Polar Voyages

by Gray, Gordon

  I was due to be met at the airport by Alexei, who works for Victor as his Longyearbyen manager, but he was not there. Victor was also due to arrive that afternoon from the ice station. Then, amid the chaos of hikers, skiers, huge rucksacks, bags of all shapes and sizes, even pulk sledges fighting for space in the small airport arrivals area, I met Malena. Malena was the Polar Quest rep who was there to meet other clients. She saw my Polar Quest bag labels and came over. She was a happy and smiling blonde Norwegian girl, who chatted away while I waited for Alexei and she looked for her other clients. She worked at a hotel in Longyearbyen and does representational work for Polar Quest as well. Malena told me that everyone refers to the ice station as Barneo. Apparently it was a joke made by a radio operator about the weather up there when the station was first set up. He referred to the new station as the ‘Borneo of the north’, or Barneo as it is now called. She told me that there has been bad weather up there and things are disorganised. She gave me Alexei’s mobile number and I called him. He was on his way.

  After some time a breathless Alexei arrived.

  ‘Sorry, it is chaos here.’ He gasped, ‘There have been no flights into or out of Barneo for over four days and the weather at the Pole has been bad for days and is still very bad. There is a big storm up there, Longyearbyen is full of scientists and skiers trying to get up to Barneo, there are no beds anywhere and I am trying to find beds for people who should have gone to Barneo but who are still here.’

  Between Malena and Alexei, I pieced together the situation. Victor was stuck at Barneo and was now very unlikely to get back to Longyearbyen tonight, or even tomorrow. There were a number of skiing expeditions stuck up at Barneo waiting for the weather to clear so they could get back to Spitsbergen. There was also a number of skiing expeditions still out on the ice, up near the pole, and stuck in their tents in the storm. They had been there for three or four days, awaiting rescue by helicopter. In addition, a lot of the scientific work being done out on the ice had been delayed and they are trying to get more scientists out there with their equipment. To make matters worse, the ice runway at Barneo had broken. The floe on which it was built had cracked right across the runway in the storm, rendering it unusable. Victor’s team at Barneo were having to clear snow and ice and make another runway in spite of the bad weather.

  Likewise, there were a lot of expedition people in Longyearbyen waiting to get to Barneo. The welcome dinner that had been programmed for our team that night had been cancelled as Victor would not be back and some of the others on the team had not yet arrived. Alexei did not know where they were or when they would arrive. Alexei is young and enthusiastic, but was struggling with the total uncertainty of everything. He was trying to organise people and beds in town as well as getting the cargo and passengers to go up to Barneo. This of course was difficult as no one knew when the flights would restart. Things did not sound good and I saw my chance of getting to Barneo, never mind the pole, diminishing.

  I had been booked into the Spitsbergen guesthouse, which was in a small settlement called Nybyen about a mile and a half out of Longyearbyen. Alexei said he would drive me there. He then decided, to save time, to get me kitted out straight away and so we went to Vicaar’s warehouse in town, which was on the way. The building was fitted out with big wall racks that were crammed with every type of arctic travel item: tents, bed mats, small boat-shaped sledges called pulks, boots, kayaks, cooking items, food rations and everything in between. There, I met Eugenie, a young and friendly Russian guy who is a polar guide and expert skier and who was Victor’s deputy on our ski trip. He was squatting in the middle of a mountain of items and stopped what he was doing to attend to me. Without any preamble he eyed me up and down, assessed my size, and started handing me things from different piles.

  ‘Here, these are your bed mats, you need two. Here is your pulk, it is old but OK.’

  He passed me an endless chain of various bags and clothes items. I left weighted down by them all and was told to go and try all the clothes on. The only problem was boots. They had none that were my size. We headed off for the guesthouse. Once I had checked in, it became clear that it was more of a hostel for local expeditions than a hotel. Each day snowmobile and skiing trips set off, or arrived back, at the guesthouse, and I saw other expeditions driving off up the snowmobile tracks on the other side of the valley as they headed off into the mountains of the interior.

