by Chris Bray
‘Yes, Chris? What is it? I’m standing in front of a public meeting of a thousand people here, and I’m just about to speak to them.’
I wavered. ‘Oh, er, it’s fine, I’ll call you back.’
‘No, Chris, what is it?’ I hastily explained the conundrum. ‘No worries. That shouldn’t be a problem. Leave it with me. I’ll do everything in my power to get your kayaks out. Don’t you worry about it. Now I really have to go. Goodbye.’
With our on-again, off-again expedition apparently back on again, we saw no need to further complicate things by missing our scheduled flight north the next morning. Our PACs could follow us just as soon as they were released—meanwhile, we had other things to attend to. As we jetted towards Edmonton—back in the harsh realities of economy class—we went over our shopping list. Edmonton boasts the world’s largest shopping mall, and we still had several things to buy.
‘West Edmonton Mall? Yes, it’s huge!’ Our taxi driver beamed, clearly proud of his city’s claim to fame. Wedged in the back with our excessive luggage, we took off towards our next surprisingly cheap—and probably surprisingly nasty—hotel. The taxi left Edmonton behind and we found ourselves cruising along what looked alarmingly like some kind of interstate freeway. We would have asked him where he was taking us, but our powers of speech had been temporarily removed as we started in awe at the exponentially increasing cab fare metre. It was like a horror movie—we didn’t want to watch, but at the same time we just couldn’t turn away. The $50 mark came and went, and still all we could see outside was an open expanse of nothing.
‘So, our hotel’s not in Edmonton then?’ I managed.
‘No.’ We looked at each other, unsure of how to react to this news. ‘It’s in West Edmonton, next to the mall,’ he added. ‘Not far now.’
Ignoring the realisation that if we’d factored in the taxi fare to the cost of our hotel we could probably have stayed in a luxury five-star penthouse closer to the airport, we were pleasantly surprised when we arrived. Gazing at the city lights twinkling through the window of our room as we sat munching Pringles chips for dinner, it suddenly occurred to me that this would be the last ‘night’ we’d be seeing in a long, long time. Tomorrow we’d fly to Victoria Island, bathed in perpetual sunlight for at least the first month.
The taxi ride the next morning back to the ‘airport’ was even more traumatic than the one on the way in. ‘No, no,’ the driver corrected us, ‘First Air does not fly from the main Edmonton airport, they operate out of a little hangar out of town.’ Fair enough—he evidently knew what he was talking about.
Our confidence slowly deteriorated over the next twenty minutes until, looking out of the window, I whispered ‘Are we—’
‘Going in circles?’ Clark finished my sentence. We were, and had been for some time. It soon became apparent that the only thing with a clear sense of direction was the fare metre. $65, $66, $67 …
When he finally pulled to the kerb, it was only to ask a passer-by for directions. ‘The First Air hangar? Umm … yeah, I have seen it somewhere. Try a left back at the crossroads.’
After another ten minutes of driving, at last the taxi driver pointed triumphantly behind him, ‘There it is!’ He threw a U-turn and moments later we found ourselves, with our bags, standing in front of a derelict shed, watching the taxi drive away. He was right, there was a sign saying ‘First Air’ clinging to the rusting corrugated walls, and so after knocking on all the doors, we sat down and waited.
‘We are 30 minutes early, I guess,’ Clark reassured anyone who was listening.
I checked our tickets. I looked at the narrow, dilapidated gravel airstrip across the road. I looked back at the tickets. ‘Clark,’ I began. ‘Clark … it says we’re going to be on a Boeing 737 jet—they’re pretty big.’ I glanced at the threadbare windsock swinging limply from a bent pole marking the runway. ‘Oh, shit,’ I fumbled frantically in the many bags for my mobile, ‘this can’t be right!’
We didn’t have the number for Edmonton taxis; in fact, we didn’t have the number for anything in Edmonton, and nowhere was open anyway. ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes … f*#king taxi driver!!’
Desperate times called for desperate measures. I phoned the only place that would be open at this time of the day: Australia. Thirteen thousand kilometres away, my friend started to track down the Edmonton taxi phone number online. ‘Here comes someone …’ Clark was staring intently at a car driving up the otherwise deathly quiet street towards us. ‘Hey—it’s a taxi! It’s our taxi, the same guy!’
