The Plan
The five-month project will begin in January 2009 with a month and a half of training dogs, preparing equipment
and living with the Polar Inuit of the Qaanaaq district of northwest Greenland. On February 17, the day
the sun comes back after four months of polar night, a team of six individuals, three sleds and 36 dogs will
depart on a three and a half month, 1,600-mile journey transecting, rounding and exploring the northern latitudes
of Greenland and Ellesmere and Axel Hieberg Islands. The team will be a mix of Arctic explorers, Polar Inuit
and the descendants of Robert Peary and his companion Matthew Henson.
Like Peary, the Peary Centennial Expedition will utilize traditional Polar Inuit ingenuity in transportation
and clothing. Each of the four sleds will have the dogs' traces in the traditional "fan hitch", with two team
members per sled. People will use a combination of traditional Inuit fur clothing and modern-day synthetics
to ward off the -60F temperatures. Both dogs and team members will consume approximately 1 3/4 pounds of
concentrated food (6,000 calories) per day to maintain sufficient energy levels.
Because of the vast areas and distances to be documented and explored by dog team, a series of supply depots
will be placed by air approximately every 200 miles along the expedition's route.
In addition to the extreme temperatures the team will
encounter shifting sea ice pressured into a near-impassable maze of car-size ice blocks and ridges. Overland
passages will be most challenging as the team maneuvers 750-pound loaded sleds through narrow gorges
and across steep rocky hillsides free of snow.
Along the way the team expects to encounter numerous basking seals, marauding polar bears, nimble arctic fox,
furry musk ox and, with a bit of luck, stealthy polar wolves and the rare white Peary Caribou.
from Qaanaaq
The Route
The Islands
Ellesmere Island:
Ellesmere is Canada's most northern island, the tenth largest island in the world with 75,767 square miles.
It is one of earth's last great wilderness domains. Lying just 450 miles from the North Pole and 50 miles
from Greenland, it offers spectacular mountain scenery, huge glaciers, deeply incised fjords and ice shelves
extending far into the sea.
The Grant Land Mountains, a jagged chain of sedimentary rock, extend across the northern part of the island,
rising straight out of the ocean and ending as part of the giant icecaps that dominate much of the island's
interior. Ice fields as thick as 2,700 feet cloak these mountains, remnants of the last continental
glaciations. Mount Barbeau, the highest mountain in eastern North American, rises to a height of 8,593 feet.
Shore-fast ice up to 240 feet thick has clung to the coastline in some places for thousands of years.
With annual precipitation of only 2.5 inches, about the same as generally falls on the Sahara Desert, Ellesmere
Island is truly a polar wasteland where willow sedges barely stand more than a few inches above ground level.
Axel Hieberg Island:
Axel Hieberg Island, named by Norwegian Otto Sverdrup who explored it by dog team in 1900, has an area of 16,671
square miles. This uninhabited island lies around 80 degrees north latitude and just west of Ellesmere.
Mountainous glaciers and huge expanses of polar desert cover the island. The higher central area is covered
by ice cap.
The Axel Hieberg Island is known for its unusual and unique mummified forest, which dates back some 55
million years to a period of great warmth. More than 1,000 stumps and tree trunks, some of them more than
30 feet long and 8 feet wide, can be seen there. Today the only woody plant found on Axel Hieberg is the
Arctic Willow. Its sprouts reach only a few inches high, even in the protection of fossil stumps that
once bore trees reaching 100 feet in height.
Greenland:
The north of Greenland was first mapped and explored by Peary between 1892 and 1902, and which established
Greenland as an island. The topography is mountainous and glaciated with sloping valleys supporting small
isolated pockets of polar wolves, musk ox, hares and lemmings.
Circumnavigation of Greenland,
Peary Land