Should Camp Barneo be Consigned to History?
The floating ice camp near the North Pole seems increasingly out of step with modern geopolitics and climate consciousness
Photo: Barneo AG
Sometime in the coming weeks French polar adventurer Vincent Colliard will step off the certainty of land and onto the frozen Arctic Ocean. Skiing solo without outside support for over 500 miles to the North Pole* is an almost foolhardy enterprise. The cost of charter flights to the start point in northern Canada is enough to tighten the sphincter of even the most generous bank manager. And like an astronaut sitting atop a giant stick of dynamite, you need some nerve to navigate safely through the precarious primordial soup of the melting Arctic Ocean.
Colliard doesn’t just need to be able to front the cash and be made of the right stuff though. If he makes it to the Pole, or needs rescue from near the Pole, he’ll have to rely on catching a flight to Camp Barneo, a temporary base erected on a drifting ice floe about 60 miles from the Pole. Since the early 2000’s, during late March and early April, Barneo acts as a logistical hub and launch pad for adventurers, champagne tourists and scientists.
The floating ice station is a logistical masterpiece. Once a solid ice floe has been pinpointed from the air, Soviet-era cargo planes operating from Russia and Norway, parachute in a payload of paratroopers, tents, fuel barrels, bulldozers, and other gear. The team of 20 or so grizzled Russian paratroopers get to work flattening out a runway to bring in the rest of the camp facilities, and allow the shuttling of visitors from Longyearbyen airport on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
Fuel barrels being dropped onto the ice. Photo: Irina Orlova / Base Camp Barneo
Despite all the effort, Barneo usually lasts as long as a Mike Tyson fight in the late 1980’s. In April 2018 it was only operational for 12 days thanks to precarious ice conditions. In other years the floating city has remained viable for 3 weeks or more before being abandoned. When the ice melts the bulldozers, fuel barrels and all manner of equipment sink to the bottom of the seabed.
Since 2018 Barneo’s doors have remained shut. Not just due to dwindling Arctic ice or the pandemic, but because of the very obvious and complicated geopolitics. Barneo used to be an entirely Russian operation until it was sold to a Swiss company owned by Swedish billionaire Frederick Paulsen in 2018. In 2019 trusted Ukrainian pilots refused to work for Barneo, or were banned from doing so. In 2020 and 2021, Norway’s pandemic restrictions closed Barneo again. And 2022 was cancelled due to a ban on Russian planes in Norwegian airspace resulting from the invasion of Ukraine.
Last December The Atlantic reported that the new management were going to great lengths to ‘de-Russify’ operations, including leasing cargo planes from Kazakhstan instead of Russia. But even without Russian equipment, Barneo will likely need to rely on employing Russian paratroopers to get the camp up and running - and that might well be difficult given the many sanctions on doing business with Russians.
At time of writing, news of Russian jets downing a US drone flying in international air space has just broken. And even the most reclusive hermit, will be aware of the 12 months of war crimes Putin’s Russia have committed in Ukraine. So despite Barneo’s attempts at cutting most ties with this global pariah, is it enough? Should the the dreams of a privileged few adventurers outweigh the obvious ethical quandary of employing Russian paratroopers? Is Barneo’s historical association with Russia not a little too strong to be palatable?
Besides Russia, there’s another problem. Barneo dumps a whole heap of junk in the Arctic Ocean. The Barents Observer reckon more than 20 bulldozers and one aircraft have been consigned to the sea bed over the past 20 years. And then there’s the obvious high per person carbon cost of the helicopters and cargo planes that deliver the equipment and relatively few visitors. In an age of heightened awareness of climate change and declining Arctic sea ice, and when more than a few Polar adventurers say they’re doing it to ‘help preserve our planet’, Barneo appears to be somewhat of a relic.
This legendary floating ice camp near the North Pole seems increasingly out of step with modern geopolitics and climate consciousness. Once Vincent Colliard shuts the doors on his daring odyssey, perhaps Camp Barneo should be consigned to the history books?
