Heading South

During July 14th, 50 let Pobedy steamed back south towards Franz Josef Land along meridians between 62 and 65E, getting as far as 86 10'N by the evening. We passed through 9-10/10 ice, with around 3-5/10 of this being old ice of up to 2m thickness.

Floes of 1st year ice are mostly Large, 100cm thick and some have a well developed system of linked melt pools with some thaw holes, with up to 4/10 coverage though most floes have melt pond coverage closer to 2/10. Today we saw some small areas of rotten ice in the young floes in the vicinity of 86 15'N. It will be interesting to see the state of melt tomorrow as we approach Franz Josef Land.

Floes of old ice are Small, occasionally Medium. Melt pond coverage is 2/10, and we suspect that some of the topography we are seeing is melt pools that have drained due to the high freeboard. Thaw holes are rare.

Most notably, we have had extremely northern polar bears. Yesterday we had a slim-to-average young bear at 89 35'N which resulted in us having to evacuate our north pole landing. We had excellent views of this very curious bear investigating our equipment on the ice and the ship itself, before moving on. This evening we had a mother and cub at 86 10'N -- both members of this family were in good shape, at the fatter end of average.

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