Like most Arctic adventurers the Serious Arctic team mounted their expedition at the start of spring. The aim was to hit a narrow weather window (usually late March to early May), avoiding the almost constant darkness and impossibly cold conditions of mid-winter, but arriving before the sea ice began to break up too badly.

      Stepping off the plane was quite a shock. The team were ‘lucky’ to fly in on a relatively mild spring day, but with the temperature at –18°C (0.4°F) it was still like walking into a freezer. One young adventurer commented that the air froze inside her nose and it felt like she’d got concrete up it.

      They were immediately whisked out onto the frozen sea on snowmobiles for a week of acclimatisation and Arctic training. Until their return to civilisation, they would now constantly live, eat and sleep in a frozen world. Their training camp, a spartan, corrugated-iron Nissen hut erected on the sea ice in the middle of Frobisher Bay, was quite surreal. Like the main expedition tents, the temperature inside would rarely rise above zero. It meant almost everything taken for granted in normal life had to be rethought, a lesson quickly learnt by the adventurers. Having taken out bars of chocolate for a snack they nearly broke their teeth – the chocolate was frozen solid.

      The expedition had two environmental missions: to help gather data for a polar bear research project, and to take measurements of a glacier as part of research into global warming. Polar bears live and hunt where the sea ice meets the open ocean, which meant a marathon journey by husky sled down Frobisher Bay. Everything the expedition team needed for two weeks living rough had to be carried on just four sleds. To avoid treacherous areas where the sea ice was too thin, the team ducked inland over spectacular frozen lakes. The wind had whipped up reducing the temperature to around –30°C (–22°F), but as memories of warmth and running water faded, the young adventurers finally began to adapt and cope with the extreme conditions.

      This image was seen on billboards around the UK to promote Serious Arctic.

      Unfortunately, hostile environments have a habit of keeping you on your toes. An unexpected, ferocious storm ripped through the camp in the middle of the night with winds of up to 100 miles an hour. Tents that had survived the North and South Poles were torn to shreds, but the expedition’s emergency planning held up. The adventurers were quickly transferred to smaller dome tents that had survived the assault. Nobody was injured, though some of the team were seriously freaked out by the experience.

      At the end of a truly epic journey, covering 160km (100 miles) in five days, they headed back down into Frobisher Bay at the edge of the frozen ocean. The team were at last in polar bear territory, and were looking forward hugely to seeing the majestic creatures at last. But once again the unpredictable Arctic struck. For three days they were storm-bound in unseasonably bad weather as blizzards reduced visibility to almost zero. The leaders were forced to abandon the polar bear phase completely to keep the expedition on schedule, a salutary lesson in the day-to-day difficulties faced by animal researchers.

      The young adventurers take some rare time out.

      The fourth day spent camped on the sea ice saw perfect blue skies once more, and the adventurers were treated to an awesome journey by snowplane onto the Grinnell Glacier. Just a handful of researchers had ever visited the glacier – more people have walked on the Moon. If it had been cold at sea level, this was a whole new level of bone-chilling misery. They were almost 1,000m (3,000ft) up and with constant strong winds the temperature plummeted to –40°C (–40°F).

      Energy reserves were at a low after two weeks of living on the frozen land, making the survey work almost unbearably tough. News that another storm was on the way, delaying their departure off the glacier, was the last thing they wanted to hear. They could do nothing but sit it out in their tents, which is pretty routine for glaciologists who plan for extended periods waiting for a window in the weather. The young adventurers had a relatively short wait of just two days, but when the snowplane finally made it through to whisk them back to civilisation it was a sight they would never forget.

      The Twin Otter snowplane lands on its skis on the sea ice.

      EXPEDITION LOCATION

       The three-week Serious Arctic expedition took place on Baffin Island in the far north of Canada. The team flew in to Iqaluit, the capital of the territory of Nunavut. Newly created in 1999 as a largely self-governed home for the indigenous Inuit people, Nunavut is one of the least populated areas on Earth. Just 30,000 people live in an area the size of Western Europe.

      GLACIER FORMATION

      Glaciers are gigantic masses of ice, formed in areas of heavy snowfall. As the snow builds up, the weight pressing down turns layers of snow beneath into ice. Eventually, the mass of ice starts moving slowly down mountains or valleys under its own huge weight. So powerful are glaciers that they have helped to shape our landscape, carving out great valleys in mountain ranges. At lower altitude the ice begins to melt, and over a long period of time the glacier reaches a constant size, as the ice being formed at the top is balanced by the amount lost at the bottom.

      This makes glaciers perfect ‘barometers’ for climate change, as a shrinking or expanding glacier is a pretty sure sign the local climate is warming or cooling.

      THE SERIOUS ARCTIC GLACIER RESEARCH PROJECT

      The Serious Arctic team worked with glaciologists from the Geological Survey of Canada on the first-ever detailed study of the Grinnell Glacier, about 110km (70 miles) from Iqaluit down Frobisher Bay. The adventurers planted aluminium poles as benchmarks so the scientists could return in the future to check if the glacier is expanding or shrinking. The team also helped take core samples of ice to monitor recent snowfalls and levels of pollution.

      Initial results point to the same dramatic shrinking

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