The Ice Master

by Jennifer Niven

  The captain then took the lead, followed by Mamen, McKinlay, Kuraluk, and Kataktovik, and they picked their way through three hundred yards of rough ice. Then they made camp on a small floe of smooth ice, the only smooth patch in the midst of miles of the roughest ice they had ever seen. Bartlett ventured ahead, clambering up any peak he could to study the conditions of the trail that lay before them.

  All he could see were the immense ridges; the vibrating, tumbling, voracious ice; the sprawling leads of water. The icescape was alive and uneven. They were lucky to have made it this far. But what of Sandy’s party? And what of Mackay’s? There would be no hope for them if they were caught in this chaos.

  And there it was—the imposing ice ridge, or rather a series of immense ridges run together, stretching east and west toward land for miles and miles, like a great, sprawling mountain range, blending into the horizon without end.

  Bartlett had never seen anything like it. Neither had Hadley, in all of his twenty-five years’ experience living in the Arctic.

  There was no end to it. No way of going through. No way of going around.

  That decided it. They would have to build a road across.

  March 1914

  It really does1 begin to look as if we have all the seeds of disaster for the future.

  —WILLIAM MCKINLAY, MAGNETICIAN

  Vilhjalmur Stefansson told the New York Times that he was certain the missing Karluk was fine, as were her men. He could not imagine that they had come to any harm and he conjectured that, most likely, the ship was probably still wandering across the Arctic Ocean, held fast by ice.

  In reality, no one knew where the men of the Karluk were, or what had happened to them. The Canadian government had nothing to say to the families of the missing men it had hired to staff and crew this expedition. They did not want to raise false hopes, nor did they want to dash any expectations. The Karluk might just as well be found as not found, her men alive rather than dead. The official stance was that they had every confidence that the Karluk would withstand the elements and her passengers would survive.

  Thus, Bartlett’s mother, McKinlay’s parents and siblings, Mamen’s brothers and fiancée, Murray’s wife, and all of the relatives of the other men could do nothing but pray and hope for the best and wait for word of their loved ones.

  There had been sightings over the past few months—the masts of distant ships, a “white man’s” tracks crossing the sea ice, heading toward land. Not much to go on, but there was hope.

  Stefansson, however, did not see any reason to act. He was at Collinson Point with the Southern Party, busy outfitting himself to head once more into the Arctic. When he heard news of the sightings, he gave Dr. Anderson instructions “that no ‘relief2 expedition’ be sent out on the ground that the search for a ship placed like the Karluk has only infinitesimal chances of success and a vessel so sent out would be likely to be no better situated herself.. . .”

  No search party would be sent then. There was, Stefansson said, nothing they could do for her.

  THE MEN SURVEYED the road ahead and felt their hearts sinking. It was going to take them a week to break a trail through the ice barrier if it could be managed at all. Bartlett and the Eskimos led the way, marking out the road while everyone else followed with picks, axes, and shovels, cutting their way through the huge walls and boulders of ice. In some parts the ice was pressed into great, soaring ridges eighty feet high, with sheer, vertical faces that would have to be scaled and made passable for men, dogs, and sleds loaded with provisions. “The front of3 it appeared to us like a great prison wall,” said Chafe. “It was as smooth and perpendicular as if built by a stonemason.” Some still preferred taking their chances at Shipwreck Camp. Better to live on the fickle ice, they felt, than to have to face this devil.

  But Bartlett was determined. The captain sent periodic relay parties back to various camps where stores were cached, to pick up extra supplies, and luckily the weather, although horrendously cold, was calm enough to work in.

  If they could just make it over the other side of the massive ridges, they would be safe from shifting ice. These hills stood as the division between the drifting land-fast ice and the floating sea ice. The hills had been formed by the drifting variety, driven by onshore winds blowing against the grounded ice.

  It was the slowest, most grueling work imaginable, toiling to make a narrow path, three or four feet wide at most, through three and a half miles of ice mountains. After chipping away at the pass, they then had to make it as smooth as possible so they could drag their sleds over it.

