22 July North Through the Fog

During the morning of 22 July we have progressed north from 82N almost as far as 85N. Total ice concentration has varied from 8-10/10, with most floes of Medium size.

The vast majority of the ice we have seen has been First Year, with a thickness of 100cm. There has usually been 0/10 old ice, but occasionally as concentrated as 1/10. This is usually 150cm thick, but at 84.8N we encountered some Small floes of old ice that are 3m thick.

The above observations are roughly similar to those we made last voyage. We would expect to see increasing amounts of old ice tomorrow as we approach the pole, but this will of course depend on how the ice has moved in the intervening 10 days.

Despite poor visibility we manage to fly the helicopter for around an hour at around 84N. We collected some aerial photographs of the ice, with photos matched to GPS position and a barometric altimeter.

A note on yesterday's update for Franz Josef Land -- we stated that the fast ice in Severnaya Bay had largely disappeared but it should be noted that this ice has been broken up by icebreakers in the last 10 days to make bases Omega and Nagorskoya accessible for shipping.

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