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An overview. Quality of image is bad, it's scanned.
No
digital in
those days.
My best friend and I, at HFT and ready for departure towards Spitzbergen.
The
Ice Flow in
the Polar Basin, the reason for not succeeding
1st tour
2nd
tour
The expedition members
The book
Its Back Cover
Press Conference
in Tromsø
Annie Zwahlen (CA)
Annie Tremblay (CA)
Florence Marshall (CA)
Mary Williams (CA)
Huguette Vivin (F)
Madeleine Griselin
teamleader
Enroute just after being deployed
at Phipps Island
Difficult going
Crevasses
A last sighting of the team before returning to Ny
Ålesund
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Svalbard
- Spitzbergen
For those not initiated; Spitzbergen or Svalbard, as its
correct name is, lies pretty far to the north, right up
between
76ºN & 81ºN
and 9ºE & 35ºE
A vast area, managed and governed by Norway, according to an
international treaty. It's in the Arctic of course, much of the
islands are covered in eternal ice although coastal regions
and especially areas to the west is reasonably free of ice
during the arctic summer. It lies as far north as the
northernmost regions of both Canada, Alaska and Greenland. A
fascinating land, full of mystiqué, beauty, wild sceneries,
weather and ( not so many ), people. Yes, there are actually people living there, in
fact some are borne there and lived there all their lives. I
am extremely happy having been allowed to explore these
islands.
Room 610, SAS Royal Hotel, Tromsø
It
all started in 1983 and therefore the story will
cover a somewhat more extensive period than those six months
we physically spent on Svalbard, although I will try not to use to much time
on that, some may find it boring. I seem to recall we were
five guys in the room, which was room 610 at the SAS Royal
Hotel in Tromsoe, Norway. We had various backgrounds you might say.
There was one more pilot like myself, one bankmanager, one
politician cum commercial development director and one more politician.
At the time of this meeting, a debate was going on in the
media, concerning how and if Norway should extend their oil
exploration efforts into the arctic region, or north of the
62nd Parallel. And if it was decided, how could a reasonable
level of safety concerning spillage of oil be attained. Should
traditional methods be used, or should new methods be
developed. The Arctic is a sensitive environment and all
precautions must be taken.
Friends in England
To cut a long story short, we, the group in room 610, came up
with a novel idea. Since I had 5 years experience from aerial
application ( spraying from aeroplanes ), I knew the
technology. As it happened I also knew the company in England
that had gained a contract with the british pollution
authority for being on guard with several Islanders and a
couple of DC-3's, ready to apply dispersant on oil slicks at
sea whenever a disaster occurred. So therefore, a company
was established, registered and financed, its objective being to offer and
provide aerial application of dispersant coverage, for the entire Norwegian coast.
Cooperating
with Widerøe
To adhere to my
promise above ( about not being to long winded ), the new company struck a cooperative deal with
Wideroe's Flyveselskap AS, and started developing an application
system for the Twin Otter. For this we hired a Twin Otter from
Wideroe ( LN-BNS), and teamed up with their engineers to produce
all required drawings and structural calculations required in
order to see if the system would work, and to provide a basis
for gaining approval both from the authorities and the
manufacturer, De Havilland of Canada Ltd.
This period was extremely interesting. I had already made some sketches of how I wanted the system to
look perform, and with the
engineers undisputed knowledge of their craft, and their
intimate knowledge of the Twin Otter, the development phase went
both quickly and smoothly.
The story concerning the Oil Dispersant services and all that
went with it, will be narrated separately, and includes both
the politics and operational challenges NFK AS went through
over the next two years.
Finding work for our aircraft
But since time dragged on concerning us obtaining a similar
contract in Norway to the one our friends in the UK had obtained, we
decided that we hade to find other employment for our
aircraft. So, one was leased to Widerøe and was put to good
use flying passengers on the Short Field Network along the
coast, one was leased to TAP in Portugal, and did sterling
service on the island of Madeira.
The third aircraft was rigged for a combination of passenger
service and scientific, aerial survey service, and deployed to
Svalbard. Through active marketing, use of contacts and great help from friends in
DK Aviation, we secured
two contracts for the Twin Otter on Svalbard.
Mapping the surface under claciers
Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), is a department under the
University of Cambridge, England. Its primary role is to
provide a research environment for anything polar, it being
Arctic or Antarctic. In addition it serves as a
comprehensive museum for the
Antarctic role Britain has played over the years. In our case
British Petroleum had decided to support field work program
at Svalbard, to be carried out by their scientist. One part
of the program included setting up base on top of the Ice
Cap at Nordaustlandet, the extreme north-east of Svalbard,
almost all bein covered in ice. Briefly told our job was
simple; bring the team out to a predetermined position on
the ice, land and unload people and gear and return to LYR
to collect another load. After having done several trips to
set up camp, our job consisted of keepng cintact with them
to or three times per day via radio and to bring them
whatever they decided they needed during the next couple og
months.Normally we visited the camp once every two or three
day.
Flying up there was normally easy and straightforward it
took us almost an hour, with the ski undercarrigae on. .
