The Ice Balloon – A doomed journey in the Arctic (2010)

The article says simply, "Early on the morning of the fourteenth, the fog thickened and the car began to hit the ice again. Then the balloon rose 'to a great height,' Andrée wrote. They released some of the gas to lower themselves, then, a little after eight, apparently resigned to disappointment, they landed and 'jumped out of the balloon . . . worn out and famished.' They had been aloft for sixty-five hours and thirty-three minutes, had travelled five hundred and seventeen miles, and were about three hundred miles north of where they had started; that is, about three hundred miles south of the Pole."

So the balloon was still fully functional, and the rest of the account makes clear they had plenty of provisions left (and after all had only been in the air for a few days) so why did they embark on their perilous and ultimately deadly journey across the ice?