Dixie Dansercoer

Dixie (Dirk) Dansercoer (born 12 July 1962, Nieuwpoort, Belgium) is a Belgian explorer, endurance athlete and photographer. He has held records or won prizes for high altitude mountain biking, windsurfing, ultramarathon running and expedition film-making.

As a student, he spent a year in Moscow, Idaho, United States with AFS Intercultural Programs in 1980.

In 1997-98, he made a record-breaking crossing of Antarctica with Alain Hubert. In 2006, the European Space Agency commissioned Hubert and him to measure snow cover in the Arctic to calibrate measurements taken with the CryoSat 2 satellite. The two left Arctic Cape, Siberia on 1 March 2007. They reached the North Pole after 55 days and Greenland in another 51 days, the first time anyone had walked from Siberia to Greenland. In 2008, he led the 'In the wake of the Belgica expedition', a re-enactment of the de Gerlache expedition. In 2011-12 he ski-kited with Sam Deltour on the Antarctic ice cap on a pioneering 5,013 kilometres (3,115 mi) circular trajectory. In 2014, Dansercour and Eric McNair-Landry completed the first full circumnavigation on the Greenland ice cap with 4,040 kilometres (2,510 mi) as final distance. During all of his expeditions parallel scientific missions were executed.

He provides polar guiding services through his companies Polar Circles and Polar Experience, with trips to both the Arctic Polar Regions and Antarctica.

References

• Explorers Attempt Longest Arctic Crossing. National Geographic Magazine
• Interview: 100 days on thin ice. New Scientist, 17 November 2007 p. 54-5

External links

• Polar Circles
• Polar Experience