We head for the Qausuittuq Inn North, where most expeditions make final preparations and check their equipment. Here you eat the plentiful set meals of traditional home cooking at a long table in the kitchen, cramming in as many calories as you can while chatting with the other adventurers also about to set off, which this time include a couple of Royal Marines about to make a second unsupported attempt, also having failed very quickly the year before. They have been delayed in their departure to the starting off point of Ward Hunt Island by bad weather, and the satellite pictures suggest a further massive snowfall is on the way. I am always cautious about relying too much on such predictions, since the one thing I have come to learn here is to expect the unexpected, the ice constantly changing, new ridges forming, fresh leads of open water appearing or others closing over. When after dinner we pull our crate of equipment into the garage to start the long process of unpacking and checking, everything has frozen solid except for our stash of brandy.
We have a huge amount to do before our departure in four days’ time on Thursday 5 March, not least removing all superfluous wrapping and dividing our food up into five-day packs of rations, muesli for breakfast, powdered drinks and soup for lunch, and a dehydrated meal for the evening, plus our munchy bags of nuts, Mars Bars and milk chocolate cut up into chunks to nibble during the day. What concerns me most however right now is that I am feeling dreadful, and if this turns out to be flu rather than simply a severe cold we will have to delay our departure, assuming of course the weather allows us to leave when planned anyway. On the Monday I see the nurse at the health centre who tells me that I have high blood pressure, which probably shouldn’t surprise me in view of all the extra weight I am carrying. She prescribes Fisherman’s Friends and a course of antibiotics, but I am loathe to take the latter so pack them away in our medical kit in case of emergency. We also test our sledges and shotgun that fires a heavy solid ball, or rather Rune does, since his military training means that polar bear defence has been delegated to him.
We are having trouble with our Argos satellite beacon, and everyone is talking about reported suggestions that the El Niño weather system is causing the polar ice-cap to melt earlier than normal. Could this simply be the wrong year to be making an attempt on the North Pole? I shudder at the thought of this. On a more optimistic note, when we weigh our sledges they come in at 106lbs and 150lbs, since Rune says dragging a heavier one will keep him warm and even up our relative skiing speeds. This is the huge advantage of a supported expedition, since the previous year our sledges were 300 to 325lbs. We’ll move faster, but also be less likely to be dragged underwater should we fall through the ice, always my greatest fear. By the Wednesday my cold seems to have lifted, the result of massive doses of paracetamol and vitamin C, not to mention mothering by Joy the cook at the guest house. Borge Ousland phones to wish us well, and we also finally crack the problem with the Argos, where it transpired that we’d been reading the minutes and seconds on each degree as normal one sixtieths rather than simply digitally. It was actually bang on, but this also confirmed to me that you almost need a physics degree to make it to the Pole these days.
By Wednesday evening we have everything ready, and have decided to risk flying up to Ward Hunt Island the next morning. The weather looks touch and go for landing, but it is pointless trying to hang around for perfect conditions and we know that the full moon on 12 March will create massive tides that are bound to break up the ice. As usual I am finding the waiting difficult to cope with, have lost my appetite and feel my nerves are getting the better of me. Even though it goes against the received Inuit wisdom I decide to risk a shower so I will at least set out feeling clean.
We rise at 4.30 a.m. the next morning and eat a breakfast of ham and eggs in subdued silence, it feeling like a condemned man’s last meal. After a final visit to a proper lavatory for two months we drive to the airport in the pitch-black. Although we are warned again that low cloud may make a landing at Ward Hunt Island’s unmanned, iced-over airstrip impossible we still go ahead and board the Twin Otter, and as we taxi Rune leans round and says to me, ‘I’ve got the feeling we’ve been here before.’ As we lift off he has his Walkman on, and is singing his own idiosyncratic version of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’. I’ll have plenty of time to become familiar with this. We fly north across a white desert lit by a shimmering half-moon as the Arctic sun slowly struggles into the sky, unclimbed mountain peaks beneath us. We land for forty-five minutes to refuel at Eureka and Rune and I feel compelled to admit our nervousness as we walk on the ice together. We just have to get through the first ten days, establish a routine. Airborne again John points out that the position of the sun and moon means a classic neap tide, so relatively gentle currents to disturb the ice of the Arctic Ocean, but in a week’s time that will be very different.
When we reach Ward Hunt Island and fly out over the ice-cap however we are shocked to find how broken up the ice appears from the air, although fortunately we see no wider stretches of open water so we should be able to navigate around them. The pilot agrees to attempt a landing on the beach, and at 11.22 a.m. we make a particularly violent touchdown on this tiny cone of land that pokes out into the Arctic Ocean, the most accessible point to the North Pole from its Canadian side. Between us and our destination the only other living things are seals, polar bears, a few arctic foxes and a couple of other teams of explorers. It truly is the most desolate place on earth. The wind-chill is –60°C and my permanently damaged nose is already throbbing again. After saying our farewells we strap on our skis and harness up our sledges, and within not much more than an hour the plane has gone, circling briefly overhead as we take our first few steps out on the ice.