Once we got close to the location on the Omega, the
challenge became somewhat more pronounced. To find by visual
sighting, a group of small albeit red, fiberglas igloos on a
vast icecap, is not easy. If The weather was good it was
usually ok, especially since we could communicate with the
base via radio, and have them spot us from a distance and
direct us towards them until we could spot them visually.
Landing there was easy, since the entire dome is fairly
flat.
I do remember on support-flight that did require some
intuitive flying though, but which also went well in the
end. When arriving over the camp by Omega, we discovered
that a thin layer of fog had developed over the icecap,
making it impossible to see anything below ca. 100 feet. We
decided to try to home us in on the position of the camp by
aid of the Omega and of radiocommunication with the camp.
But, after about half an hour of circling and going as low
as we dared with the aid of the radio altimeter, it became
evident that we would not be able to locate the camp and
even less make a sucessfull landing. Only one option
remained.
It did seem like thelow fog was mainly concentrated on the
ice dome, looking towards the east, it did seem to be
clearer. We decided to head eastwards towards Sovjet
territory, selcting a track that deninately was over the
open sea and start a slow descent. At an altitude of about
300 feet we broke out in the clear and turned 180 degrees
towards Ispynten on the Nordaustlandet. We selcted to fly at
about 50 feet, put the radar on a slightly up tilt and
immediately the ice edge appeared clearly about 30 nm ahead.
Soon we could see the icefall near Ispynten rising above us,
we estimated it to be about 300 feet, being surprisingly
even and straight. As we approached the front face, I lifted
the aircraft up along the veru edge of the ice, and a few
seconds later we spotted a man on a skidoo about 300 meters
inn from the fall. I tight circle was made over his head and
then we landed right next to the man. We could already see
that he was part of the team we were supporting. Kaare, our
flight engneer and survival expert, jumped quickly out of
the aircraft rear, starboard side door, with the task of
recruiting the man to drive in front of us to the camp, not
being aware of the fact that it was 30 km from this position
to the camp. We set off, and soon the skidoo was doing
nearly the same lift-off speed as the Twin Otter, which ment
that we were undulating across the ice being partly airborne,
partly iceborne.
.
Supporting 9 French and Canadian female scientists
One was for supporting a french, combined civil and military
expedition in which 9 french and french-canadian female
scientist and glaciologists would attempt to ski from the
northern tip of Svalbard to the North Pole. We would get them
started, support them enroute and lift them from the Pole when
the mission was complete. That was the plan anyway. The girls were partly
supported by the french army, who supposedly wanted to know more about how female
can endure arctic conditions. All the girls were trained athletes and
accomplished scientists
in their own fields, and most of them had been in the high arctic before
and well trained on skis. They
arrived in Tromsø (TOS), in a french army Transall C-160, with all their
equipoment,. The Transall wasn't allowed to fly up to Svalbard, as it is military
aircraft. Different rules apply at Svalbard, among others it
is a demilitarized zone.
After having spent one night in Tromsø, with friends of the girls from Tromsø
University, the local, french consul and the french ambassodor from the embassy
in Oslo,
preparations were made for departing to Svalbard.
Previous attempts to reach The Northpole from The
Sjuøyane on Svalbard
It is worth stopping a moment to reflect over the
expeditions choice of starting point and to their objective
in general. Initially in the proceedings we contacted people
with experience both in commercial operations on Svalbard,
as well as fishermen and hunters familiar with sailing
around and working on land there. One of them was the crew
on the research vessel M/S Lamce, she used to carry out
extensiv sailings in the area of North Svalbard in order to
do echo sounding of the waters for the purpose of improving
the maps of the area. We also visited the archives of
Fjellanger Wideroe, having probably the most extensive range
of aerial photos and photogrammatic material for this part
of the world.
Through these and a number of other sources, we were able to
ascertian that suitable landing areas could be found on
Sjuoyane, but even more surprising was that also the
historical records found and the ice flow measurements
gathered from a number of sources both abroad and at home,
clearly confirmed that the ice conditions in the Polar Basin
in the area streching from the Sjuoyane and up towards the
North Pole, with almost certainty would not be navigable on
skis, not because of the ice as such but because the way the
ice in the basin gyrated and subsequently emptying itself
into the Danmark Strait and the Atlantic Ocean
(see map).
People had tried this before. A couple of histoical records
are worth noting, Phipps for one, which in 1773 led a
two-ship British expedition the the North of Svalbard in
order to attempt to ascartain of it was possible to reach
the pole from this position.The expedition failed and
returned to England. Then again in 1823, under the
leadership of Cpt. Perry, an attempt was made, but to no
avail. This time the intentions were to traverse the ice in
light boats pulled by raindeer. The full story on these two
attempts can be read on
Norsk Polarinstitutts: Phipp's og Parrys
ekspedisjoner .
Soon the festivities in Tromsø was over and
preparations made for the first flight up to Longyearbyen
(LYR), a distance of ca. 530 nm @ 160 = 3:20 hrs,
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