A biting wind swept down from the west, so the four of us sought shelter beneath a silicon tarp held up by ski poles, gnawing on a scant ration of Landjäger sausage and smoked cheese. In the distance, the peaks of Axel Heiberg’s central spine heaved upward, glaciers oozing from rounded valleys like soft tongues of white toffee. Though they appeared close in this surreal landscape, they lay a day’s march away.
The inevitable hunger of backpacking had set in, and as I mentally inventoried the food supplies buried in our packs, accounting for all eight days ahead, a sense of precariousness set in as well. If the plane scheduled to pick us up on the other side of the island never arrived, if the world changed in our absence—planes were grounded, say, or av-gas ran out—I doubted we could save ourselves. It wasn’t a feeling I was accustomed to. Even in the depths of Burmese jungles or lost on the plains of Mongolia, I’d always had the option of escaping under my own power, by harvesting wild food or seeking the help of wandering nomads. Such surety does not exist here, in a land teetering on the edge of nowhere.
A RASPY, broken voice on my answering machine offered the first tantalizing hint. It was Dave Quinn—good friend, verifiable dirtbag, and life-long wilderness guide—calling from God knows where on a cellphone that kept cutting out. All I could make out was “Axel Heiberg,” “July,” and “kinda heavy pack.” But that was enough. I immediately cancelled my other plans.
Despite persistent rumours of its rugged beauty, Axel Heiberg Island is one of the least visited, least livable, most mysterious corners of the world. It’s easy to miss when scanning maps of the Arctic, for it huddles against Ellesmere Island’s western coast. Just next door, Vilhjalmur Stefansson filled in the last big blank space in the Canadian atlas with his sighting of Meighen Island in 1916. Not until 1927 did a Canadian explorer actually set foot on Axel Heiberg. It is the third-largest uninhabited island on the planet, as empty today as it was a century or a millennium ago. By comparison, Ellesmere—with its national park, army outpost, research base, and Inuit village at Grise Fiord—feels positively pedestrian.
Eric Walters, a well-heeled European Arctic-phile, was financing a personal expedition to Axel Heiberg. Dave, who’d travelled with Eric before, was arranging logistics, and I was happy to tag along when invited, even if that meant hauling a hundred-pound pack loaded with food, a perimeter-fence to warn off bears, a shotgun, and a small raft.
We met Eric in Ottawa. Short, with a shaved head and wireless spectacles, he looked like he could fit in my backpack. He proudly patted his flat stomach. “Nine stone!” he said—just 125 pounds. A corporate banker originally from Britain who now split his time between a castle in France, a home in Zurich, and a flat in Davos, he seemed an unlikely devotee of the North. But it was clear a part of his soul resided there. He came every summer, and his journeys, although grand, were never for glory. Even at home, his mind constantly wandered to the cold wastes, and he wrote endless letters to Ottawa and Iqaluit bureaucrats on themes ranging from hunting practices in national parks to unusual wildlife observations.
Accompanying Eric was his regular Arctic travel companion, Brian Keating, the Calgary Zoo’s fountain of energy and interpretive information. Two days and two long flights later, the four of us arrived at Ellesmere’s Alert military base.
Our plan was to explore the southern valleys around Axel Heiberg’s Wolf Fiord, but the Twin Otter pilot we’d hired to ferry us there dropped a bombshell: there was no chance of landing in the island’s southern reaches. Earlier in the summer he’d spent two days and burned thousands of dollars of gas searching fruitlessly for a gravel strip. Suddenly we were scouring a map on the wall of the officers’ mess for options.
“What about Mokka Fiord?” Dave asked, pointing to a long indent on the eastern coast, where a saddle led west across the central icecap toward Strand Fiord. “What about attempting a traverse of the island?” It was a massive change of plans, and we didn’t even have correct maps. When the base commander discovered Dave photographing the wall map—planning to navigate the 125-kilometre route by studying the pictures on his digital camera—he took pity on us and handed over a topo. Minutes later we clambered aboard the Twin Otter and buckled in.
