bthere: Inflight Magazine Brussels Airlines

Alain Hubert – explorer, entrepreneur, UNICEF goodwill ambassador and co-founder of the International Polar Foundation – is anything but ordinary. James Kevin MacGoris caught up with the intrepid explorer before he set off on an attempt to complete the longest Arctic crossing

Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton… while the great names have been experiencing something of a revival recently, it’s easy to forget that polar exploration is little more than a century old and there’s still a great deal about the frozen icecaps we don’t really understand. Luckily, there exists a handful of modern-day explorers who can’t fail to inspire us with their courage, determination and charisma. In International Polar Year 2007, Belgian duo Alain Hubert and Dixie Dansercoer hope their expedition to cross the Arctic Arc from Siberia to Greenland will confirm their place up there among the few.

There’s a sequence in a film of a previous polar expedition that may show one of the secrets of Hubert’s success. It’s the end of another difficult day and he’s taking a run at yet another of the chaotic ice hillocks and escarpments that have blocked his way so far. He summons all his strength to get up the necessary speed to drag his 180kg sled up the 45-degree ice block. At the top, he pulls and strains to tip the sled’s centre of gravity enough to get it over the summit. He’s down on his knees, pulling with all his strength, when the ice tip breaks and the sled slides back down the wrong side of the slope. Instead of screaming in frustration, Hubert laughs, picks himself up and starts again.

“You have to be able to keep a sense of humour on an expedition like this,” he says. “Sometimes you have so many obstacles, you only make a couple of kilometres’ headway in 24 hours. We don’t talk much during the day, but Dixie makes sure we keep our spirits up.”

This time, the duo are crossing the polar icecap by foot, trekking from the northernmost point of Siberia to the northern cape of Greenland, before traversing the Greenland ‘continent’ from north to south on skis at an average altitude of 2,000m. The expedition started at the end of February, still winter in the Arctic. “This means we’ll be taking on the beginning of the sea-ice part of the journey with less than four hours’ daylight,” says Hubert. “We’ll be travelling for at least five hours in darkness across fairly treacherous ground, but hopefully we’ll have the moonlight to guide us.”

The first part of the expedition is expected to last three months and will see Hubert and Dansercoer traversing the icecap on foot and floating. “When we get to the north cape of Greenland – which has never been accurately mapped, by the way – we climb to some 2,000m and start our trek south across the Greenland plateau,” says Hubert. “This is a totally different type of crossing – here we’ll be able to use our kite-sails to pull us across the relatively flat surface, hitting speeds of 100km/h. But because Greenland is situated between two different meteorological systems, the weather can be quite extreme, with winds gusting up to 220km/h. When it’s like that we have to sit it out in our tent.

“What many people don’t realise is that an Arctic expedition is totally different from an Antarctic one,” Hubert continues. “The Arctic is a sea, not a continent, so we’re crossing terrain that’s perpetually moving. There’s nothing flat, so we’re constantly having to find the best way through, but when we opt for low terrain sometimes the ice is barely thick enough to support our weight. We have to be careful not to fall into the polar waters. We’ve had some lucky escapes.

“But this is part of the scientific aim of the expedition – we want to help map the thickness of the icecap at points where geo-satellites can’t. That way, we can give invaluable information on the melt rate of the polar ice. This is key to the world’s understanding of the effects of climate change and global warming on the least accessible regions of the planet.”

Food is an extremely important element in this type of expedition. “Food makes up about 70% of the weight of our sleds,” says Hubert. “Of course, one thing we don’t have to carry is water, as we’re surrounded by it – when we need some, we just melt ice. The food itself is highly specialised, though. In fact, we make it ourselves. We mix up oil and very high-calorie fat-rich foods such as nuts and even pure fat itself. It ends up as a brown paste, which we keep frozen until we get to Siberia. Explorers call this pralines, after the chocolate product, so we’re eating about a kilo of Belgian pralines every day – that’s about 6,000 calories! As you can imagine, we have to practise eating this stuff for a couple of weeks before we start out on the expedition, otherwise we’d be quite sick.”