The driver stepped out. Our first instinct was to attack him on sight, but before we had a chance, he’d popped the boot and was bodily throwing our bags inside. ‘I just realised this isn’t the right place, guys!’
We burst inside Edmonton’s main airport, just in time to hear our names called over the PA system. ‘Mr Bray and Mr Carter, please proceed immediately to Gate 23. Mr Bray and …’
‘Oh my God!’ We joined the obscenely long queue as it trickled slowly through security check-in.
‘Hold up, guys, what have you got in the bags?’ The officer patted our submersibles.
‘Oh, just, cameras and umm … stuff.’ We were sweating. He could tell something was making us really nervous. The PA crackled into life again. ‘Mr Bray and Mr Carter—your plane is ready for an immediate departure. Please proceed as quickly as possible to …’
‘That’s us they are calling for,’ I pleaded.
He didn’t believe me—clearly this was a common escape tactic used by smugglers. We flung open our backpacks and the officer’s eyebrows rose as he gazed at all our (evidently stolen) electronics. ‘Okay, that’s fine.’ He looked past us. ‘Next!’
We ran for it. As we tore towards Gate 23, the attendant pointed through a little door outside. ‘It’s on the tarmac—hurry!’ We scrambled up the staircase onto the plane, to be greeted by a smiling flight attendant.
‘Oh, phew … lucky they aren’t pissed-off with us,’ I whispered, and then, turning the corner we both stared down a plane-length of angry passengers staring right back at us.
The aircraft started taxiing towards the runway even before we’d made it to our seats. We cursed the taxi driver one last time for good measure, and then both hid behind the pages of the in-flight magazine, trying to pretend we didn’t exist.
After refuelling in Kugluktuk, our plane left Canada’s northern coastline behind, and flew out over the frozen expanse of the Arctic Ocean. Through the cabin window, we pointed excitedly at the great tears in the ice sheets—endless cracks or ‘leads’ revealing the frigid, inky water below. In the winter when the ice is somewhat thicker, supplies are actually trucked from the mainland to the Arctic Archipelago. Suddenly, I elbowed Clark. ‘There it is!’ I pointed. ‘Victoria Island!’
Until now, our mental image of the island had been based on a total of about ten or fifteen photographs. There were precious few images around and most of ours had been emailed to us by an Australian couple who had been trying to sail their yacht through the Northwest Passage before the oncoming winter forced them to winter-over in Cambridge Bay. As we approached the island now, though, it looked, I thought, very much like it had been used for repeated nuclear testing. A flat, brown, gravel-strewn, featureless wasteland. Clark’s mouth hung open. ‘I guess that’s Cambridge Bay then …’ We began our descent above a tiny clutter of brightly coloured roofs huddled tightly together in this vast void of nothingness.
Just as we were starting to wonder if there was anything alive down there, we caught sight of people busying themselves down at the airport. Moments later, we stepped off the plane and into what nine months ago had been nothing more than a fanciful, far-off dream. It was 11 July 2005, and finally we—two Aussie boys—were standing in the Arctic. We had no kayaks, but we, at least, were here.
CAMBRIDGE BAY, VICTORIA ISLAND
In my pocket I had one phone number—that of Doug Stern, the legendary ‘White Inuit’ of Victoria Island. My very
first contact on the island had been when I’d called up their general store, Kitikmeot Supplies, months ago. The manager, Keith, had regularly answered my questions on everything from the weather through to mosquito conditions. However, it hadn’t taken long before Doug’s name came up. ‘Oh, yes, he’s quite a character,’ Keith had told me. ‘He spends most of his time out “on the land”; he’s even guided expeditions down in Antarctica!’
Doug, as it turned out when I’d eventually got hold of him, was more than just a wealth of outdoor information—he was also an incredibly generous man. ‘I’ll probably be out managing the national park on Ellesmere Island by July,’ he told me, ‘but I’ll leave you the key to my house, and you can use it as your launch pad.’ It was an honour that we were thrilled to accept.
So, not surprisingly then, when I dialled Doug’s number from the airport there was no answer. ‘Well … I guess we’re walking,’ Clark said, stretching his arms before shouldering his backpack and picking up one of our four 28-kilogram bags in each hand.
