On April 19 which was the Orthodox Easter Sunday, it was planned to send our forward party by air to the North Pole. The local inhabitants were celebrating the Day of Reindeer Herders, and the commanders of the Khatanga aviation detachment asked our skydivers to organize a kind of aviation holiday for them. We accepted the idea with pleasure, and on that day a lot of multicolored parachute canopies brightened up the sky over Khatanga. The local schoolchildren were also jumping down with our tandem instructors. Some interesting parachute piloting techniques were shown by our paramotor pilots Mikhail Yagolnikov and Aleksandr Shakovets. The spectators were fascinated. In early evening hours the members of the forward party including journalists, paramotorists and skydiving coordinators were summoned to the airfield for departure. After a quick equipment loading on board the AN-26 airplane, these people who were to make the necessary preparations in order to receive the skydivers on the North Pole, flew out to island Sredny (79° 31.3' N, 91° 08.8' E). After flying for 2,5 hours the airplane landed on a narrow strip of land amidst the Arctic Ocean. After their accommodation in the local hotel this group divided into two parts one of which went to rest, and the other part walked around the island on a sightseeing tour and came across a 
little island named Domashny (Home Island). That islet lost amidst the huge amounts of ice, had become the last refuge for both well-known and unknown explorers of the Arctic. Their names are hewn on their tombstones. Meanwhile the airplane crew was preparing the AN-26 airplane for flying further to the north. We spent several hours waiting for favorable weather conditions and at last the forward party flew to the Ice Airfield drifting in the ocean 140 kilometers away from the geographic North Pole. The landing on the Ice Airfield was performed already the next day - on the 20th of April. Then a long expectation of communication signals endured, and no one could exactly name the current day and hour and the duration of that state of expectation. A low cloud base hindered a flying exploration by the MI-8 helicopters for finding a suitable ice floe in the vicinity of the North Pole where the parachute landing could be carried out. Only a day after the forward party had left Khatanga, it could fly nearest to the North Pole and give the long-awaited signal to the main group of skydivers to take off and fly to the north. All that period the skydivers in Khatanga had been waiting for the signal in full readiness.
The airplane makes another circle and from the height of 1500 meters at a speed of 280 km/h the first 5-man-strong group of skydivers leave the plane, among them specialists in car parachuting and Father Viktor. The airplane climbs to 2500 meters. The main group of skydivers stands in line near the edge of the ramp door and waits for the command to jump. The sharp sound of the siren embarrasses the first rank of the skydivers, but the back rows start moving to the ramp, and the whole mass of skydivers falls down into the abyss. In 35 seconds the sky over the North Pole brightens up with various colors of the parachutes. The polar silence is broken by the enthusiastic shouts of the descending skydivers and their friends meeting them on the surface. All express their emotions in their own way: some shout, others cry, still others dance, and some laugh. Already several minutes later preparations started for a new jump. The skydivers of the forward party and freshmen in skydiving took off in a MI-8 helicopter and made their independent parachute jump down on the North Pole. The main heroes of that skydiving were the 14-year-old boy Yegor Bakalov who made his first independent parachute jump, and Nordzia Bi Mohamad Noor, a Malaysian mother of five children. Then, near the symbolical signpost indicating distances to the various geographical places, everybody celebrated the event with the traditional drinking of champagne and raising of the flags of: the World Youth Games, the National Olympic Committee of Russia, the city of Moscow, and the participating countries - Russia, Malaysia, France, Portugal, Great Britain, Canada, Holland, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, as well as the flags of the organizations that participated in the preparation of the expedition. It is impossible to say how much video recording was done or how many photographs were taken. Two and a half hours passed quickly, everyone wanted to stay as long as possible on the North Pole, but the weather began to worsen which forced the participants of the expedition to gather fast for flying away to the Ice Airfield that was at the distance of 40 minutes flying time. Only five people were left on the ice floe, they began preparing the Malaysian car for evacuation from the North Pole.
In the meantime, in two warm tents on the ice airfield the most frost-resistant part of the group was staying amidst the endless silence and ice hummocks, waiting for a re-establishment of signal communication. Surprisingly enough, among the group were the leader of the Malaysian team Abdul Rahim Bin Dahalan, the television team from Malaysia and Nordziah Bi Mohamad Noor. These southern people stood staunchly that test of a long stay on the ice. At this time of the year the sun is shining constantly there, so the whole period of staying on the ice was like one very long day for us. Meanwhile a day and a night passed. Waiting for an airplane to come we were not wasting the time: we told each other all the parachute stories we knew, a football match was held, and all the ice hummocks around us were explored. All the time we were together with the representative of the Executive Directorate of the World Youth Games Zhanna Sukhareva who had flown to the North Pole in the forward party and then returned to Khatanga among the latest arriving people. This small woman who was unanimously elected by us on the North Pole to be Mrs. North Pole - 98, spent a total of 2,5 days on the polar ice. Only at night on April 22 an AN-74 airplane came to take us, and 6 hours later we were reloading the car and our luggage into the IL-76 which was ready to take off and fly to Moscow. Having said good-bye to the hospitable town of Khatanga, the expedition in full strength went to the terminal point of the whole risky journey - to Moscow. No one felt tired. Everybody was joking, laughing, proposing toasts, exchanging addresses with one another and discussing new travel projects.