Oden after passing through a difficult stretch of sea ice. Photo: Martin Jakobsson

After leaving Thule Air Base we had a smooth ride up to Smith Sound in Nares Strait where sea ice clogged the entire passage northward. This happened somewhere around 78°30’N. Every winter Nares Strait fills up with sea ice that forms a quite solid “ice-bridge” between Ellesmere Island in the west and Greenland in the east. The strait usually clears from sea ice sometime in July, but the break-up is late this year. It has not even cleared in the moment of writing, August 2. This means that we have to break through the sea ice that is blocking us from reaching the working area for the expedition, the Petermann Fjord and adjacent areas all the way across to Ellesmere Island on the Canadian side.

The sea ice from above. This photo is taken north of the really difficult passage where there were good passages between larger flows. Photo: Martin Jakobsson

Even if Oden is one of the most capable icebreakers in the world, it proved very difficult to break through the bottle neck where sea ice had piled up. This was due to that the ice has been pushed together so that thick ridges formed between solid flows. Adding fog on top, the situation did first not look good at all. Our captain Mattias decided to stop for a while and wait for the fog to clear, because breaking blindly into walls of sea ice ridges did not make us progress much at all. During the morning, the fog cleared so we could fly with the helicopters and make some sea-ice reconnaissance. We also received SAR (Satellite Radar Aperture) and Landsat images from Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota. These images were extremely helpful as they give a fresh broad overview of the ice situation. From these images we planned the helicopter flights. After about five helicopter flights to find good paths for Oden we were through the bottle neck. We shall now see how the sea ice situation evolves during our transit up to the Petermann Glacier where the first thing on the list to do is to helicopter all teams that will work on land. More about these later.

Polar bear close to the Oden. Photo: Martin Jakobsson