by Mike Horn
Should I turn south? But how far would I have to go before I found a more solid surface?
Should I turn back? But marching back over the same snow would amount to tempting fate.
I decided to keep on going toward dry land and pray that the gods of the Far North would be on my side. I moved forward, trying to tread as lightly as possible. But I hadn’t gone fifty yards before, with a muffled crunch, the ground gave way beneath me. I was falling.
If I fell in, I would have nothing to grab onto to haul myself out of the water, only soft snow. I would be stuck in the water, and that would be the end of me.
In the fraction of a second during which I felt the snow open up beneath my feet, I had the reflexes of a parachutist. I curled up and began to roll, but on my side, so that I landed, skis in the air, on a surface that was still solid. But it began to crumble beneath my weight, too, so that the opening in the snow quickly expanded. I tried to spread out my weight as much as possible by continuing to roll, haphazardly and as quickly as possible, despite my skis and my sled. The snow continued to open beneath me until I clambered onto a pile that was a little thicker and stronger. At last, I was on solid ground. Saved!
However, my sled was in the water, and the sea was rapidly transforming the snow all around me into a gooey slush, and I was stuck on a little island about the size of a dinner table. To make things worse, I was soaked through. Luckily, it was “only” thirteen degrees below zero, and the snow that stuck to me when I rolled through it absorbed the moisture, which kept me from freezing to death on the spot.
Should I turn back? Continue on toward dry land? Should I veer north where, according to Anton, there would be nothing but open water? Regardless of my choice, I would be almost certain to fall in. So, I might as well stay on the same course and push on. And that’s just what I did, walking on eggshells the whole time, trying to distribute my weight as evenly as possible. I did my best to find a rhythm—a completely fluid stride with no bumping or stumbling—trying to be as light as a feather.
I employed a tactic used by polar bears, which picked up only one leg at a time to spread their weight out over three points of support. I spread my legs and moved forward gingerly, as if my private parts were hurting me badly, without picking up my skis or moving them too far apart, which could have made me lose my balance. My three-hundred-pound sled followed me at its own distinct pace, floating on the water I left in my wake, sparing the spider web of snow below me any further burden.
One thing was certain. If I fell in the water—for good this time—I would toss my fuel and my food into the sea and I would use my sled as a boat—even if it meant paddling for twenty hours with my shovel to reach dry land.
From snow pile to snow pile, excruciatingly slowly, I inched my way closer to the mainland. It took four hours: half-a-mile per hour. And the last fifty feet, walking a tightrope as I weaved my way among the ice blocks bobbing against the shore, took a full half hour. I was wearing a jacket of ice, but the exercise had warmed me up. And Bernard Harbor was just twelve and a half miles away.
I wouldn’t be reaching it that evening, though. After four miles, my body failed me. I barely had the strength to pitch my tent. And yet, once I was inside the tent, I wrote another letter to my daughters. I felt the need to talk to them because, once again, I had come very close to never returning home at all.
More than anything, I was angry at my own stupidity. I couldn’t forgive myself the lack of judgment that had come so close to costing me my life. I shouldn’t make that sort of mistake, not at my level of experience. Nevertheless, beneath the sense of frustration there was a vague but growing sense of confidence that now there was nothing that could keep me from succeeding.
* * *
The next day I woke up to one of the worst blizzards I had experienced since the beginning of the expedition. I skied forward, practically lying flat on my belly as I went because of how far I had to lean forward against the power of the gusting winds. I couldn’t see the tips of my skis, and I was navigating by the angle of the wind hitting my face. Pressing my nose against my GPS in order to make out its indicator, I read, “Destination reached.” I raised my head and looked around. Total whiteness. Then the curtain of snow parted briefly, and Bernard Harbor materialized right in front of me.