The expedition is one of the most ambitious ever. Funded largely by the Swiss watchmaker Rolex, it will cost almost €500,000 in total. Unlike the usual polar route of some 1,800km, the Arctic Arc trek will cover more than double that, around 4,300km. It will be yet another first for the Belgian duo – in 2002, they attempted a shorter route but had to give up after 69 days in the face of extreme weather conditions.

This time, Hubert and Dansercoer will again be tested to their limits, both physically and mentally. But success should ensure that in the future, their names are mentioned in the same breath as those of the greatest polar explorers.

Territoires inexplorés

Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton… ces grands noms ont récemment refait surface en nous rappelant à quel point l’on a oublié que l’exploration polaire remonte à une petite centaine d’années. Ils nous redisent aussi qu’il reste encore beaucoup de choses inexpliquées dans les calottes glaciaires. Pour célébrer l’Année Polaire Internationale 2007, le duo de Belges Alain Hubert et son équipier Dansercoer ont entamé une traversée de l’Arctique depuis la Sibérie jusqu’au Groenland. Le succès de leur expédition confirmera leur place dans l’Olympe des ‘grands explorateurs’. Jamais exploit comparable n’a été tenté dans l’Arctique. L’itinéraire d’Alain Hubert, à la différence des distances habituelles de 1 800km, sera considérablement plus long, de plus de la moitié.

“Beaucoup de gens ne réalisent pas qu’une expédition dans l’Arctique est totalement différente d’une expédition dans l’Antarctique. L’ Arctique est une mer, pas un continent, nous traversons donc un terrain en mouvement perpétuel. Ici, rien n’est plat, ce qui veut dire que nous devons constamment trouver le meilleur passage. Mais lorsque nous pratiquons des terrains de basse altitude, il arrive que la glace soit d’une épaisseur à peine suffisante pour supporter notre poids”, explique Hubert.

“Cela fait partie de l’objectif scientifique de l’expédition : nous voulons aider à établir la carte de l’épaisseur de la calotte glaciaire à des endroits inaccessibles pour les géo-satellites, nous serons ainsi en mesure de fournir une information inestimable sur le niveau de fonte de la glace. C’est essentiel pour la compréhension des effets des changements climatiques dans le monde et du réchauffement global dans ces régions, parmi les plus inaccessibles de la planète.”

Onbekend gebied

Onlangs stonden ontdekkingsreizigers zoals Scott, Amundsen en Shackleton opnieuw in de belangstelling. Maar we durven wel eens te vergeten dat die eerste poolexpedities slechts honderd jaar geleden plaatsvonden. De ijskappen hebben dan ook nog heel wat geheimen prijs te geven. In het kader van het Internationale Pooljaar 2007 willen de Belgen Alain Hubert en Dixie Dansercoer de Noordpool oversteken, van Siberië tot Groenland. Een ambitieuze expeditie waarmee zij poolgeschiedenis zullen schrijven. In tegenstelling tot de gewone poolroute van zowat 1.800 km, wordt hun trektocht dubbel zo lang.

“Veel mensen beseffen niet hoezeer Noordpoolexpedities verschillen van Zuidpoolexpedities. De Noordpool is een zee, geen continent, en is dus voortdurend in beweging. Niets is vlak, dus moeten we steeds op zoek naar de beste doorgang. Op laag terrein is het ijs soms zo dun dat het ons gewicht amper kan dragen”, vertelt Hubert.

“Maar dat is net het wetenschappelijke doel van de expeditie. Op plaatsen waar geosatellieten tekortschieten, willen we de dikte van de ijskap in kaart brengen. Zo kunnen we kostbare gegevens verzamelen over de smeltsnelheid van het poolijs. Informatie die cruciaal is om de effecten van klimaatverandering en van de opwarming van de aarde in dergelijke afgelegen streken te begrijpen.”

The Arctic Arc expedition set out from Brussels on 27 February, on a flight sponsored by Brussels Airlines. To follow the progress of the expedition, go to arcticarc.org. There’s also a special education website for young people, with films and a competition, at www.educapoles.org