The Chronicles of transpolar expeditions

 24 March 2011. Blizzard lasted for four days, warm - up to -7 C °, drifting snow, white-out, a strong wind. The Arctic has prepared for our verification of the entire set of its surprises. On low speed we move through with clenched teeth, and pushing his views are more in the Navigator screen and the computer with the card than the windshield, get to the northern tip of Island Russky. Machines behave well, the team, too, going round the clock, and if the watch falls on the dark, it is considered good luck, as in the light of powerful lights landscape of snow and ice ridges are seen better than in the afternoon milk.

MLAE-2011 is short for Marine Live-ice Automobile Expedition 2011. It is organized under the patronage of Arthur Chilingarov – Special representative of President of Russian Federation for international cooperation in the Arctic and the Antarctic.

RCAE is short for Russian Center for Arctic Exploration – an Autonomous Non-profit Organisation which is developing innovative amphibious automobiles “YEMELYA” and organizing expeditions in High Arctic.

This year March 4, 2011 our team had started from town of Urengoy in Yamalo-Nenetskij Autonomous Region of Russia and is driving up to the North Pole (approximately until April 20) and further to Ward Hunt Island, Canada (supposingly by May 26) and will finish in the town of Resolute, Nunavut, Canada (probably by May 31) plus a few days spare. From Resolute Bay we shall fly to Montreal before we can fly home to Moscow.

For the expedition we shall use newly built automobiles “Yemelya-3” and “Yemelya-4”. We plan to leave them in Resolute Bay for a period of 10 months until March 2012 when we plan to return to Nunavut from Russia and continue the route of the expedition further on along the coastline of Canadian Arctic to Alaska.

During previous expedition MLAE-2009 – seven-men crew: Vasily Elagin Afanassi Makovnev, Vladimir Obihod, Sergey Larin, Alexey Shkrabkin, Alexey Ushakov, Nikolai Nikulshin in two automobiles “Yemelya-1” and “Yemelya-2” under the leadership of Vasily Elagin had started from Severnaya Zemlya, Russia and after 38 days and 2033 km of driving over drift ice for the first time in history of Arctic exploration reached the North Pole by car. It happened on April 26, 2009 and now this achievement is included into Russian Book of Records.