Arctic expedition loses Ford F-150 through ice near Taloyoak, Nunavut

An overland expedition that left Yellowknife earlier this month says it successfully madeit all the way toResolute Bay, Nunavut but it lost one of its seven vehicles through the ice on the way back to Cambridge Bay.

In an update Thursday, The Transglobal Car Expedition said no one was injured when one of its vehicles was "unfortunately lost" through "rapidly shifting ice on a heavy current."

The team did not say which of the vehicles it lost it took three modified Ford F-150s and four amphibious vehicles but Nunavut RCMP confirmed it was one of the Ford trucks that went through the ice.

RCMP said they got the call about the incident, northwest of Taloyoak, early Thursday morning and they called Nunavut Emergency Management for a response.

The expedition team says it is working to recover the vehicle.

A spokesperson for GoodGear, the Swiss non-profit parent company behind the expedition, said no one from the team was available for an interview Friday.

The expedition claims it is the first-ever overland wheeled journey from the continental shelf of North America to the High Arctic. Andrew Comrie-Picard, a Canadian member of the expedition, previously told CBC News the trip to Resolute would be a month-long prerun for a full expedition that would take place next year.

Once that trip gets underway, the team will travel from the southern tip of South America to the North Pole, then down through Greenland, Europe, Asia and Africa. They'll then go across Antarctica and return to their starting point in South America. It'll take them a year and a half.

Before the incident, the trip got a nod in the Nunavut legislature.

On Tuesday, Quttiktuq MLA David Akeeagok told his colleagues, in Inuktitut, that "some kind of a vehicle" had arrived in Grise Fiord that day unexpectedly, noting "it was good to see these new things come around" and "it's not something we see every day."

The expedition made headlines at the start of the month for landing in Yellowknife on a Russian charter plane.

In its media statement, the TransGlobal Car Expedition said losing a vehicle through the ice would inform the safety measures needed for the full expedition. It also said global warming was making travel over ice more dangerous for Indigenous communities and "other ice travellers."