Moscow - Prince Albert of Monaco reached the North Pole on Sunday and issued a warning about the effects of global warming, calling on everyone to make an effort to combat it.
"When you see these landscapes, these landscapes of the sea of ice, it is astonishing to see how diverse our planet is," he told reporters by phone an hour and a half after reaching the top of the world, where at this time of the year the sun never sets.
Albert reached the North Pole after a four-day husky-drawn sled journey aimed at drawing attention to global warming, the palace in the principality said earlier.
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He said the effects of global warming were evident: near the pole some open channels were hardly frozen.
"We must try to find solutions, with scientists obviously, but at the individual level," the 48-year-old prince said.
"I think everyone by their behaviour can make their small contribution to a global and extraordinary effort."
Part of the aim of the trip was to pay tribute to his great-grandfather, Prince Albert I, one of the pioneers of modern oceanography, who made four trips to Spitzbergen in Norway between 1898 and 1907.
Albert II consulted the notes taken by his ancestor, who never reached the pole but explored the Arctic during the summer months.
"He used to say that he had come across ice very, very far south. The ice began much earlier, at the 81st or 82nd parallel.
"Now you see it at the 86th, I think. The cracking of the ice and the break up begin fairly early. For some years it has been noticed that spring arrives earlier and earlier," he told reporters.
Albert left the Russian weather station at Barneo on Thursday with six sleds each drawn by six dogs for the 91km journey across the ice.
In fact the distance covered was nearer 150km, he said, given the need to skirt outcrops of ice. He arrived at the pole at 5.45pm on Sunday.
"It is a fantastic impression. It was a physically difficult journey because it isn't a straight line. When you have blocks of ice that crash into each other they make pretty impressive little hills to climb," he said.
Some were 10m high.
"The team was great and the dogs extraordinary, everything happened in a very good atmosphere," said Albert, before being helicoptered off the ice. Sources in Monaco said he would be in Moscow on Tuesday, where he would meet President Vladimir Putin.
The palace in Monaco said Albert's journey had been difficult, covering 20km on the first day, and the first three days had been especially hard because of cracks and compressions in the ice.
On the second day the team could only cover 17km because of reduced visibility and ice conditions.
On Saturday the weather improved and the expedition covered more than 35km. The final 20km assault on the pole began on Sunday at 9.15am. - Sapa-AFP
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