It was strictly a military outpost and operated like all the stations along the DEW Line, without any personnel on site. The station consisted of a building topped by a white radar dish. The structure, roughly the size of a small house, could be seen on a clear day from sixteen miles away. Peter and Anton had given me not only the exact location of the outpost but also the security code to open the door and the telephone number to call once I was inside to report my presence—all confidential information.
“Hello, Mike,” said the voice of the soldier at the other end of the line. “Anton told us you would be coming. He left you something to eat. Enjoy your meal. Give us a call back, just to let us know when you leave.”
The noise of the generator kept me from sleeping, so I camped outside at the base of the radar tower, where I waited a day and a half for the blizzard to die down. I enjoyed the break and toasted the health of Peter and Anton.
* * *
Once the weather improved, I set out to traverse the eighty-seven miles to another station on the DEW Line: Cape Young, at the foot of Mount Davy on Amundsen Gulf. Just as I was leaving the peninsula to climb down to the ice again, Anton’s helicopter, bringing American military personnel and engineers to inspect Cape Young, flew overhead once again. Camera flashes went off as the aircraft hovered around me and set down nearby. Four uniformed men burst out of the chopper and came running toward me, exclaiming, “Unbelievable! It can’t be true! You told us about him, but we didn’t believe you!” and so on. They all offered me their lunch boxes, without worrying about the fact that they would be feeling hunger themselves in a few hours.
Soda, bananas, apples, chocolate, freshly made ham-and-cheese sandwiches—in short, these lunches had everything I had been missing most since leaving Cambridge Bay a month before. It seemed as if the entire population of Arctic Canada was taking turns feeding me and making up for the shortcomings of my courier service.
Before taking off, Anton warned me that enormous quantities of pack ice had formed along the coastline. I didn’t let it worry me much. From now on, I knew that I would get through, whether on dry land or on ice.
There was a danger more formidable than pack ice: grizzlies. Global warming was pushing their habitat farther and farther north, where they were starting to encroach on polar bear territory, causing some serious tensions between the two species. Anton had seen some in the Cape Young sector. Because the ice was starting to melt, they were moving along what is known as the flow edge, whether that meant following the coastline or the banks of a river, wherever their prey might be likely to come to play or breathe. To make things worse, this was the season when mother bears and their cubs were emerging from their dens. Because of all of this, I would have to be on the lookout.
* * *
After leaving Bernard Harbor, I made excellent progress along the coast, covering average daily distances of twenty-eight to thirty-two miles without even making use of my kite because the wind was in my face. The pack ice wasn’t bad, and I got around the obstacles I encountered without too much trouble.
One day, when the wind shifted a little, I hoisted my kite. Moving along at a good clip among barriers and obstacles as hard as concrete was no simple matter. As I was zigzagging along, I occasionally found myself with one ski in the air, trying to regain my balance. More than once, my sled got caught behind me, causing some hard falls. I improvised some nice jumps off of snowpiles and bumps in the ice, using them as springboards.
I narrowly avoided one catastrophe after the other. I knew the slightest mistake could have proved fatal, but I just couldn’t bring myself to stop. I was intoxicated with the adrenaline rush. When evening came, I had traveled forty miles, but I
chided myself for running risks that were quite unnecessary. I would be in a lot of trouble if someone up there stopped watching over me. As I folded up my kite, I swore I would never use it in pack ice again. I had a complete change of attitude. My goal from now on was no longer to get to Tuktoyaktuk as quickly as possible, rather just to get there at all. The farther I went on this expedition, the less of a right I had to compromise its success by running pointless risks.
* * *
The landscapes I was traveling through were some of the most beautiful places I had ever had an opportunity to see. This Far North, where land, sea, and sky are all different facets of the same diamond, where the mountains look as if they had burst through the ice, made me think more than ever about the fragility of our earth.