  “To look at4 the ice, one would think it impossible ever to get through it,” McKinlay wrote in his diary. “In some parts there are ridges of 60 or 70 ft. in height, some even higher, with a sheer vertical face on one side as smooth as if they had been built by human hands. And we must get over & through & we must camp here until we have made that possible, which will take some days.”

  The chasms between the ice ridges were as wide as the ridges were tall. All able men climbed up one steep side of the mountain, where they posed precariously, cutting chunks of ice from the top, which they then rolled down into the chasm below until it grew to half the height of the ridge itself. This was harrowing work, and Bartlett was having to train the men as they went.

  Afterward, the men “would grade a5 road down to it, go across and grade up the side of the next ridge; then fill up the next chasm in the same way, and so on till the whole thing was finished,” wrote Chafe.

  Then they had to maneuver the sledges over the tops of the ridges, which meant fastening a rope to the nose of each sled and hauling it up the incline. Once at the top, they untied the rope, fastened it to the rear of the sled, and lowered it down the other side. Sometimes, they held the sled at the top and ran a rope from it to another sled below. Then as the first one slid down the incline, it would pull the second sled up. At the bottom, they simply moved to the next ridge and repeated the same process all over again until they eventually crossed the entire range.

  Bartlett sent Kuraluk and Kataktovik ahead through the rafters to scout out the ice conditions. They reported that the ridges ahead resembled a small mountain range. As Bartlett said, “Building a road6 across them was like making the Overland Trail through the Rockies.”

  MALLOCH HAD SOMEHOW gotten his feet frozen again—two toes and the heel of each foot this time. Malloch, being Malloch, didn’t tell anyone about it and just laughed it off and tried to ignore it in the hopes that it would go away. The result was that he had gotten himself into a real mess. The heel of the right foot was now a mass of raw flesh, and Mamen clipped off the skin and bandaged it. Malloch was increasingly careless with himself and his clothing, and no matter how many hard lessons he was taught, he never seemed to remember or pay them any mind.

  Maurer, too, had a frozen heel, and he and Malloch stayed inside, worthless invalids. Frozen feet were a serious handicap in the Arctic, not only to the victims, but to the progress of the entire party. Mamen couldn’t help being annoyed by Malloch’s lack of concern for himself. His thoughtlessness was starting to affect everyone now, making him unable to work and do his share. But Mamen took care of Maurer and Malloch as best he could. With Dr. Mackay gone, everyone took a turn at doctoring, particularly Mamen, McKinlay, and second engineer Williamson, who seemed to have a special knack for it and didn’t appear to be bothered by the more squeamish aspects of the job.

  Bartlett ordered Mamen to stay in camp to rest his leg while everyone else toiled over breaking the trail. According to Mamen, the captain told him, “You will have7 use for it before you and I get through.” Mamen’s job was to rest. Impatient, he tried to remind himself that this was just as vital to the expedition as carving the trail or moving provisions across the ridges. Bartlett needed Mamen’s leg to strengthen and heal so that Mamen could go with him to Siberia. He hadn’t told the topographer this in so many words, but Mamen knew it just the same.

  Little by little, as the pass
across the ridges was being carved out, Bartlett and his men moved camp to the other side. The distance over the ridge was three and three-quarter miles, which seemed much longer given the tremendous trouble they had getting the stuff across. Bartlett himself made three round trips over the bad ice, and fireman Breddy was on his fourth of the day. He was a typically indolent young man, always eager to hand responsibility over to someone else, but now he worked with uncharacteristic energy and enthusiasm.

  Mamen had gone over with the second load and there he had stayed. Kataktovik built an igloo, so Mamen had shelter, and nothing to do but watch the men toil and struggle.

  While everyone else worked on cutting the trail, McKinlay, Hadley, and Chafe were sent back to Shipwreck Camp to bring back more supplies. After much trouble in the morning picking up the trail to camp, they arrived there later that same afternoon. They loaded eight hundred pounds of provisions onto the sleds the next day, so that when they were finished, the only items remaining in camp were cases of pemmican and various smaller items.

