Building a good ice station near the pole is tricky. Keeping it free of problems equally so.

 

The 2016 spring season at the North Pole opened as usual: on March 18, Russian helicopters started their search for a perfect ice floe, perfect enough to host the camp and a long runway which could handle multiple landings and take offs of heavy An-74s carrying crowds of adventure seekers from all around the world eager to leave their mark on the pole together with their equipment.

 

Building a good ice station near the pole is tricky. The team has to start immediately after the polar sunrise (and the Sun is up after six months of darkness on March 20), and then to do all their work quickly enough to allow for a month-long commercial season, until the ice starts disintegrating under the warming sun in the end of April.

 

At the beginning, there was nothing that could have predicted a disaster of either the climatic or political sort...

 

Continue reading the story in The Arctic Journal.