  Alexei drove off with the promise that he would get me some boots the next day, when the teams in Barneo got back, weather and flights permitting. I settled into a simple room which was warm, had a comfortable bed, and a wash basin, with the main bathroom and showers right across the passage. Faced with the prospect of being there for a few days, I resolved that I had better make it home. The guesthouse had no TV or radio in the rooms, and served no meals other than breakfast.

  Day 3, Tuesday 17 April 2007

  The next morning, after a good sleep and some breakfast, I set off to walk into town. The day was calm and sunny, the scenery spectacular. The steep sides of the valley reached up to snow-topped cliff faces, which peered down from both sides. The deep snow covered everything, including the road, so I slid more than walked down towards the town. On the way Alexei drove past in his van and stopped to pick me up.

  ‘The news from Barneo is not good’, he told me. ‘The new runway has now been broken up by another storm last night. It will now be at least tomorrow night (18th) before any flights can get in or out. Some people still in Longyearbyen are now starting to cancel their ski trips to the pole and trying to get flights back to the mainland as they are running out of time, but the flights back to Oslo are all full. Others are waiting in Longyearbyen to see what happens.There are still teams stuck out on the ice in tents as well as those already in Barneo trying to get out’.

  He dropped me off and I walked to the warehouse to tell Eugenie that the clothes seemed fine but do not forget the boots. He had heard that the weather forecast would be good from Friday (20th) for a few days. That was the planned day for our flight north, so we might be OK. Would Victor get back here before then? I wondered. In the meantime there was nothing to do but wait. I was getting concerned at the lack of any special polar training, as my confidence was dependent upon Victor’s mentoring. As if reading my thoughts Eugenie said,

  ‘Victor will not come back now at all, as he must stay at Barneo to sort things up there. Also the original teams have had to be changed as some of the novices have not arrived. The others in our team now should be a Canadian, who skis in the Canadian arctic, and another guy, but he has yet to arrive too.’

  These did not sound like the beginners Victor promised!

  ‘Maybe I can give you a little training later, if the others turn up’, he added as a throwaway line.

  The idea of going off on the ice with another guide, who did not know me at all, did not sound good. With no polar ice experience and no special training, it seemed folly to embark on a trip with Eugenie and his expert skiers, especially given the weather conditions up there at the moment. I headed back up the road to the guesthouse deep in thought.

  I called Ralf at Polar Quest in Sweden to get their news and views. Their information, which came from Victor’s St Petersburg office, tallied with what Alexei had been telling me. They were also in touch with one of their clients, who was actually stuck in a tent near the pole and had a satellite phone. They said that there would be no flights to Barneo before Thursday night and a number of skiing trips would have to be cancelled. Victor would definitely not be leaving Barneo while this crisis was going on and would not be leading our ski trip. If the trip happened at all, then it would be led by Eugenie but with different skiers as the other novices that Victor had in mind for his small team have failed to appear in Longyearbyen. This was all unwelcome, but it is the Arctic and this is how things are. Everything is governed by the weather. The advice from Ralf was to wait and see. If I got to Barneo, then let Victor decide what I should do then. There was
nothing more I could do, so I walked back down to town and had a burger and a beer in the Spitsbergen hotel.

  Day 4, Wednesday 18 April 2007

  I met up with Alexei in the morning but he had no more definite news.

  ‘The earliest flight will now be Friday, but chances are low. Victor is so heavily involved at Barneo trying to get the people stuck out on the ice safely back to Barneo by helicopter. There is no chance he will be able to leave Barneo’.

  Alexei still had no word of the other two who are meant to be in our expedition team – it appeared that they had not arrived or may have cancelled before getting to Spitsbergen. ‘Eugenie will lead a small team made up from you and two others. The Canadian man should arrive today and another guy.’ Alexei also let slip a small gem.

