The first ever winter trek to the North Pole reached its goal today despite setbacks from weather, equipment failures, and polar bears.
"It's great to finally be standing on the North Pole," South African explorer Mike Horn wrote on his expedition Web site. "This mystical place is all that it is made out to be. It's incredible out here!!"
Horn and Norwegian explorer Børge Ousland conceived the trip because they wanted to see sunrise from the North Pole. And to get there, they wanted to trek overland—or more specifically, over ice.
Although dawn has illuminated the region with pastel light for at least a couple of weeks, official Arctic sunrise happens only once a year: on the vernal equinox, when the sun crosses the equator.
That means that Ousland and Horn had to do something nobody else had ever attempted: ski, drag sleds, and occasionally swim through the heart of the Arctic winter.
Atrocious weather held them back, but they still managed to reach their goal this afternoon 60 days and 5 hours after setting off.
"This is a fantastic thing—a first," said photographer Kjell Ove Storvik.
Storvik, a personal friend of Ousland's, watched the pair's departure on January 22 and then tracked their progress via satellite-phone conversations.
Thinking Like Polar Bears
Winter travel in the far north poses a host of problems not encountered by prior expeditions.
To the uninitiated, the worst of these might seem to be the cold. And that has indeed been an enemy, dropping the mercury as far as -40°F (-40°C) and frostbiting Horn's fingertips.
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