We didn’t get very far before a 4WD pulled up beside us. ‘Hey, you must be the two Oz-tralians? I’m Frank, hop in!’
Doug’s house was just incredible. A dog-sled lay on the balcony, the roof was adorned with countless caribou and muskox antlers, and the doorway dangled with whale bones, hoofs and other decorations we weren’t game to even try to identify.
‘G’day, boys!’ The Australian voice caught us off guard, and we spun around. There, not 3 metres from us, stood Santa—merry twinkling eyes, flowing white beard and all. I guess it’s not all that surprising, I thought, we’re as near as dammit to the North Pole. ‘I’m Phil—from the Aussie yacht stuck in the ice over there,’ he said, shaking our hands heartily, glancing at Doug’s house behind us. ‘The only house in Cambridge Bay without running water, flushing toilet or heating,’ Phil laughed jollily, ‘but Doug doesn’t need it, he pretty much lives off the land.’
For a house without heating, it was surprisingly warm inside. Fur lined the doors to seal them, and the rooms were so crammed full of interesting artefacts that we wouldn’t have noticed the cold even if we were freezing. Feathers, fossils, fox-pelts, photographs, skulls, bear claws—all with little Post-it notes stuck next to them reminding Doug where each piece in his museum originated from. ‘Oh, that’s not a part of his museum,’ Phil corrected me as I marvelled at some genuine caribou-skin clothes. ‘Doug uses them. He made them, too …’
Word that ‘the two Oz-tralians’ had arrived spread quickly around the little community of 1500 people. Every time we returned to the house after being shown around town, we’d find a multitude of scribbled letters pinned to Doug’s door:
Chris & Clark! BBQ tomorrow night at my place. Alex.
Chris & Clark—Just a reminder that you’re both invited to my place tonight for a get-together. Matt.
Everyone—absolutely everyone—was just so incredibly friendly. Quickly we had more dinner invites and offers of accommodation than there were days to allocate them to; however, on that first night Clark and I were itching to test our gear in real Arctic conditions. At around midnight we walked 4 kilometres out of town, unfurled our Exped mats directly onto the tundra, lofted our sleeping bags on top and got in—without the complication of a tent.
A few hours later, I opened a cautious eye. My face felt slightly sunburnt. I checked my watch. It was 3 am, and the sun still hung blindingly in the bright blue sky. Blinking, I rolled over and peered at Clark. He was sound asleep, his sleeping bag encrusted with a thin layer of ice, and 100 metres behind him, a huge shaggy animal was lumbering toward us.
I sat bolt upright. ‘Clark!!’ It was our first muskox—a massive bison-like animal with dreadlocks. Victoria Island is home to one of the world’s densest populations of these ice-age buffaloes. We’d read up on them—if you approach a herd they will usually clump together forming a defensive circle, young hiding in the middle, surrounded by an impenetrable fortress of formidable horns. Lone bulls, however, can be dangerous. They have been known to charge, gore and even kill people, especially ambitious photographers who like to get too close. I glanced nervously around, looking for the rest of this one’s family. He was alone, and the single udder hanging beneath him hinted that he wasn’t female. Great, and here we were, both incapacitated, zipped-up like grubs inside mummy bags.
Clark flopped himself up into a sitting position, and the woolly beast stopped, put his head down, and instead of charging, started munching idly on the tundra. Relieved, we went back to studying the insides of our eyelids while the sun incessantly bore down upon us.
The perpetual daylight was a little disconcerting. As we lay there trying to go back to sleep, we couldn’t shrug the feeling that we were being lazy, sleeping in, and that it must already be mid morning. Who cares? we decided. So long as we’d had enough sleep, it was time to get up and declare the start of a new day. It was quite a revelation—time became meaningless, and we were free to warp it as we wished. If we wanted there to be ten days per week, all we had to do was remember to have dinner more often. As bizarre as this sounds, some expeditions do choose to operate on a distorted clock, enjoying the exaggerated ‘daily distance covered’ that comes from realising a 36-hour day. As we’d be doing regular live interviews back home while on the trip, we had seriously considered setting our clocks back to good ol’ Aussie time to make life easier. This would, however, put us out of sync with any pilots or anyone else we might need to deal with during the expedition, so we’d decided to stick with ‘Canadian Mountain Time’. Still, it was awesome to have the freedom to bend time while still in the safety of Cambridge Bay.