  On the return trip, they perspired so much from the exertion that Chafe peeled off all the clothing on his upper body except for a sweater. Finally, they decided to cache part of the load at Camp One so they could make better time. At this rate, it would take them about six days to reach the main party, and they needed to move faster than that. Bartlett would need the dogs, and the manpower.

  The next day they lost the trail and searched for an hour before finding it again. When they did, the trail was smashed up and too rough to drive the sleds over, so they had to cut a new one. Hadley was an imposing, irritable figure. He was also, next to Bartlett, the one who knew the most about cutting trails and maneuvering over ice, so McKinlay and Chafe followed his lead.

  McKinlay was chopping his way through the towering, raftered ice, when the barking of the dogs made him turn around. He saw Chafe heading for the ice hummock, carrying his axe. Then he saw an impressive young polar bear—ten feet from head to toe—standing behind him. Before McKinlay could say anything, Chafe called out to Hadley, who hastily cut his rifle off the sled. The old man pulled the trigger but the grease on the cartridge was frozen. Their hearts raced as the bear lunged after the dogs. In an instant, Hadley tossed out the useless cartridge, loaded another, and fired a shot, which sank the bear to his knees. A second shot finished him off.

  They were busy fixing up one of the igloos at Camp Five when a second bear appeared, much larger than the first and with a beautiful coat. The bear also went after the dogs, three of which had broken free from their harness, and now ran around the bear in circles, barking and snapping at him. The bear sat on his haunches and swung at them with his paws, nearly destroying one of them with a scrape to the back. Hadley, on tiptoe, crept over to the sled and again took down his rifle. At first, he tried to scare the bear off so that he wouldn’t have to kill him. But the bear was already terrified of the dogs and paid no attention to Hadley. Finally, to protect the dogs, the old man took aim and fired, wounding the bear, which ran twenty yards before Hadley’s second shot killed him instantly.

  Later, as McKinlay was retrieving ice to make water for the tea, he heard the dogs barking as before. Standing beside the dead bear was another of the giant creatures. He was still and silent, eyeing the dogs warily as they raced around him. And then came Hadley again—boom—with another shot. The bear ran, dropping about a hundred yards away, but as McKinlay, Hadley, and Chafe started for him, he rose again and loped off, disappearing from view.

  The next morning, Hadley found the injured bear three hundred yards or so away from camp. He was gasping for breath, and the old man shot him to put an end to his pain. Hadley cut open the bear to let the gas escape, and then they fed the dogs from the carcass and cut off a leg to take on the trail with them.

  When they reached the ice mountains, they paused to take in the scenery. There was no smooth ice to be seen anywhere in that great, vast field before them. The enormous ice boulders, large as buildings, were piled on top of each other, scattered like mammoth rocks on a giant’s playground. A parallel series of ridges mirrored these, their icy heads looming above and beyond. They were all you could see for miles and miles. It was through these that the trail had been forged, because there was no way around them.

  Bartlett and his men had divided the loads and dragged them across as carefully as they could. The sleds were heavy and awkward, and it was slow going over the ice. To make matters worse, there were deep chasms in the ice at some points. They had to be especially vigilant: one wrong step and a man could plunge to his death. So they moved stealthily, cautiously, dragging the sleds over the ridges, all hands hanging on to them as they slid—as carefully as possible, so as not to get out of control—down the sheer incline on the other side.

  At last, the ridge was completely subdued, six days after it was begun. Six days’ labor over three miles. They had not yet reached the land-fast ice, but they were over the worst part. Bartlett was anticipating more pressure ridges before they reached land, but for now, the men were relieved. It was calmer on this side of the mountains. There was no wind, only a light breeze; just forty more miles or so, and they would reach the island.

  Once they were on the other side of the ridges, the men could see more clearly how the mountains must have formed. Blizzards had pushed the moving ice against and across the stationary ice, which threw the ice into, as Bartlett put it, “fantastic, mountainous formations8 that are as weird as that astounding picture of Chaos before the Creation that used to ornament the first volume of Ridpath’s ‘History of the World.’”