By the time I came even with Cape Young, I saw no remaining signs of the grizzly bears except for their tracks through the snow that headed toward Banks Island on the north side of Amundsen Gulf. It snowed periodically, which was the natural companion of the warmer temperatures. The thermometer no longer dropped below fifteen degrees below zero, and the ice would partly thaw during the day and then freeze up again during the night, which gave it an unpleasant, cardboard-like consistency. This “damp cardboard” stuck to my skis and slowed me down. But I was like an athlete in midseason condition, and I approached Paulatuk on schedule to meet up with Jean-Philippe and his basketful of provisions.
Jean-Philippe had also brought his closest friend, Pierre-Alain, a Swiss restaurateur who closely followed all of my expeditions. Jean-Philippe brought him along to this reprovisioning point as a present for his fortieth birthday. All of Pierre-Alain’s friends had chipped in to pay his way, and so there the two of them were, traveling from Paulatuk to meet me, on their rented snowmobiles and accompanied by their Inuit guide. We met at the exact spot where I climbed onto dry land. The trip from Paulatuk had taken them four hours. It would take me three days to retrace their brief journey.
During those three days we camped together, but while I made progress toward Paulatuk, Jean-Philippe and Pierre-Alain set out to explore the region’s amazing landscapes and wild fauna. Thanks to the mobility that their snowmobiles gave them, they could rejoin me from time to time to check on my progress or to bring me a snack, vanishing into the distance and then reappearing unexpectedly, chasing me down by following my tracks, or going on ahead to set up their camp. Pierre-Alain had brought supplies of fondue and other Swiss delicacies, so that the three days we traveled together turned into a jolly excursion. Despite that conviviality, and even though we weren’t very far from Paulatuk by this point, I didn’t waste the tiniest scrap of food or ounce of fuel. I never wasted food or fuel, both out of a sense of principle and superstition. Even if I had an extra forty-five pounds of surplus food to haul, I could never bring myself to abandon any of it on the ice field. There was no question of letting my friends carry part of my load either—for safety reasons. If for any reason we were unable to meet up again, I had to be self-sufficient.
On the last day I told Jean-Philippe and Pierre-Alain to go on ahead to wait for me in Paulatuk. Arriving at the end of a stage is a gift that I like to enjoy greedily, all by myself. I like to be alone so that I can gradually slow down to a stroll, taking my time to watch as the village grows larger and closer, considering what I went through to get there, savoring the small victory while allowing myself to think ahead to the next stage.
I had taken thirty-three days—only two of which were sunny—to reach Paulatuk from Cambridge Bay with daily distances of about twenty-five miles. That distance might not seem like much when plotted out on a map, but it had taken me four months to cover the same distance under harsher conditions from Arctic Bay to Committee Bay.
If there was a reason I had made it this far, I think it was first and foremost because I believed in myself, and also because I had never let disappointments diminish my sense of hope. The other ingredients of the magic potion were a blend of experience and wisdom. The wisdom was the product of the terrible errors and hubris that had come close to costing me my life. I would need wisdom and experience, in spades, to cross Siberia in winter.
I had crossed into the Northwest Territories, which lies between Nunavut and the Yukon, and I was on schedule to cross the Bering Strait in August. I would hoist sail at Point Hope to cross the Chukotka Sea to Vankarem on the Russian side. From there I would set out to cross Siberia. The timing was perfect, as long as I didn’t waste a single day—as long as everything went smoothly until I reached Point Hope.
* * *
Paulatuk, the smallest town in all of the Far North, is just a cluster of prefabricated houses near an airstrip. The place was empty because the few inhabitants had left to hunt snow geese, which were migrating from Banks Island. Each family had a goose quota to contribute to its supply of meat for the coming winter.
We were housed comfortably as guests of Christian Buchère, a Swiss biologist who had been living here for the past two years, working on a Canadian government project to monitor and study wildlife. Christian was surprised when Jean-Philippe told him a few days prior that I would be arriving. His shock was partially due to the fact he hadn’t heard from us for a year, but mostly because he had heard that I had died on my aborted attempt to reach the North Pole!