  ‘The other guy is a Russian skier who knows Eugenie well and has been on many such trips in Siberia.’

  A Siberian skier!

  My trip as originally planned with Victor would definitely not happen. Even the new trip under Eugenie might not happen. If it did, it would be without any training as his guys did not need any.

  I decided that it was time to reassess the whole situation. Firstly, there would now be no training before the trip, as Victor would not be there. Secondly, Victor would not be leading the expedition out on the ice. Thirdly, the flights up to Barneo were far from certain and ski trips are a secondary priority to the scientists and their equipment. So there was no way of knowing when, or even if, the ski trip would go up to Barneo. Nor were there any plans for returning to Longyearbyen. I had to be back in Longyearbyen for my flight to Oslo on the Wednesday (25th).

  Perhaps now I really had to decide whether to scrub the whole thing and start thinking about getting home, or wait and go with Eugenie and the Russian, whenever they could get to Barneo. Or, alternatively, see if I can find some other way to get to the pole, perhaps on my own. Eugenie still seems to think I am an experienced skier like the others. My inexperience could have serious consequences in the event of bad weather, a fall, or an accident on the ice. Even if my skills and fitness matched theirs, which I highly doubted, Eugenie was planning on having to ski over 50 kms, with pulks, over three days. My sole aim of this whole trip was to get to the North Pole, and the basis for the trip was to do it with Victor as a short ski trip. Now, that had all changed.

  The weather and subsequent problems with flights to and from Barneo had now put any chance of even getting that far in severe doubt. Also my end date of 25th meant that unless I got to Barneo in the next couple of days, there would not be any point in going at all – if the weather changed for the worse again, then I would not be able to get back in time. If I missed the booked flight back to Oslo I would not be able to get another flight for days and would have to buy new tickets. Time was running out. What had started as a seemingly ‘safe little jaunt’ in the bar of the icebreaker, was rapidly coming apart.

  There were stories emerging of a couple of ski teams out on the ice, who had been stuck in a tent in the storm for three or four days and had never got to the pole at all. They literally could not move from their sleeping bags and had run out of food and fuel by the time they were rescued. I decided to ring Victor’s office in St Petersburg and discuss the situation with them. A lady there, called Victoria, told me that they were having huge difficulties sorting out which ski teams would be able to get to Barneo with all their pulks, tents etc and it might take some days yet before it was all sorted out. That was assuming that the weather up there improved and, more importantly, that the ice runway froze over.

  ‘Victoria, if I decide to cancel the skiing part of the trip and just want to travel singly to Barneo, in the hope of getting to the North Pole by helicopter, will it be easier for you to get me on a flight to Barneo?’

  ‘Yes’ she immediately replied, “It will ensure you will get up to Barneo with the scientists ahead of any of the ski expeditions. If that is what you want to do then I will tell Victor at Barneo and get his agreement.’

  She called me back later to say that Victor agreed with my plan and that it would be better for me to do it that way.

  ‘Will that cause any problem for Eugenie?’

  ‘No. He will still go with the other two skiers when we can get him on a flight.’

  I set off for town to find Alexei. I found him talking to some clients in the Radisson hotel and I told him of my discussion with Victor’s office and my decision to change my plan. By lunchtime and after more phone calls, Alexei confirmed that the first flight up to Barneo would be on Friday 20th, the day after tomorrow. Alexei got a call to say that Victor had arranged for another Antonov 74 aircraft to fly up from Moscow to try and help clear the backlog. They would then have two planes operating for twenty-four hours. Priority would be given to scientists and those going singly, but all the ski trips must wait. All this was assuming that the new runway froze properly and that the weather settled down for a few days to allow it all to happen.

  I walked back to the guest house feeling happier that I had made the right decision and feeling comfortable with it. I might not even get as far as Barneo, or I could get there and still get stuck. Time would tell.

