Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (May 27/02) - Rob Carroll isn't far from the top of the world when one of his sole remaining navigational devices starts going buggy.

Flying in a four-seat Astar AS350 helicopter, Carroll notices the electronic map on his Global Positioning System is making erratic movements. Instead of steadily updating the helicopter's location along a straight flight path, the GPS begins jerking around -- saying he is pointed in directions other than straight north.

Carroll is on his way to the North Pole. He will work there as a pilot shuttling around American scientists, who are studying the polar climate, to various locations on the ice cap.

The problem with his GPS: Carroll is so near the pole that lines of longitude were converging. The GPS, not designed with the polar traveller in mind, is confused as he crosses different longitude lines.

But Carroll, a 12-year veteran with Great Slave Helicopters, has a backup: a directional gyro that functions neither with the magnetic pole -- useless at this latitude -- nor satellites.

Soon after noticing the odd problem with the GPS, Carroll tunes his radio to 124.00 MHZ and calls out his position.

The response comes in Russian. Writing in his journal that night, he says, "Although I don't understand any of the instructions, it is as comforting as a mother's touch. I have arrived!"

Fueling up on the Barren Lands

Carroll touches down about 145 kilometres from the North Pole -- on the other side of the world. He has flown 3,400 kilometres without a co-pilot, a journey which has stretched from April 12-18.

Along the way, he has stopped in both of Canada's remotest outposts -- Eureka and Alert. He has spent hours searching for fuel caches, hidden by blowing snow. He has avoided a polar bear and her cubs. And he has rolled 160-kilogram barrels of gas across Barren Land islands to fuel his thirsty Astar. With a cruising speed of 240 kilometres an hour and a range of 480 kilometres on a tank, it's been a long trip.

When he arrives he touches down in a camp surrounded by old Soviet-made orange huts and helicopters. As he walks out, he is greeted by a line of Russian soldiers and formally shakes the hand of the Russian senior officer.

"No co-pilot?" the officer asks.

"Nyet," he responds.

This is his welcome to Borneo, his home far away from home for the next 11 days. It is a camp run by the Russians but with a small French contingent on site. The French company -- which brings its own camp cook -- is bringing tourists to the pole. The price tag is about $20,000.

Carroll is here at the request of scientists from the University of Washington, who had called Great Slave to find a helicopter capable of flying to the pole. A group of scientists, working under the university and with grants from the National Science Foundation, are working to collect data on ocean salinity, temperature and currents as well as ice thickness and solar radiation.

In previous years, scientists with this North Pole Environmental Observatory have used a Twin Otter, and First Air has flown one of its aircraft up to be used this time around as well. But at the North Pole, ocean currents and lunar tides can tear apart the two-metre layer of ice, leaving gaping leads. A helicopter can drop down into much smaller areas than a fixed-wing aircraft, which needs a suitable runway.

Carroll will be flying the scientists to specific co-ordinates on the ice floes. Because those co-ordinates might not rest beside a decent runway, the scientists need a helicopter.

In search of salt water

James Morison is one of the scientists who flew to the pole. He says the need for scientific observation on top of the world is particularly acute now that the Cold War has thawed.

During the Cold War, both Russian and American scientists were able to gather data from military outposts and nuclear submarines stationed at the pole. When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of that data-gathering was also deflated.

"Just as things are starting to change (from global warming), our ability to keep track of them has been declining," said Morison.

The scientists are collecting information on, for example, ocean currents, water conductivity and temperature.

Salinity measurements are important. One of the things scientists are trying to determine is which parts of the Arctic Ocean come from the Atlantic Ocean and which are Pacific waters. The two oceans have distinctly different salinity levels.

But measuring salinity is more than a purely scientific exercise. The origin of the water can tell scientists a lot about climate change.

Since the 1970s, scientists have noticed a slow increase in the "polar vortex," the winds spinning around the pole, giving more evidence of global warming.

Morison cautions that "this is a very noisy signal," meaning the data are subject to a number of variables that make it less precise. However, he says, "there's one line of argument that says this is the kind of change you would expect to see in a greenhouse-warming situation."

Cold and cultural

For Carroll, the challenge is flying -- he leaves the data collection to the scientists.

Flying up here isn't easy, especially over sea ice. Carroll is an old-school pilot in a way. When he flies, he does it with a map on his knee and his nose to the window, checking against land marks and the helicopter's compass. That doesn't work on the sea ice, where there are no landmarks -- just a vast landscape of ice sliced apart by glistening leads.

The shifting ice also provides navigational challenges. Borneo is situated on an ice floe which moves at about 800 metres per hour. That means locations need to be reacquired everyday. Scientific devices positioned above the ice must be equipped with a radio beacon to make relocation possible.

The weather at the pole is cold. The sun shines constantly -- at the pole, April 21 marks the beginning of endless sunlight. But temperatures are still frigid, hovering around the -30 C mark.

"There wasn't a day where I wasn't concerned about the weather on the whole flight, because you're a long way from home," he says. The distance from a hangar with a mechanic and spare parts "keeps you on your toes," he says. "You're not getting lackadaisical." He is also kept on his toes by camp policy. Soon after arriving, he discovers that all takeoffs and arrivals must be cleared with the Russian airport manager.

"It's a Russian camp and they're quick to point that out," he says. "The funny thing with the Russians, they're still very regimented. Whenever a plane lands, they all come out to the runway."

The Russians he meets don't speak a whole lot of English -- just the necessaries like "take off" and "clearance." But by the time he gets back, Carroll has a pocket notebook with several pages of Russian terms.

And two more cherished possessions: a Russian fur hat and a little slip of paper certifying him to fly in a Mil-8 helicopter.

The fur hat is a gift from the senior officer; the paper slip a record of a flight he won't soon forget.

Lawn chairs in flight

Carroll marvels at the Russian Mil-8 helicopters. He calls the aircraft the "flying tractor," as he sees it barrelling through snowdrifts. The Mil-8s were originally built by the Soviets in 1961, and soon became the most widely built chopper in Soviet hangars.

There is no fixed seat for the pilots inside the chopper Carroll flies. Instead, the pilot and co-pilot sit on lawn chairs. The Russians give him a chance to try his hand at the controls, which he jumps on.

As he flies, the rest of the crew stands behind him, cigarettes in hand. They are standing because the rear is packed so full of cargo that there is literally no place to sit down.

After touching down, the officer hands him the certification slip, written in Cyrillic script.

Homeward bound

By April 28, Carroll is fuelling his Astar for the flight home. As he does, he is met with mixed feelings.

"Even with the lack of amenities of the camp, the remoteness of the flying assignments, I felt a little sad that I had to go," he writes in his journal. "These people let me in their world and offered me plenty of the few things they have."

After takeoff, Carroll makes a side trip to the one destination he has not yet travelled to: the top of the world, 90 degrees north. When he lands, he erects a small flag and kicks his heels in the air. He has the photo to prove it.

His flight back is a chance to marvel at the scenery of Ellesmere Island and other places scarce touched by mankind.

It's also a chance to reflect on the trip. "Everything I learned over the past 12 years was used on this trip," he says.

By May 4, he is on his last stretch of travel. Come early afternoon, he is winging his way from the gold mines across trees to Yellowknife.

Just before 5 p.m., his helicopter coasts in for a delicate landing.

Sitting in the right seat of the cockpit, he smiles out from under the Russian hat.

He opens the door, and says, "boy it's good to be back."

As he walks toward the hangar across the helicopter landing pads, he drops to his knees for a moment. He brushes the asphalt with his hand.

"Nice ground," he says.