by Chris Bray
I spent the entire day hanging on to the back of the cart, either pushing it slowly up, leaning it to the left or right to help guide it around pointy rocks the size of cars, or trying desperately to slow it down as it bounced and scraped its way down into ditches and valleys. There were of course also repeated sessions of pulling the cart backwards and forwards for yet another twenty-point turn to try and change course by 90 degrees in order to follow less suicidal routes.
Clark spent all day at the front wheels doing the same thing. Forget about ‘hauling’—we manhandled the cart all day, and we are now utterly, utterly exhausted, and our hands sprained and bruised, much like our feet. We forced our dilapidated Nugget over terrain today that we were both sure it would not survive, but we had no choice. We dropped it off ledges, we rolled it right up and over 70-centimetre spiky rock corners to avoid even more deadly ones, we lowered it down several landslide chutes filled with huge boulders, grimacing as the wheels bent this way and that, watching the whole metal frame skew and twist, both us and the cart squeaking and groaning in pain. It became a case of ‘Just go for it … it’s the best we’ve got. If it breaks, it breaks. We’ll just have to find a way to fix it.’ Ayuuknakmat.
Although the PAC-o-meter revealed a measly 4.22 kilometres (and only 3 kilometres by the GPS) we set up camp a little early tonight as we have zero energy left. Right in front of us is another torturous descent and climb, although there seem to be grassy patches we might be able to reach tomorrow. I really can’t wait to get out of this terrain. It’s pretty scary, stressful stuff.
Google Earth shows it gets greener ahead, and then it becomes strangely patterned with lines. Maybe it’s a green, swishing grassy field, with a series of neatly mown pathways along it?
DAY 52: Broken men
We waved the mouse pointer repeatedly around on Google Earth like the glass on a Ouija board, pretending we could divine some meaning from the blurred images, and magically devised a route for today that seemed to offer the smoothest, flattest, most PAC-friendly path possible. The result was, as it turned out, the most horrible, rough, boulder-filled, PAC-murdering terrain we’ve ever seen—yet, alarmingly, it probably was still the best option out there.
As we harnessed up, Clark pointed out a herd of muskox lazing around, lying beside the grassy riverbank down which we were about to haul. As we rolled towards them they begrudgingly got to their feet, and eyed us blandly for some minutes, great tufts of their woolly coats wafting and flapping from their unkempt, shaggy backs. Hemmed in by steep cliffs, we couldn’t really divert from our path, so we edged closer until they began rubbing their eye glands on their forelegs in warning—and then we stopped. At a complete stalemate, we just had to wait until—possibly aided by a few of our wolf-like howls—they backed off a few paces, regained composure and lay back down and we managed to sidle past them.
Not five minutes after this, an arctic fox bounded up towards us, pausing every few seconds to sniff the air, cock his head inquisitively and leap a little closer, his bright little eyes sparkling with curiosity. Eventually he got close enough that our smell must have burnt his delicate nostrils and he scampered off.
As the wind died, the mosquitoes descended upon us in such numbers we just couldn’t stand still. We slapped ourselves, shook them off our hands, snorted them out of our noses, spat them out of our mouths, and fished them out of our coffee with our grimy black fingers. More maddening still, The Nugget has recently developed a pronounced desire to always veer to the left of its own accord, which is particularly infuriating when, like today for instance, we really needed to arc right to avoid a slushy region. We strained sideways on our ropes, almost walking crab-like in the last few desperate metres before I flung my hiking poles down in disgust and went back to ‘sort it out’.
Just as I was about to give the frame a shove to skew it back parallel, I caught sight of the rim on Clark’s side. It was buckled on one edge. A crack had run down into the rim, splintering the epoxy bonding.
‘Oh no—look at that!’ My heart sank. It was exactly what I’d feared might develop after our incident with the rapids. We must have banged a pre-weakened part yesterday in all that hellish boulder terrain, and the damage had now spread. Our options for repair were very limited, and after assessing the situation we decided to leave it for today and see if it continued to worsen. ‘We’ll just make sure we take it easy over any rocks today.’
