later than usual, they said, as they would every day in those subzero mornings, “We’re going home.”. But Horn’s submerged skis were catching on ice, trapping him in the water. To keep their sleeping bags from absorbing perspiration, which could accrue into pounds of ice, they lined them with custom-made plastic sacks that Horn likens to body bags and Ousland describes as “a big condom.”, Every morning, Horn spent 30 minutes scraping ice off the tent walls from the night’s respiration, a frigid, tedious task that he came to see as another step on his extreme quest for enlightenment. Polar sports watches do much more than keep time -- a heart rate monitor keeps track of your pulse while you exercise, while a stopwatch function monitors your workout. If that fails, Ousland incorporated a holster for his .44 Magnum on the waist belt of his sled harness (along with knife sheaths and personal flotation devices he sewed into the harness’s shoulder straps). Remember to check that your computer clock is set on the correct time zone. They needed to get creative. Horn thrives on the edge. Finally, it was time for Santa to announce who would have the honor to organize the Great North Pole Christmas Party! In the calm after the storm, Ousland and Horn knew their only hope of reaching the boat was to cover the biggest distances of their trip. We provide cutting edge investigative reports into what may or may not truly or not truly be the most pressing issues of our time. “It’s very difficult to get up in places like that, and we were so weak,” Ousland says. They grew quiet, feeling many things at once. T. OCLC WorldCat, 2018, SPT Details, WorldCat, viewed 1 October 2018, http://www.worldcat.org/title/south-polar-times/oclc/54495003. Then they don’t want anything.”, They skied for hours into the early morning, “four ice trolls on the ice,” as Gamme described them. He couldn’t see it. Ultimately, this foreword frames the magazine as a means by which the men could lighten the winter's monotony." During his adventure he learns about friendship, bravery, and the spirit of Christmas. They watched in silence as it flew above the pole, turned back the way it had come, and disappeared into the night. The men did not appreciate the plane’s presence. After skiing all day, the men set up camp for the night, a lengthy process that involved setting up trip wires and flares to scare away polar bears. Here, Ousland and Horn stepped onto the ice’s surface and their adventure began. They did not celebrate. “He has things no one else thinks of in his repair kits,” Ebbeson says. With Tom Hanks, Chris Coppola, Michael Jeter, Leslie Zemeckis. Ousland’s son was having trouble sleeping and mused to reporters that at 57 his father was “not as young as he was before.” Ousland’s mother, who had never before felt the need to call Ebbesen and check on her son during expeditions, rang over and over. What must they do to stay alive? Furthermore, some copies are listed as fragile material and therefore cannot be used by the public. This way, only one person was in the water at a time. In his overwhelming exhaustion, he began falling asleep and stumbling while skiing the next day. “I can deal with all types of things—wind, cold—but going through the ice and into the water, that is the most dangerous thing that can happen in the polar ocean,” Ousland says. If he fell in, it would be over for both of them. They should have been making good time, but each day the winds continued to blow the ice backwards like a treadmill under their skis. As long as they reached 84 degrees, they would be in range of helicopters from Svalbard. The centenary edition which holds the first three volumes was originally reprinted in London by Smith, Elder & Co. Broken ice created difficult obstacles for the sleds. They were being followed. Scott states that scientists contributions should be about their special subjects and scientific events of general interest. They needed to cross a degree of latitude every six days to reach the ice edge to meet Pangaea before they ran out of food and fuel. According to the National Weather Service, a polar vortex is a large low-pressure area with cold air surrounding both poles. Suddenly those currents, used by explorers since the 1800s, weren’t so predictable. All rights reserved. Like most things this year, the event to benefit the Special Olympics Maryland is going virtual. Although specific roles were assigned to particular members of Scott's Antarctic expeditions, it is noted in the preface to the first edition that a central condition of the production relied on the notion that it was to be open to all and that "the men as well as the officers were to be invited to contribute to its pages. “We become like the world we evolve in. Introduce children in pre-k, preschool, and kindergarten age child to telling time on a clock with these super cute, Polar Express Printables. Plus, these time worksheets are so easy to prepare they are practically print and go! Press Release (ePRNews.com) - JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. Horn admits, “It felt like we were going the wrong direction.”. They had 49 days of food in their sleds when they set out on the morning of October 18. The men charged forward … straight into another storm. The logistics stop comes 30 days into its months-long deployment to the region to protect the United States interests in the Bering and Chukchi Seas, including along the Maritime Boundary Line between the United States and Russia. Less than halfway through the trip, the men entered the Arctic winter and trekked through perpetual darkness, with only their headlamps and the moon offering any light. They’d been vulnerable ever since. The South Polar Times was a magazine created by the crew of the two Antarctic voyages led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott in the early 20th century: the Discovery Expedition (1901–04), and the Terra Nova Expedition (1910–13). The mercury fell to 40 below zero Fahrenheit. And there was the matter of age, with both men now on the far side of 50. Exploring the ice’s farthest reaches, teeming with polar bears and peril, has provided explorers one of the Earth’s ultimate challenges for over a century. The renewed interest in science is reflected by editor Bernacci's statement that "Antarctic exploration is of capital importance to science". They followed Jupiter arcing across the southern sky, adjusting their bearing as the Earth spun beneath them. They’d steadily increased their skiing to 10 grueling hours per day. The time display view on Polar Loop 2 comes from your computer’s clock automatically. The South Polar Times offers an insight into the daily conditions, tasks and amusements of the expedition that is more evocative than any history book or biography. They’d been skiing for 36 days and weren’t yet halfway, but they’d reached a psychological tipping point. [5], Scott explained in his preface of the first edition in 1902 that the men "knew that daylight would shortly disappear for four whole months", and consequently, the thoughts of expedition members turned to the long dark period ahead. Buy Movies. You can also change the time format (12h or 24h) in the Polar Flow web service. 2020 National Geographic Partners, LLC. Spreading their skis wide to disperse their weight on ice that bowed beneath them, they moved as quickly as their elephantine sleds allowed. The style of the magazine is colloquial and recounts the extreme conditions suffered in Antarctica. Though a week behind schedule, they were confident. That was their window to cross the Arctic Ocean. A glowing band appeared, then another, and the men staggered to a stop and turned off their lights. They gorged on ox steak with potatoes and gravy, creamy spinach soup, and chocolate, so much chocolate. Worse, the frequent crossings slowed their pace to a mere three to five miles per day, less than the half the 11-miles-per-day pace they were counting on. When they crossed for the third and final time, there was no celebrating. The polar vortex is a spiralling low pressure system way up in the stratosphere above the North Pole. 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