* * *
The snow was melting, and I wasted little time, leaving Paulatuk after two days. Before departing, I consulted a village elder, John, about the best route to follow, as was my custom. It is no accident that at regular intervals, I sought out men who were close to nature, in whom knowledge and wisdom had traced rings, like the rings of an oak tree. More and more each day, I understood that my journey was much more than a physical or athletic challenge; it was an expedition of discovery—into the remotest territory of humanity and my own human nature. My exploration of this remarkable terrain was taking me farther and farther afield, which is certainly why my adventures were relatively short early in my career and now take years.
I set out at four in the morning, under a heavy snowfall that clumped to my skis and slowed down my progress. The snow was partly melted, and it spread out across the ground in a black-and-white patchwork that was soon quite impassable with a sled. I climbed back down to the ice on Amundsen Gulf, but the ice, because the snow wasn’t freezing anymore, was covered with a liquid film.
The Paulatuk Peninsula proved to be sufficiently snow-covered for me to cross it on skis, so I did so, following the tracks left by the goose hunters.
I had almost reached the other shore when I met an Inuit family of five—including an old man who looked like he was at least one hundred—returning from a hunting expedition. Green was their surname, inherited from a family of Boston whalers, and they offered me the hospitality of their traditional encampment for the night, which they had already set up near their snowmobiles. I accepted with pleasure, and once again I was treated as an honored guest. Seated around a banquet of caribou and goose, with Eskimo fritters made from flour and seal oil for dessert, the Greens explained that no one had traveled by snowmobile from Paulatuk to Tuktoyaktuk in at least eight years. And as for on foot, well, according to them, it would be impossible for me to cut across Cape Bathurst Peninsula because of the cliffs on the east coast, which were two- to three-hundred feet high. These cliffs were called the Smoking Hills because at regular intervals they emitted roaring jets of steam, as if a dragon were breathing deep within their black flanks. As for the river whose mouth lay a few miles ahead, the ice covering it was very likely to be flooded already. I would certainly drown if I fell through and was swept under by the current.
The Greens recommended that I skirt around Cape Bathurst and Baley Island, directly west, before crossing Liverpool Bay, which should present no problems at this time of the year. On the other hand, the marshes at the estuary of the Mackenzie River would prevent me from reaching Tuktoyaktuk with my sled if I took a straight line. They recommended that I go north around the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula and cut down at a gentle so
uthwest angle toward the village itself, staying on the ice the whole time. The ice would certainly be covered with river water. But my new friends figured that I still had five days to get through safely before it became impossible.
Finally, they warned me that there would be a high risk of encountering grizzly bears and polar bears, which were attracted to the Smoking Hills by the openings made in the ice by the crosscurrents near Baley Island.
I set off again after a breakfast consisting of rice, snow goose, and fritters, following the route that they had suggested. A little past Franklin Bay, I happened upon polar bear tracks. Soon after, I saw the grizzly paw prints in the snow. The bears were following the river that flows out into the sea midway up the Cape Bathurst Peninsula, where it gushes out onto the surface of the ice. I continued toward the cape after making an enormous detour to avoid being swept away by the river water.
Just to make things more difficult, the temperature rose several degrees, and the heavy, wet snow that had been falling ever since I left Paulatuk had now changed to rain! There is nothing worse in the Arctic. You can get rid of snow by brushing it off, but rain soaks you. It gets into your clothes, and it freezes as soon as a little wind starts blowing. In any case, the rain would change to something else very soon. The weather changes from one minute to the next in this part of the world. It shifts almost undetectably from snow to sunshine, from heat (relatively speaking) to cold, from calm winds to squall. “If you don’t like the weather here, just wait fifteen minutes,” they say in Arctic Canada.
The farther I climbed along the peninsula that leads to Cape Bathurst, the less ice there was. Soon, the waves were practically pounding against the rocks. The blocks of ice—crashing against one another like ice cubes in a glass—pushed me against the Smoking Hills, and soon I was wedged onto a beach two yards wide, where rocks were poking through the snow.
