Dixie Dansercoer

Dirk "Dixie" Dansercoer (12 July 1962 – 7 June 2021) was a Belgian explorer, endurance athlete and photographer. He held records or won prizes for high altitude mountain biking, windsurfing, ultramarathon running, and expedition filmmaking.

File:Dixie Dansercoer 01.jpg

Dixie Dansercoer returning from first-ever Siberia-Greenland crossing via the North Pole with Alain Hubert. Brussels airport, June 20, 2007

Biography

• In 1980, as a student, Dansercoer spent a year in Moscow, Idaho, United States with AFS Intercultural Programs.
• In 1997–98, he made a record-breaking crossing of Antarctica with Alain Hubert.
• In 2006, the European Space Agency commissioned him and Hubert 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, Dansercoer 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 provided polar guiding services through his companies Polar Circles and Polar Experience, with trips to both the Arctic polar regions and Antarctica.

Dixie Dansercoer co-founded with Eric Bonnem and a few explorers (including Gilles Elkaïm, Philippe Frey, etc.) Expeditions Unlimited in 2011.

Together with ultra-runners Erik Michels and Christoph Vandewiele, Dixie Dansercoer also co-founded Polar Running Expeditions in 2018, a new type of fast-paced polar expeditions.

Death

Dansercoer died on 7 June 2021 during an expedition in Greenland. He died after falling into a glacier gorge. It is unclear if his body can be recovered.

External links

• Polar Circles
• Polar Experience
• Polar Running Expeditions
• Listen to an interview with Dixie