From the Far Corners of the Earth...

BARROW, ALASKA, July 12--The sun hasn't set here for the past two months, but the Arctic pack ice has only recently started to break in the waters surrounding this Navy research installation. Eight-hundred miles out on the ice, in an area usually populated only by polar bears, seals, and occasional gulls, four British explorers have set up a summer camp on a floe of old ice. They have been traveling for more than four months by dog sled.

These four men, led by a veteran Antarctic cartographer and explorer named Wally Herbert, comprise the British Trans-Arctic Expedition, and their aim is to drive by sled from Barrow to the Pole and down to Spitzbergen Island--3,500 miles all told. Perry and the other adventurers who roamed the ice pack 60 years ago traveled a few hundred miles out on the ice, perhaps to the pole, and then turned back. But Herbert's group plans to spend a full 16 months in their crossing, with frequent scientific observations along the way.

The science they have been doing wouldn't intrigue most Harvard science wonks, since it's primarily the sort of observational work that engaged nineteenth century researchers: ice, wildlife, weather, and ocean depth surveys, plus simple physical and psychological tests on the effects of their bleak environment. However, these elementary investigations are crucial to cold regions researchers whose limited data on this huge area so far has come chiefly from a few itinerant ice island stations maintained by the U.S. and U.S.S.R., and from an international ice observation study called Project Bird's Eye.

Much discussion at the Expedition's base camp here has centered on "Stephansson's Theory," a rather simple assertion that the ocean beneath the pack ice contains enough animal life to support a handful of travelers indefinitely. Although this Expedition does not actually depend on game meat for survival, the number of large animals they actually sight will provide some idea of the theory's validity.

Since starting out in their four dog sleds last February 21st, they have actually encountered a scarcity of large animal life despite abundant tracks. Yet after Freddy Church, the Expedition's communications middle man at Barrow, relayed one of the rare sightings of a few seals to England, The Times of London assumed that the Expedition had practically proven Stefansson's theory. The Times just happens to be one of the financial backers of this $150,000 effort.

The Expedition made relatively little progress during its last few weeks of spring travel. The soft ice slowed the dog sleds down considerably, and unfavorable ice drifting occasionally pushed them farther south than they could sled north. One sled was nearly lost when a recently refrozen "ice lead" or channel broke under the sled's weight. Frequent pressure ridges (the ice rubble, sometimes 80 feet high, that results from two large ice floes' collision) also slowed them down.

By July 6th, the ice had become too soft for further travel, so the Expedition settled down for a 13-week summer rest. By this time the ocean currents had produced favorable ice drifting, sometimes ten miles a day toward the Pole. Yet at 83 North and 165 West, they are still 170 miles short of the spot on the International Date Line where they had originally planned to set up camp.

Another recent headache has been Herbert's pair of 15-watt "Redifor" army radios. For the past four days, fierce geomagnetic storms have prevented Freddy Church from receiving even a routine fix on the camp's drifting position. Even more powerful transmitters located on the nearby U.S. ice island T-3 have recently failed to reach the Naval Arctic Research Lab here.

Church simply broadcasts his message on a 1,000 watt transmitter near Barrow and Herbert acknowledges by tapping out the letter "R" for a few minutes on the one field radio that still operates. Every once in a while, a few of Herbert's weak signals, the only contact between these four men and the rest of the world, penetrates the radio noise.

Scheduling the Expedition's supply runs has also proven difficult. An old R-4D Dakota, operating out of Barrow, flew the first three airdrops and actually made two landings out on the ice, but beyond a certain point in the sled journey, the R-4D couldn't make the flight without a refueling stop at T-3, pretty much an impossibility now that the runway has melted.

The Roval Canadian Air Force sent a C-130 from Resolute Bay this "morning" with a 3,000-pound payload of huts, newspapers, dog food, and tea for the summer camp. But a ten-knot wind made the airdrop unfeasible, and the plane returned from over the camp without dropping the supplies. A second attempt is cheduled for tomorrow.

In August or September, plans call for more sledding on firm ice until the long winter night sets in. They will camp again from October until March when the daily quota of sunlight is large enough for travel, having drifted near the North Pole during that North encampment. Then they will have to race against the spring surface melt and hopefully arrive at Longyearbyen on Spitzbergen Island in mid-June. There the H.M.S. Endurance will be on hand to return them to England