Eric Larsen had been waiting for ten days when his phone rang with bad news from Barneo Ice Camp.
The veteran explorer and guide was set to lead the only American expedition to the North Pole in 2024. He and five clients had packed their gear, obtained travel visas, and traveled to Krasnoyarsk, a hub on Russia’s Trans-Siberian railway, and the official jumping-off city for the 2024 polar season. They had waited for the go-ahead to fly to Barneo, a temporary collection of huts and sleds that drifts on sheet ice 68 or so miles below the planet’s northernmost point.
And then the call came in. The fragile 4,000-foot runway that Barneo’s workers built across the ice had cracked, and the fissure was big enough to jeopardize a plane landing. There was no other area big enough to build another runway. Polar season was off.
“I was disappointed but I wasn’t that surprised,” Larsen told Outside from his home in Crested Butte, Colorado. “I’ve spent years of my life on polar ice and I know how hard it is to find a section that long and stable. I know how delicate the operation is and how slim the margins are up there, and I always knew it was a possibility.”
Indeed, even in good years the Barneo Ice Camp is a fraught and fragile operation. Twenty or so workers parachute onto the pack ice equipped with tools and small bulldozers, and they then work round the clock for five days to cut a runway into the frozen ice. Transport planes land and workers unload tents, huts, food, generators, and other gear onto the ice. Then, the crew of Russians build living quarters, a mess hall, and other accoutrements for the coming guests—the 250 or so visitors that cycle in and out of Barneo include scientists, adventurers, and tourists. Some visitors come to run the North Pole Marathon, others arrive to drink champagne and party, while still others complete the week-long out-and-back ski trip to the North Pole.
Workers unload a plane at Barneo Ice Camp. (Photo: Eric Larsen)
One of the bulldozers that workers use to create Barneo Ice Camp.
Barneo expedition drift ice camp in the Arctic.
The camp is owned by Swiss billionaire Frederick Paulsen but manned by Russians. The whole camp drifts on pack ice and is pushed several miles each week by currents. The season’s duration is, at best, a month long. It begins in late March when the sun finally peeks above the polar horizon after a long winter, and ends a few weeks later when the warming rays melt the ice to slush. A freak storm or rapid warming can upend the entire operation, as was the case in 2018 when the runway ice cracked.
“The fact that it operates even once is a minor miracle,” Larsen said. “Everything has to line up perfectly to get things moving.”
Things haven’t lined up for much of the decade. Political tension between Russia and Ukraine forced Barneo’s closure in 2019, and the camp was shuttered in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to a ban on Russian planes in European airspace, which torpedoed the camp in 2022. Last year was supposed to be Barneo’s grand return, but on the eve of the season Norway prohibited flights there from Svalbard, the jumping-off city.
Larsen and others were hopeful that 2024 would be a successful year.
The constant cancelation has created enormous hurdles for guides like Larsen, who has reached the pole six times in his career. It’s also generated headaches for veteran adventurers hoping to complete the so-called Explorer’s Grand Slam: ascending the highest mountains on all seven continents and then reaching both poles. Four of Larsen’s five clients this year were hoping to complete the challenge, he said. He felt a professional obligation to help them reach their goals, since they had been waiting for several years to get there.
“It’s an expedition that doesn’t exist anywhere else on the planet—it’s kind of like the Wild West,” he said. “Anything can happen. The ice is always different.”
A helicopter leaves Larsen and his crew off for their trek to the pole. (Photo: Eric Larsen)
Eric Larsen guiding a polar expedition in 2018. (Photo: Eric Larsen)
And Larsen says reaching the pole this year would represent a sizable personal accomplishment. He is one of the only people alive to have ever touched the South Pole, North Pole, and summit of Mount Everest in the same year. But in 2021 he was diagnosed with stage 4 rectal cancer, and over the course of a year he underwent six rounds of chemotherapy, did radiation, and lost a sizable section of his large intestine. In 2022 he emerged from the treatment cancer-free. Last February Larsen told the story of his diagnosis, treatment, and recovery on The Daily Rally podcast. Getting back to the pole, in a way, would constitute another chapter of his healing.
“After being sick, I felt like going back up there was a way to prove to myself that I didn’t die and am still capable of doing the things I love,” he said. “It really is a great trip—I cannot think of too many places where you’re traveling over constantly-shifting surfaces every day.”
Larsen knows that the clock is ticking on him ever reaching the North Pole again. He’s 52 now, and has survived a brush with death since the last time he was there. And nobody knows for sure how much longer Barneo Camp will exist. Temperatures in the Arctic Sea are rising faster than almost anywhere on earth, and research by NASA says that the polar ice sheet is shrinking by 12.2 percent each decade. Soon, polar expeditions may be part of history.
Despite the North Pole’s unknown future, Larsen is going to keep trying. The ticking clock, he said, is one of the reasons to continue.
“Imagine if Mount Everest got bulldozed one day,” Larsen said. “That’s why people want to experience it.”
The post Eric Larsen Missed Out on the North Pole Again. He Isn’t Giving Up. appeared first on Outside Online.
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