  They were thankful to be on the other side of them, and the men—particularly the polar novices—could not believe they had won their way through. “It was with9 a sense of intense relief,” wrote Chafe, “that we looked back at this monster wall, and then gazed over the vast, almost level, stretch of ice before us.”

  They moved in the teams Bartlett had designated when leaving Shipwreck Camp, which meant McKinlay worked with Mamen, Kataktovik, and the captain as they moved forward over the ice, on the last leg of the journey to land.

  Land. They could scarcely believe they were so close. Just a couple more days’ march, Bartlett said.

  McKinlay and Mamen had set out before sunrise with a load for the next camping place, seven miles closer to Wrangel Island. They were working in relays again, carrying forward supplies, which they cached at the next camp, and then returning and bringing the rest. Some of the men remained in the new camp to build the snow houses for that night while the rest of the men went back for the remaining stores. It was a system that seemed to work well.

  They still had to cut their way through the ice in spots, but now there was smooth ice in patches, which helped their progress.

  Then, as Bartlett had predicted, they came upon another pressure ridge. They knew the drill by now, and everyone set to work—just as they had before—to build yet another road across the Arctic.

  FOR SOME REASON that Mamen couldn’t figure out, the skipper had turned selfish. He and Kataktovik kept to themselves now, always walking ahead together to break the trail, and in Mamen’s opinion, Bartlett couldn’t do a thing alone without Kataktovik as his nursemaid.

  There had been a large portion of bear meat, their share from the one Hadley had killed, which Bartlett had proposed they wait to eat. While the other teams were enjoying theirs, they waited. Bartlett said he was too tired to cook it and they should save it for later.

  Afterward, when Mamen and McKinlay asked for their share of the meat, they were told it was already gone.

  “I don’t give10 a damn now till we get the things in to the island,” Mamen reported Bartlett as saying, “and then to hell with them, with everybody, I know damn well to look out for myself. I am not going to starve.”

  McKinlay sensed there were other reasons for Bartlett’s strange behavior. Still, it was baffling. Bartlett was usually so generous and fair, and now he seemed to think more of himself. On March 7, t
he captain got two stoves going just to dry out his own clothes. “I have also11 been disappointed,” McKinlay wrote, “to find that Captain is not sticking to the scale of allowances he himself has laid down; he & Kataktovik today took with them 2 lb. pemmican over the ration.”

  In their tent, a tin of Underwood pemmican was lasting them only one day instead of the prescribed one and a half days. He could only blame it on Bartlett, since he and Kataktovik were still taking two pounds of the stuff with them when they went out breaking the trail.

  Bartlett told McKinlay “‘it don’t matter’12 to him, as he is not going to stint himself before he reaches the island. The reason is obvious, of course, he will start off fresh supplied from the island & we will have what is left.”

  What McKinlay and Mamen could not know was that the captain was thinking ahead of the long journey to Siberia. He knew now that most of his men were too weak to make the journey. He had already been toying with the idea that he himself would make the two-hundred-mile trek to Siberia, and the five hundred miles beyond that of rugged Siberian wilderness. Mamen expected to go, but Bartlett knew Mamen would never make it, thanks to his lame knee.

  Better to let his men think the worst of him than to explain that their own survival depended upon his physical condition. He had to strengthen himself for the long, arduous journey that lay ahead. If he was not strong enough, he would never make it to Siberia himself. They, on the other hand, would be waiting for him on an island, which, by all reports, teemed with enough game to get them through. Bartlett and Kataktovik would be crossing mostly ice and wilderness, and there was no telling what chances they would have at obtaining fresh meat. He couldn’t very well tell his men they were going to die if he didn’t have extra pemmican, so he took the extra rations and let them wonder.

  THEY AWOKE ON THE MORNING of March 12, determined to reach land at any cost, even if it meant traveling in the dark.