Inside Photo of an Antonov An-26 Curl Russian Aircraft in route for the Geographic North Pole.

I looked out of the small window and the view was fantastic.  There was this beautiful fog like mist of blowing crushed ice over the surface.  You could see the pressure ridges between huge plates of ice, that was forced up into the air.  In other places you could see large cracks, called Leads, between the plates of ice.  I was once told that when you are walking on the ice cap, if you come to a lead, all you need to do is to walk around it.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  Some of these leads must have been in excess of forty miles long and a thousand feet wide.   The proper thing to do was to camp and rest until the lead froze over until you could walk across it, usually about ten hours.   It was clearly visible where some of the leads were starting to freeze over.   I wasn't on the surface, so I couldn't really tell, but it appeared that the freezing started several feet below the surface of the ice, at least that's what it looked like from twenty thousand feet.

This is a site that everyone must see, it's fantastic.