We hauled onwards, slowing down as a dramatic landscape slid into view around the corner. We shot tentative ‘surely not’ glances at each other as the scene deteriorated. We stopped.
Basically we were sealed between impossible cliffs on each side, with no option but to continue hauling right into a trap. We’d have to negotiate a shocking jumble of boulders (which had clearly once fallen from the cliffs on either side), and then descend through still more boulders into another valley. High on each side, the cliff faces were scattered with house-sized hunks of rock that looked like they’d been snap-frozen for no apparent reason in the middle of falling, while others teetered on the edge, and still more lay at the base, with a recently crumbled scar of shattered rock behind them. A lone rough-legged hawk cried its mournful wail above to complete the scene. Typical.
And so it became the kind of day where we just had to suck up our emotions and keep going, the terrain and boulders getting steadily worse and worse, until we found ourselves pushing and pulling the PAC over incomprehensibly stupid boulders. Bounce, bounce, slide sideways, bounce, grate, scrape, creak, groan, bounce, crunch, thud, bounce, creak, *SPLINTER*! I let out an agonised moan the instant the sound of our splintering rim reached my ears: even before I knew what had happened, I felt its pain.
We both hurried over and shook our heads, refusing to believe it. The edge of the rim had evidently landed heavily on a large boulder, sending splits and cracks right up through the structure of the rim like lightning bolts. It wasn’t even the same rim as before. We still had several hundred metres of boulders to traverse ahead, and we had no option but to unload the cart and portage all our gear, one bag at a time, to the ‘safe zone’—trying not to break a leg as we staggered around the boulder field. Not that breaking a leg and being flown out wouldn’t have its advantages, we both mused, only half jokingly.
It was a real low point, and I accidently overheard Clark confiding into his video camera, ‘It just keeps on going. I just want to go home. I’ve had enough. There are only so many bad things that we can try and overcome.’ While I knew we both felt this way inside, it scared and shocked me to the core to hear Clark actually say it—if only privately to his video camera. The plunging effect it had on my morale was a real eye-opener as to the importance of maintaining our false optimistic exterior, just to help each other get through.
After the first portage we scrambled up a landslide chute to the top of the cliff to see what lay ahead: more boulders. Yay. On the way back to The Nugget, Clark set the GPS to point towards the far side of the island, still 168 kilometres away. He turned around and followed the arrow. ‘At this speed … walking … it says it’ll only take us 49 hours,’ he announced pointedly. As we reloaded The Nugget, we seriously began considering the practicality of just shoving some food and safety gear into an Ortlieb bag and heading off, on foot. We could be there in a few days, bringing 30 kilograms instead of 300.
We hauled onwards. The rest of the day we were broken men, barely speaking. When we did, it was without energy or emotion, empty, just to confirm a direction, or to call a halt for a moment to recover. We each just put our soul into a little box somewhere inside us for safekeeping—to bring out again at some later date. For now, we merely stumbled onwards, gritting our teeth in anxiety as each boulder passed underneath, our stomachs knotting each time a wheel lurched down into a pit, threatening to further damage the rims or worse. The wheels aren’t even round anymore.
The terrain got steadily worse, and at last beside a lake, we donned drysuits and, although we wanted to go almost 90 degr
ees to the right, we pushed the PAC into the water and hauled it, floating peacefully, the long way around the lake edge to give it a break. The lake bottom was also boulders—and covered in slime—so we were forever slipping over, our mangled feet sliding and wedging awkwardly into gaps between rocks.
‘This stuff messes with your sanity!’ Clark suddenly admitted.
‘I think we’re already pretty insane to be out here in the first place,’ I replied, attempting humour.
‘Yeah, well, I guess this is making me go sane then,’ Clark mumbled, ‘because I’m at last starting to think that … maybe this is crazy.’
