Britain's Prince Harry was briefly stranded at a Russian base in the Arctic because of a broken ice runway.
The younger son of heir to the throne, Prince Charles, joined a group of wounded British servicemen late last month for the first part of a challenging expedition headed for the North Pole.
But the trek lasted a day longer than planned because of the runway problems at Camp Barneo.
"He was due to leave just over a day ago," a royal spokesman said Friday. "He's been delayed a day. … It required some rebuilding of the runway."
The trekkers, two of them amputees, are aiming to raise money to help wounded soldiers rebuild their lives.
Barneo is a tourist destination established in 2002 on floating ice near the North Pole by the Russian Geographic Society. Its airstrip is built from scratch every year by a flown-in bulldozer.
A Barneo representative said periodic cracks in the ice under the runway are a regular occurrence, Interfax reported.
(Reuters, MT)
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