Driving from Alaska to Siberia

Pelerin writes "The team from the Ice Challenger project are driving from Alaska to Provodanya, in Siberia; across the 56-mile field of ice floes that each winter "joins" America and Russia. At the last minute the Russian authorities have denied the entry permit but the crew says they're on track to reach the Big Diomedes islands, which lie across the date line, thereby proving it's possible to do this. This feat is not as easy as it sounds due to the harsh Artic winter conditions, and the fact that the ice floes themselves are drifting at a pretty good clip. It takes a specially built vehicle to tackle this adventure. Geek quotient: pretty high :)" If you just want to drive to Alaska, you might go with Philip Greenspun. And if these guys don't make the trip to Russia this year, they might not get a chance. Update: 04/08 12:21 GMT by T : DrShrink adds to the story: "The two made it to Siberia, however were turned back due to not gaining permission to enter Russian territory."

Comments

Similarly Across Antarctica

[jacobb]

I saw a TLC program a month or so ago, where they used some specialized trucks to drive accross antarctica... They had some problems with huge ravines and blown tyres, frozen motor oil, etc. etc. but they made it.
Note: it _could_ have been the arctic, i forget now... but it's awesome all the same.

Amphibious vehicle?

[PhotoGuy]

While it looks like quite an amazing feat regardless, there are some pictures of that special vehicle floating in water; if it is amphibious, it kind of streteches the definition of "driving" across. If at times you're floating, it is sort of like taking a boat when necessary.

Taking the Tunnel.

[Alien54]

They could always wait and take the Bering Straight Tunnel when it is completed.

After the completion of the English Channel Tunnel, this is now seen to be at least in the realm of possibility.

Heck, there has been some discussion on this already.

Re:Driving from America to Asia

[WetCat]

Actually, making a permanent roadway will benefit only US and Chukotka, because
Chukotka itself has no reliable connections (no hard-surface roads, no railroads) with Russia
mainland.

Re:Oh my...

[NonSequor]

I'm completely in favor of bringing back "thou." You may have noticed various attempts at pluralizing "you." These efforts are pointless as "you" is already plural. "Thou" is the singular form. At some point in the past the speakers of the English language collectively decided to be excessively polite and address everone using the more formal "you." So now we refer to a party with whom we are speaking by means of a plural pronoun, regardless of whether or not more than one person is being addressed.

By the way, a comparison using Google as an ad hoc measure of the popularity of a spelling of a word showed "arctic" to be vastly more common than "artic." "Artic" is little more than a common misspelling of "arctic."