LATE ON the fourth day of our trek, a deep canyon suddenly appeared before us. From its depths, we heard the roar of a torrent that boiled over drops, careened around bends, and tore straight down through the soft tundra. It blocked our intended path, but by hugging the bank, we could still gain Axel Heiberg’s central icefield and make our way to Strand Fiord Pass—which looked, from where we stood, like a gentle ramp into the sky. Just then, three slender Peary caribou materialized from the mist on the other side of the gorge. A hundred feet away but unreachable, the curious animals skittered closer and then melted away.
After a cold and fitful rest, we were hiking by five A.M. the next morning. As we stepped onto the glacier and began our ascent, ominous clouds began rolling in, obscuring the peaks and bringing flurries. The route appeared simple on our maps, but we edged forward cautiously, ever-watchful for crevasses.
We were soon disoriented in a complete whiteout. We thought we were still climbing the snowfield when Dave suddenly shouted with glee: “Look! Look! We’re going down!” Rivulets of blue meltwater were now flowing in the direction we were headed. The pass comprises two bumps, like a Bactrian camel’s back, and we were over the first.
Soon the tiny streams coalesced into larger meltwater rivers that carved down the icy slope at a furious rate, then vanished into the black depths of the glacier. Slipping into one of these sapphire flumes would have been fatal. When drifting snow began concealing them beneath a thin crust of white, our progress slowed and we probed every step.
“Break time,” Eric would announce every hour. A man of discipline, he favoured the British Army style of travel: one hour of work followed by a five-minute snack break, repeated ad nauseam. His notepad was always in hand, filled with distances walked, rates of progress, wildlife sightings, and weather reports. “I doubt anyone will ever read these,” he confessed, chuckling. “But it’s a habit I’ve had since youth, and I simply can’t stop.”
We fell wordlessly into the routine of walking and snacking and then walking some more. Disrobing almost entirely to cross a pool of meltwater atop the glacier, we clambered over piles of loose moraine and pressed on. Far ahead, three muskox skulls sat alone and sun-bleached on the snow, and Brian veered towards them. “Can you believe this?” He practically bounced with excitement. “An entire family has been slaughtered by wolves. Look at how they’ve chewed the noses and licked the marrow. Why did they ever wander onto this expanse?”
Eleven hours and twenty-one kilometres later, lost in a meditative state, we reached the far side of the glacier. Picking our way down the steep ice to terra firma, we collapsed into tents, nursing mug after mug of tea and sugar.
TAKE A PIE-SHAPED slice out of the High Arctic, running north and west from the town of Resolute, and you have what’s been dubbed “the Barren Wedge.” The continual press of pack ice against the western shore of the Arctic Archipelago brings fog, wind, and a constant chill. Plants struggle to grow; game and marine mammals are unusually scarce. Axel Heiberg straddles the edge of this desolate zone; the western shores we were headed toward lie in this “Empty Quarter,” while the eastern coast we had come from hugs the relative lushness of Ellesmere.
The snows continued for three damp days, until at last high pressure moved in. We were following the Strand River west, winding between high ridges and globular glacial toes, swaddling ourselves in every garment we had. Then, suddenly, T-shirt weather graced us. Flies and bees appeared, flitting across the tundra, buffeted by steady winds. Entire hillsides shimmered with blooms of yellow arnica. Cotton grass and pale yellow Arctic poppies pressed up toward the sun. A chocolate-brown fox visited camp, rolling in the grass at our feet, sniffing every tent and then bounding away. We stumbled upon a field of perfect ammonite fossils. Day after day brought the joy of dis
covery and solitude. Unbeknownst to us, the only other people on the island, scientists at a McGill University research camp, had evacuated following the recent storm, leaving us alone. Yet as blessed as the warmth was, it felt thin, illusory, and not to be taken for granted.
Environment Canada employs the Climate Severity Index to rate the relative comfort of the nation’s communities, with one being the most mild and 100 the most severe. At 13, Victoria ranks among the most pleasant of Canada’s climes. Toronto lands at 36; Whitehorse 46; Alert, on Ellesmere, 84. The most inhospitable of all? The former Isachsen weather station, located on Ellef Ringnes Island, not too far from our destination. It earned an atrocious 99.
