Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Monday, July 03, 2006
Cedarburg native, another man report reaching North Pole
A Cedarburg native and another man report reaching the North Pole in their effort to draw attention to the impact of global warming on the Arctic environment.
Cedarburg native Eric Larsen and Lonnie Dupre report on their Weblog that they reached the pole Saturday.
They said they met several seals and gulls in recent days, giving testament to the open water that they regularly encountered as they approached the pole.
``This expedition was never about making history and simply reaching the North Pole, but about a journey that could spark a movement to combat global warming,'' Dupre, the expedition leader, said in a statement released late Sunday by Greenpeace International, the expedition's major sponsor.
A June 30 blog entry described the ice of the Arctic as eggshell-thin and fractured by wind and ocean currents.
``There was so much open water that the scent of warm (almost warm) salt water was constantly in the air,'' they said.
``We crossed roughly 50 or so cracks in the ice that we could span with skis and had to catamaran the sled-canoes seven or eight times to paddle across large leads'' in the ice. ``Only a few miles from the pole, we were seeing more open water than either of us would have ever guessed.''
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