We are going nowhere fast, our cart is breaking up, and so are we. To be honest, we are hating life out here today, and the far side feels impossibly far away.
DAY 53: Gale force winds, rain, ice and … surf?
I woke as a particularly violent bullet of wind and rain struck the tent, the whole cart heeling slightly with the force. Squinting at my Citizen EcoDrive watch hanging above me, it took me a while to work out that the hands really were pointing at 9.45 am. That didn’t seem to make sense as I was still dog-tired, but holding the watch up the other way gave an even less realistic time, so I woke Clark and we lay there, listening to the miserable weather raging outside.
We continued to lie there for another quarter of an hour, hoping it would ease, but it didn’t. Even breakfast inside the tent was a challenge—milk powder blew right out of the mugs before we had a chance to add the coffee, and our titanium pot lifted off the MSR stove and hit me in the side of the head just as Clark started to pour water into it. There was nothing for it but to get out there and face the weather; we didn’t want to stay crammed in the tent anyway. We squelched our feet into our boots, packed up camp, and headed off. Our thermometer showed 3 degrees Celsius, but a shocking minus 3.5 if we included windchill—our first sub-zero temperature in weeks, and mixed with rain it made the world quite unbearably cold. The wind was so strong! Hearing each other talk was impossible as the wind roared past our hoods, and our communications degenerated into a series of hand signals, nods and questioning looks of incomprehension. I got out our wind thingo (a Silva Atmospheric Data Centre Pro), and held it up: 50 to 60 kilometres per hour wind, gusting to 65 kilometres per hour. That’s a new expedition record.
Mercifully, the wind and rain was at our back, and once we started hauling, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Nor was the terrain—the boulders have mostly gone now, replaced by firm, short tundra grasses on long rolling slopes. Reaching the mountain pass we’ve been aiming towards for a few days, I surveyed the impassable landscape below. Rather than attempt to go down through the boulder-filled valley, Clark spotted a potential route that involved us hauling right up into the hills, but potentially led at last to a grassier, gentler slope down. It worked a treat, and a few hours later we found ourselves in front of a large lake that it looked like we’d have to haul around, as there was no floating pancake of ice visible.
Peering along the shoreline route, I saw some rather nasty terrain developing ahead, culminating in a boulder-filled ramp up to a jagged cliff that then plunged directly into the lake. Desperate not to subject ourselves to any more boulders, I looked around in vain for another option.
‘If we push the PAC into the lake right here,’ I began, ‘the wind will blow us across to the other side, right past all these boulders and cliffs …’ Clark looked dubious; the idea of standing around in the rain getting changed into drysuits and booties wasn’t appealing. ‘We could just roll it in, hop on and push off with our paddles,’ I encouraged. ‘We could even stay in our hiking gear.’
We agreed, and six-point-turned The Nugget to face the water and rolled her in, leaping aboard just as the water crept up to boot height. A few hard shoves with the paddles against the bottom and we were afloat.
The screaming wind gripped us, and to our smug delight the GPS showed us accelerating directly towards the far corner of the lake where we wanted to exit at a nice grassy ramp perhaps a kilometre away. We jeered at the boulders as we passed. In response, Victoria Island increased the wind. The further from the windward shore we got, the larger the waves became. Whipped up by the wind, the surface of the lake transformed from scurrying ripples into ever-growing waves, crumbling into whitecaps. The crests of some of the larger waves even started to be blown clean off, the foam streaming across the surface like spindrift. It was—almost—like a mini version of the Southern Ocean. We looked at each other in a combination of awe, excitement, and a growing tinge of concern.
For reasons known only to herself, HMAS Nugget prefers to turn side-on in any wind and travel beam-on. As the waves grew, so did the rhythmic rocking of our raft, and with waves now smashing against the wheels and rims, some even emptied themselves right over onto the deck, threatening to wash away our gear.
