In the spring of 1928, two men in a single-engine plane took off from the northernmost point in America - Barrow, Alaska. Flying for over 20 hours across the Arctic, they completed a journey to Spitsbergen, Norway, described by their contemporaries Byrd and Amunsden as 'the most remarkable journey ever made'. Seventy years later a team of six explorers set out in a pair of 1947 design Russian biplanes, the Antonov An-2, to recreate that historic journey. Even with modern navigational aids, the problems faced in 1998 were similar to those of the first expedition: temperatures far below zero, dense sea fog, planes full of highly flammable fuel, plus challenges faced by all explorers - building a team, confronting the unknown and probing the limits of human potential. The result is a gripping modern day adventure exploring the remote North.
In the spring of 1928, two men in a single-engine plane took off from the northernmost point in America - Barrow, Alaska. Flying for over 20 hours across the Arctic, they completed a journey to Spitsbergen, Norway, described by their contemporaries Byrd and Amunsden as 'the most remarkable journey ever made'. Seventy years later a team of six explorers set out in a pair of 1947 design Russian biplanes, the Antonov An-2, to recreate that historic journey. Even with modern navigational aids, the problems faced in 1998 were similar to those of the first expedition: temperatures far below zero, dense sea fog, planes full of highly flammable fuel, plus challenges faced by all explorers - building a team, confronting the unknown and probing the limits of human potential. The result is a gripping modern day adventure exploring the remote North.