This thrill, unfortunately, was short-lived. Having hiked all the way back into town to begin our new day, we stood, insulted, in front of the supermarket that contained our breakfast. ‘Closed,’ the sign read. ‘Open 9 am.’ Dammit! If local time governed our meals, then local time governed our lives.
Keeping our fingers crossed that our PACs would be on their way within a day or so, we wasted no time in preparing for our departure. We collected the enormous stockpile of food we’d had sent ahead from Edmonton weeks earlier, and, sitting on the dog-sled on Doug’s verandah, started measuring it all out into drybags. Twelve kilograms of milk powder, 6.5 kilograms of rolled oats, 26 kilograms of various nuts—all had to be divided into nine identical weekly portions. Eventually, gorged on handfuls of leftover cashews, we turned our milk-powder-ringed eyes towards our 16 kilograms of chocolate. ‘When we said we wanted “blocks” of chocolate,’ Clark said to the video camera, ‘we didn’t mean it literally.’ The formidable stack of four solid 5-kilogram slabs truly was a sight to behold, and it didn’t take us long to realise we were going to have 4 kilograms left over.
‘Break a bit off, let’s quality-test it,’ I suggested, already salivating. Easier said than done, and over half an hour later we still hadn’t found a way to break into it. Banging it against the edge of a large rock barely dented it, and pre-heated knives couldn’t cut it. We even tried hacksawing, but only succeeding in gumming up the saw blade. Short of drilling a hole and inserting a small explosive, we were running out of ideas. Exasperated, I brought out our tomahawk and took a hearty swing at it. Brittled by the Arctic’s natural freezer, chocolate shrapnel exploded all around us and the small crowd of Inuit children who’d gathered fell upon the pieces with glee before we could react. Eventually, using a hammer and screwdriver as a jackhammer, we finally reduced all 20 kilograms into varying degrees of chocolate rubble. It wasn’t until several days later, however, after borrowing the only set of weigh-scales on the island—from the post office—that we managed to finally divide this mess into our 130 individual daily portions, each weighing exactly 123 grams.
We were grossly unacclimatised, wearing almost every layer of clothing we’d brought and still shivering. Rugged up in our puffy goose-down jackets, we felt increasingly ridiculous as we shuffled past girls stripped down to their minimalist summer kit, some even wearing miniski
rts, enjoying the hottest day any of them could remember as the temperature soared to a blistering 15 degrees Celsius.
Every day I called up and gingerly pressed the lawyer, Craig, for news on our PACs, and every day our hopes were raised and then dashed. Every potential solution ended in another problem. Even when Craig located a trucker for us who was willing—with permission—to cross the picket line and collect our container, the handling company refused to fill in the paperwork to hand over ‘ownership’ of the container to the new trucking company. In fact, they were even starting to pretend we didn’t exist. ‘I’m just leaving messages after messages, and no one’s getting back to us …’ Unable to look the video camera in the eye, I just stared dejectedly at Doug’s little red phone as anger started to give way to despair.
Thankfully, we didn’t have much free time to ponder our fate, as each day was filled with meeting new people, learning new skills and getting everything ready. Early on, Alex Stuit—president of the Ikaluktutiak Paddling Association in Cambridge Bay—threw a fantastic welcoming party in our honour, attended by dozens of unfamiliar faces who soon became like family. After we’d washed down thick Canadian T-bone steaks with mugs of beer, Alex ushered us over to meet someone. ‘This man,’ he began, ‘has dog-sledded all the way to the North Pole, using a sextant—before the days of GPS …’
For a member of the first ever confirmed party to reach the North Pole without resupply, Brent Boddy was surprisingly quiet and unassuming, and we warmed to him at once. Although tall and lean, he wasn’t exactly built like an ox as I had assumed all polar explorers were, but beneath his greying hair, his eyes burned with an energetic intensity. ‘Paddle over to my cabin and we’ll go ice-fishing,’ he offered. We agreed at once, ignoring the fact that we didn’t have any kayaks—we were already starting to adopt the Inuit philosophy of ‘Oh, it’ll be okay.’ Up here, given time, everything did seem to have a habit of working itself out.