The far side of the lake was getting closer and closer, and staring at it, I realised with increasing anxiety that our landing was not going to be as smooth as we’d imagined. The reason there was no floating pancake of ice on the lake was that the wind had blown it across into the corner we were now rapidly bearing down upon, smashing it into a billion fragments of ice—as well as a few sizeable chunks. As the waves crashed into the confusion of ice, they broke all over it like surf, and I watched, mesmerised, as each wave’s energy passed through into the icy mixture, transmitting incredible surges of rising and falling hunks of ice through to the shore beyond.
My mind raced forward the 30 seconds or so it would be until our traumatised, swamped little raft struck this jumble of surf and ice, and what I saw terrified me.
‘Hold this!’ I yelled at Clark above the wind, flinging off my harness and snatching up my drysuit—something we should have done at the start—and racing to put it on. The gap was closing fast as I kicked off my hiking boots, one leg into the suit, two legs in … we could hear the ice grinding and breaking against itself just metres ahead.
*Expletive*. ‘My zipper’s stuck! Help me, will you!’
Clark freed the zip and I yanked it closed, slammed on one wetsuit bootie and didn’t even have time to get my foot in the other, before I plunged over the side and—half swimming—grabbed a wheel, desperately fighting with all my effort to try and drag the PAC around to face the wind so that at least we’d ‘roll’ into the mess rather than collapse against it broadside.
I just managed it in time, and stood helplessly in the crashing, chest-deep, ice-filled water—with the wind blowing the spray into my face—and watched as the front of the PAC entered the fray. As Clark panicked to get into his drysuit, the wind drove HMAS Nugget further into the thick of it, and—buffeted by heaving ice boulders—I too found myself in that zone I’d seen earlier, where each rolling swell lifted up the suitcase-sized hunks of ice around me, and then dropped them—sometimes excruciatingly—onto my feet. If it wasn’t for the fact that the ground was soft mud, I’m sure it would have crushed every bone in my feet.
HMAS Nugget eventually came to rest, jammed against a mess of compacted ice. We were stuck in the surging nightmare, 10 metres from shore, held off by all the jumble of ice pieces as wave after wave charged through. Clark, now in his drysuit, hopped in and we tried desperately to pull the PAC to shore but it wouldn’t budge. In the end we actually backed it right out through the surf zone into the water again, out and around to a place where the ice was less built up. There, giving it our all, we at last managed to heave the PAC up and half onto the jumble of tumbling ice, and drag it across, finally, to shore.
It took us a while to collect our thoughts. The scariest thing about it was that we didn’t see it coming at all. The terrifying half-hour just past was pure action and reaction—survival instinct kicking in. It could so easily have ended so badly. We didn’t even feel up to jeering at Victoria Island for overcoming her latest hurdle—we were just mighty thankful that we did. Her games are getting serious.
Everything seemed to survive being swamped, including our battery and our d
rybags of food. ‘All’s well that ends well, I guess,’ Clark shrugged.
‘Maybe next time, though,’ I grinned, ‘we’ll put our drysuits on a little earlier perhaps.’ We nodded as the lesson sank in.
‘I’m so glad you saw that coming and managed to get yours on in time, guv.’
DAY 54: Rolling on broken rims
The silence when we woke this morning was so complete it was eerie. Something was missing. ‘Hey, the wind’s stopped!’ The tent sides were motionless.
‘Fantastic! Maybe we’re finally going to get a good day.’
The terrain, although peppered with the odd boulder we had to multi-point turn to avoid, was, on the whole, brilliant. Firm dirt and dry mud—held together with a patchy covering of tundra and wildflowers—rolled ever onwards. By lunch, the sun had come out in full force, and with most of our electronics all but running on empty, we quickly had batteries charging left, right and centre. With 4 kilometres already clocked up, good terrain ahead, and a tummy full of lunch, everything was once again looking up in a big way.
Until I noticed something strange about the front right wheel. It was bulging oddly. Frustration mounting at the thought of yet another delay for more niggly repairs, I walked over to it as Clark watched with that now familiar ‘what’s broken this time?’ expression.