  That evening I saw Alexei. He told me that Eugenie, the Russian and the Canadian would wait and leave for Barneo whenever they could. However, Alexei also told me that the weather was still bad at Barneo and the runway was still not finished. The temperature was only -9 degrees Celcius, so the ice was not freezing fast enough. It was still not looking good for anyone.

  Day 5, Thursday 19 April 2007

  I met up with Alexei in town and he wanted to know if I was still happy with my decision to cancel the ski trip and try to get to Barneo alone. I told him yes, that I had discussed it with Victoria and that Victor knew all this and had agreed.

  ‘That is very good. Actually, I spoke to Victor last night and I know he agrees’. He continued, ‘We now hope to start the flights tonight and four flights initially will be planned. I am planning for you to go on flight No. 4 which should be sometime on Friday afternoon.We do not know yet when the ski parties will go but it will certainly be after that. Victor will arrange for you to return to Spitsbergen probably on Sunday (22nd).’

  This was great news. Things were starting to look up. Alexei had still not acquired my proper arctic boots but he promised to hire a pair for me the next day.

  In the end there were no flights on Thursday night. More bad weather.

  Day 6, Friday 20th April 2007

  At about 2 a.m. I was woken by the sound of car doors slamming and people talking outside. Perhaps this was the first flight in from Barneo? In the morning, another bright and sunny day, I asked the receptionist but she said, ‘No, it was a flight from the mainland that arrived late’. She did not know whether any Barneo flights had gotten away but thought not. I said I was due to check out and go to Barneo today, but did not know yet what was happening. She said I could use the room until I knew.

  If there were no flights to Barneo last night, then the chances for my flight up today were slim. At 11.30 a.m. the hotel housekeeper was banging on my door telling me to check out. I was now getting into a tight corner. I knew that there were no hotel rooms anywhere in town and I could not get a flight out to TromsØ, even if I wanted to, as they were all full as well. My only hope now was to get to Barneo in the next twenty-four hours otherwise I was going to be sleeping on the floor somewhere. A strange thought occurred to me that the only possibility for a bed tonight was at the North Pole!

  I checked out and spent the rest of the morning sitting hopefully in the reception building of the guesthouse reading a book. I was deep into a chapter when I became aware of someone rushing in through the door. I looked up. It was Alexei. ‘The flights are starting today.’ He called, ‘We think the runway may be OK and the weather is better, so you will be on a flight this afternoon. Do not go anywhere and be ready to leave when I come for you.’ He dashed out and drove off back down the road. Hooray! It might still happen.
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br />   Shortly after 2 p.m, Alexei returned and I climbed into his truck. Two other guys, who looked like scientists, were already sitting in the back. We finally headed for the airport but even now my plans were nearly scuppered by another passenger that Alexei had to pick up. It was a woman who caused mayhem by being late. She had gone off on a morning tourist trip, against Alexei’s advice, and was late back. Alexei was furious. When she did arrive about ten minutes later, she told us that she had forgotten her reading glasses and had left them in the tour car. She insisted on keeping everyone waiting at her hotel until her glasses were found and returned! We waited and waited as time slipped by. Alexei had promised me that we would get to the plane on time, but had also said that the plane would not wait if we were late. When the glasses were finally returned she did not offer one word of apology or thanks to anyone. This selfish woman very nearly caused us all to miss the plane!

  With departure time fast approaching, we arrived at the airport and found the departure shed full of people, with an especially noisy American group in front of us with their pulks and back packs – all very ‘gung-ho’ confident, loud and cocky. We were the last to check in, and no sooner have we checked in than they started to board the plane. Alexei rushed back into the departure area with a pair of boots. ‘Your boots, I did not forget!’ He handed them to me and rushed out again. I had completely forgotten about them. I tried one on and it was OK. The other one was not. It was too small. I then noticed that they were not only different sizes but not even a matching pair! By pulling out some of the insulating felt insole, which was there to keep my feet warm, I got it to fit!