Excerpted from the December 1999 AOPA Pilot article:Postcards: On Top
of the World about tandem parachute jumps at the North Pole:

We then flew in the several An-12s to the island of Graham Bell, which at
650 miles south is the nearest Russian base to the Pole.  The island is
named after Alexander, who -- among other things -- was president of the
National Geographic Society when the island was discovered in 1899.  Here
we slept in huge converted fuel tanks to avoid being eaten by polar bears.  
They gave me the best accommodations in the place; I had the only tank
with an attached "outhouse.  "Trouble was, my luxury "bathroom" wasn't
heated.  When your toilet seat is a crisp 40 degrees below zero, you don't
spend a lot of time reading magazines.  I unscrewed the toilet seat from
its plywood base, brought it into the tank, and hung it on the radiator.  
When the base commander visited (it was his place) and saw the toilet seat
on the radiator, he literally got down on his hands and knees and kissed
my feet.  He'd lived there for two years and hadn't figured this out yet.