Arctic exploration In 1970, Shparo traveled from
Lake Taymyr, the largest freshwater body in Eurasia north of the
Arctic Circle, to
Cape Cheluskin (the northernmost point of
Asia) via the islands of
Komsomolskaya Pravda in the
Laptev Sea. Following completion of this expedition, Shparo was recognized by the national press and news affiliates. Newspapers published his journals and announced their sponsorship of a new polar expedition, with Dmitry Shparo leading the way. In 1973, Shparo developed an interest in Arctic exploration. At this time, explorers were viewed with a great deal of suspicion in the Soviet Union. Their routes had to be approved by the
Communist Party committees and local
KGB offices. Following Soviet approval, Shparo led several low-profile expeditions up the outskirts of Russia. Soviet authorities were taking the Arctic Region seriously. The Polar Ocean was a place d'armes of the ongoing military competition with the
US. The
Kremlin wanted to see victories in this battlefield, not defeats. The stakes of the proposed ski-trip to the North Pole were such that the final decision rested with the
Politburo. Its response was laconic: the expedition to the North Pole was "unsuitable and pointless". In March 1979, Shparo left to the North Pole on skis secretly, without the Politburo's permission. In late April, when news of the flagrant disobedience finally reached the Politburo, its conformist majority was outraged. Kremlin leadership urged the Chief of the KGB,
Yuri Andropov, and the
Minister of Defense,
Dmitriy Ustinov, to send out military helicopters in order to return the escapees and punish them accordingly. Shparo and his teammates were halfway there and Mihail Suslov, the Party's chief ideologist, suggested that chances of their successful arrival to the Pole were quite high. Shparo was allowed to finish his trip, and reached the North Pole on May 31,in 1979. Soon after Shparo's name went into the
Guinness World Records, he undertook a new trip, crossing the Arctic Ocean during the
Arctic night in total darkness. He walked in the night for two months, from the drifting polar station "North Pole-26" to another drifting polar station "North Pole-27". His route lay through constantly drifting and crashing ice, and temperatures dropped as low as . In February 15, 1986 he arrived at the pole of relative inaccessibility, becoming the first man to reach it on skis. His projects include an expedition to
Franz Josef Land where the winter home of
Fridtjof Nansen was found; an expedition to the
Commander Islands in
Kamchatka, where the grave of
Vitus Bering, a world-famous navigator, was discovered, and many others.
Goodwill ambassador As a mathematician, Shparo insisted that the North Pole, as an ever-shifting spot, existed only as a mathematical concept. But even with such an abstract goal in mind, his trips always had a very practical component. Shparo had become one of the earliest Soviet ambassadors of goodwill to the
West, before
glasnost and
perestroika. In 1988, Shparo co-led the Soviet-Canadian expedition, first to cross Arctic Ocean from Russia via the North Pole to Canada, lifting the Ice Curtain. In 1989, Shparo and his American colleague, Paul Schurke, led the Bering Bridge Expedition from
Siberia to
Alaska in an attempt to reconnect Arctic cultures separated by the
Cold War. Until
World War II, the
Inuit of Siberia and Alaska had traveled back and forth across the Bering Strait to hunt walrus and visit relatives. However, in 1948, the Stalin and the Truman governments locked down the border. Shparo and Schurke asked the Kremlin and the
White House to open the border to a
sled dog expedition. Along with the preparation of dogs and sleds, Shparo and Schurke had drawn a protocol of intentions and talked the Governors of both Alaska and
Chukotka into signing it on the ice on the Bering Strait. According to this protocol, native
Chukotkans and
Alaskans were allowed to travel, hunt and trade freely again. The protocol was signed at the end of April 1989, several months before the
Berlin Wall collapsed. The border was reopened and presidents
Bush and
Gorbachev praised Shparo and Schurke for their achievement. Disintegration of the Ice Curtain did not receive the same high-profile treatment as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, yet the main goal of the expedition had been achieved: Inuit families across the border were reunited. In 1996, Shparo attempted to cross the Bering Strait again – this time on skis and in the company of his two sons. The expedition failed when overnight the
coastal ice had carried the sleeping adventurers away into the open
Bering Sea. Shparo, conceding defeat, set off the
rescue beacon, and awaited rescue. A
United States Coast Guard (USCG)
C-130 Hercules was dispatched from
Kodiak to pin down the location. To the horror of the USCG they found approximately 20
polar bears, and the group was feared lost until they were finally spotted, and rescued by USCG helicopters from
Nome. In 1997 a second attempt failed when Nikita, the oldest of Shparo's children, fell through the weak ice and sustained severe
frostbite. In 1998, in the course of the third attempt, Dmitry and Matvey Shparo managed to successfully cross the Bering Strait, becoming the first people to do so by skis and thus securing another spot in the Guinness World Records and personal congratulations from presidents
Clinton and
Yeltsin. In 2005,
Prince Albert of Monaco chose Dmitry Shparo, along with son Matvey as partners and advisers in his April 2006 North Pole dog-sled expedition aimed to highlight
global warming and to commemorate his great-great-grandfather,
Prince Albert I, who made four Arctic trips a century ago. == Disability advocacy ==