Inuit call this part of the extreme High Arctic Inuit Nunangata Ungata—“the land beyond the land of the people.” Despite that, occupation sites have been discovered on Axel Heiberg dating back almost 5,000 years. These sparse settlements of one to four homes employed bowhead whale bones to support roofs of sod and skin. Before the advent of seal-oil lamps, it’s postulated that the precursors of today’s Inuit survived the winter here by entering a state of torpor, moving only occasionally to nibble food or urinate.
“Berg heil!” Eric shouted as we clambered atop a high summit adjacent Strand Fiord. Amidst swirling snows we looked out over a medieval scene of peaks, ice, and great, braided rivers, the entire panorama a palette of only black, brown, and white.
Later at camp, Dave called the pilot on a satellite phone. We were due to be picked up early the next morning, but a surprising message came back. They were already in the air, racing our way. With the good weather expected not to last, they wanted to get us out while they still could.
Author’s note: Last November, just four months after visiting Axel Heiberg, Eric Walters tragically passed away while hiking in Oman. The Canadian Arctic lost a champion.
Bernadette McDonald
SEARCHING
FOR HUMAR
I OPENED THE email and my stomach dropped. “Tomaž Humar trapped on Langtang.” Oh, no, I thought—not again. And the situation was even worse than I imagined. Tomaž was solo climbing a ferociously dangerous route on the north face of Langtang Lirung in Nepal and was trapped on the wall. It was unclear what had happened: either he had fallen, or he had been hit by falling rock. All we knew was that he was injured, unable to move, and had called out on his satellite phone. The email was from our mutual friend Viki Grošelj, alerting me that he had initiated a rescue operation but wasn’t very hopeful because the weather was worsening. The date was November 9, 2009.
I thought back to another message, four years earlier, when Tomaž was desperate for help on the Rupal Face of Pakistan’s Nanga Parbat. Indirectly, I had been part of that incredibly complex and infamous rescue. When I’d heard the news, I had contacted a friend in the helicopter rescue business, who called his Swiss colleague, regarded as the top rescue pilot in the world. The colleague had flown to Pakistan, only to be scooped at the last minute by a daring Pakistani pilot under direct orders from President Musharraf himself.
As I reread Viki’s email, I remembered coming across a photograph in Tomaž’s book, No Impossible Ways, a self-portrait that had haunted me. The photo revealed a face deep red from the cold, swollen with edema. His eyes were rimmed with ice. His headlight was so caked with snow that only a small pool of light illuminated the dark night of May 6, 1995. He was on the summit of Annapurna I, alone. “I was so happy,” the caption read. “Because I had absolute faith, I was rewarded with the answer. The Himalayas love me.”
But as I stared at the image, I didn’t see happiness or love—I saw primal fear.
I FIRST MET Tomaž in May of 2000 at a film festival in Trento, Italy. When Mexican climber Carlos Carsolio introduced us, I naively offered my hand in greeting. Tomaž’s famous bonecrushing handshake both amused and irritated me. It was soon obvious that his high-voltage personality lit up every room; he was the man of the hour. “Let’s have another drink,” he insisted. “It’s liquid oxygen, you know.” His overwhelming charisma won me over and I invited him to come to Banff. As director of the Banff Mountain Film Festival at the time, I knew he would impress the discerning audience.
Months passed and I heard nothing. Finally, Silvo Karo, a mutual climbing friend from Slovenia, tracked him down in a German hospital. After years of climbing on steep unconsolidated rock and fragile ice pillars at extremely high altitudes, Tomaž had sustained serious, multiple compound fractures—by falling from the floor joists into the basement of his unfinished house. He’d undergone a series of botched surgeries and had been told he would never walk again. He called his new wheelchair “the red Ferrari.” It appeared that a home construction project had ended the climbing career of one of Slovenia’s finest alpinists.
But after several more operations and months of physiotherapy, Tomaž began to ride a bike and then to walk with crutches, albeit with a lurching gait. As soon as he could, he began to wheel, walk, and bike to the Kamnik Alps near his home, drawing physical and spiritual strength from the mountains that he loved and found “holy.”
He came to Banff a different man than the one I had met in Italy. His face still radiated joy and the handshake had not changed, but his body was seriously compromised. This didn’t prevent him from discarding his crutches at the festival wrap party and dancing like a madman, however. “Lazarus rises,” wrote one British journalist in Climbing magazine. But the journalist was still on the dance floor when I half-carried Tomaž up the hill to my office to collect his things. Still, he enthused about what fun he had had, how beautiful the Canadian women were, and how grateful he was for this visit to the Rocky Mountains.
We met again in 2001 at Paklenica, the Croatian climbing paradise. He still stumbled on level ground, but up on the razor-sharp limestone walls he moved like a dancer—fast and light. We climbed long, finger-shredding routes at what felt like breakneck speed during the day, and at night Tomaž told stories. Together with a roomful of friends and countless bottles of crisp Croatian white wine, he held court, regaling us with tales of desperate bivouacs and German physiotherapists. One of the most memorable—Hilda—had connected him to some kind of high-tech contraption that provided him with a remote control to manipulate the height of his suspended, heavily casted, and recently rebroken leg. It looked like fun at first, Tomaž said, but the horrific reality soon hit. “It was a kind of a perpetual-motion machine, with weights attached to my leg,” he explained. “The only way to make the pain leave was to keep moving the leg, yet each time I moved the leg, another wave of pain would come, over and over and over.” Afterward, Hilda would wheel him to the pool and yell from the edge: “Schwimm, schwimm, schwimm!”
“You should be writing this story,” I told him.
“Yeah, good idea, Bernadette. We will think on it. Let me read your aura . . . okay, it looks good, you can help me.”
DESPITE MY prodding, the next few years produced nothing more than vague promises. In fact, Tomaž had no time to write. He was a climber, and his life was full. He was focused on the mountains: Shishapangma in Tibet in 2002, where he tested out his newly minted, steel-reinforced and slightly shorter leg; a new route on the south face of Aconcagua in 2003, where he teamed up with Aleš Koželj for the first time; back to Nepal for Jannu in 2004, when he came tantalizingly close to soloing a new route on its east face; and Cholatse in 2005, where he, Koželj, and Janko Oprešnik climbed a new route on the northeast face. The climbs didn’t capture the attention of the mainstream media, but they were noted by the cognoscenti—and acknowledged as fine accomplishments for anyone, let alone someone with a bionic leg.
All the while, he had an even bigger plan—to solo climb a new route on the Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat, Pakistan’s second-highest mountain. The 4,500-metre Rupal Face is a formidable place—the highest rock and ice wall in the world. He went to the base of the Face in 2003, just to take a look. Back again in 2004, Tomaž made an attempt, but warm temperatures had created a death trap. In the summer o
f 2005, he returned.
His original plan was low-key, with a minimum of fuss. But all that changed when his sponsor pulled out, leaving him with a big bill. He solved that problem by bringing together a combination of media sponsors that would fundamentally alter the experience. Now he would be expected to provide regular online updates, newspaper and television stories—plus climb the Rupal Face. He arrived in July and acclimatized on the easier Messner Route in wet, stormy weather. Then he waited. And waited. The storms rolled through and conditions on the mountain worsened. Finally, a three-day window of decent weather was forecast. Meanwhile, American climbers Steve House and Vince Anderson had arrived in the area and were planning their own new route on the Rupal Face. The pressure was fierce.
Tomaž left his base camp and climbed alone to a point at around 6,300 metres. Then the weather closed in completely. Day after day of snow and rain and continuous avalanches followed. Tomaž dug into a slot in the icy slope and hunkered down, unable to move in any direction. After four days in his ice coffin, out of food and fuel, he was forced to do the unthinkable—call for a rescue.
Asking for a rescue is difficult—even shameful—for any serious alpinist. But at over 6,000 metres on the Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat, with the entire world monitoring his website, it was tantamount to treason. American climber Mark Twight commented on National Geographic Adventure’s website, “Now every ill-prepared sad sack whose ability falls short of his Himalayan ambition can get on the radio, call for help, and expect the cavalry to save the day.”
Rock, Paper, Fire Page 10