We know what is ahead of us, but in some ways I feel better than last year. Then Rune was a friend, but now he is more like a brother to me. We know how well we work together, and we will need all that. The Pole is 415 nautical miles away, but we will be travelling much further than that around open leads of water and as the ice drifts, east, west and south, more like 600 nautical miles probably. We start walking and within an hour come across a French–Italian–Canadian three-man expedition that we’d got to know back in Resolute. We’d felt then that there was dissension between them, and now it looks as if they might even be giving up on their first day. We head on past them, and set up camp feeling very pleased to have managed 3 miles in an hour and a half. I’m annoyed to detect some slight frostbite on my fingers, a result of filming with the BBC Video Diaries camera, as apart from my nose I have pretty much managed to avoid it in the past. Despite that we decide to celebrate our first night on the ice with a swig of whisky from two hip flasks of single malt that we’ve been given. Supper is Irish stew. Hell, here we are again!
I wake up feeling cold, remembering almost at once that there will be nowhere to warm-up for the next sixty days. It was relatively mild inside the tent last night, only –30°C, but it should really have been some 20 degrees less than that. We’ve deliberately left slightly earlier this year, when there is less daylight and hence lower temperatures, as that should mean open water rapidly freezes over. I little thought I’d find myself wishing for colder weather, but to a large extent our chances of success depend on that. We both feel the pressure of the sixty days we have set ourselves to reach the Pole, but Rune already seems to have relaxed and settled into a routine of just getting on with the job. I hate getting out of my sleeping bag in the morning, and from that moment onwards I look forward to the moment when I can get back inside it again. We can’t ease ourselves into this gently, as the worst rubble and pressure ridges will be over the first 100 miles, but as we are out of practice it still takes us four hours to get going in the dark. Within an hour of setting off we are fed-up, as it becomes clear that our ski bindings have been mounted too far forwards, but for all our swearing we know we will just have to cope until our first resupply. We manage another 3 miles during the day, and in a ridiculous radio conversation relayed between us and Jo
hn by a radio operator in Resolute we discover that we and the marines are now the only two teams out on the ice, although one member of the other aborted expedition will attempt to struggle on solo, God help him.
The next few days are very difficult. Rune is much fitter than me, the fourteen years between us making all the difference, and I feel exhausted. Our biggest problem is the cold, since we are not heating the tent as we want to conserve fuel. Our thermometer measures down to –55°C, but on the morning of day four it is off the bottom of the scale. Even if Rune is doing better than me we are both tired and miserable, our metabolisms not yet adapted to the cold and we are struggling to digest our 6,000-calorie daily rations. To make matters worse my therma-rest, a vital layer of protection as I sleep, has disintegrated in the cold and no longer works just at the time I need it most. Rune gives short shrift to my suggestion that he should lend me his, or that we should share it on alternate nights. At my statement that any good friend would do so he simply smokes a roll-up and says, ‘I am not that good a friend.’ It takes us an hour to help each other struggle into our frozen boots in the morning. We are making better mileage than last year however, up to 5 miles a day already.
On day five we discover a serious equipment problem, as all three fuel pumps for our stove have stopped working properly. Something is wrong with the rubber washer in each case and they are leaking. If this goes on we will either be unable to cook and hence starve or be asphyxiated by the fumes. We simply can’t work out what is wrong. The first two started to leak when it was relatively mild, so the extreme cold does not seem to be the sole cause. We’d checked everything thoroughly before departure, and can’t believe in the possibility of deliberate sabotage when we left the pumps out prior to packing, yet nor does accidental damage seem a reasonable explanation for all three. To conserve fuel we agree not to heat our tent however cold it gets, and to accept the cruel sacrifice of foregoing our hot drink before bed. Although this is very depressing we also have a moment of experiencing the sheer beauty that the Arctic can throw up. Rune taps me on the shoulder and points back towards the vapour trails our warm bodies leave behind us as we walk, a ghostly spoor that takes five minutes to dissipate in the still air.
The cold is a mixed-blessing still. I have some frostbite on two toes now, the result of new boot liners I am wearing being just fractionally too small, and Rune has to dress my wounds which may be becoming septic. The temperature does mean we have been lucky in not coming across real open water, until we find our first major lead on day six. There is a science of sorts to determining the strength of ice from its appearance, but Rune adopts a far simpler method of just stabbing it with his ski pole. If it remains unbroken after three pokes then it is safe, if the third goes through you consider risking it—but then he is far less afraid than I am of falling into the icy water below. Salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh, about –4°C, but although it might be less cold than the surrounding air you lose heat far more rapidly once you get wet. I was terrified to hear about one part of his commando training, cutting two holes in the ice of a frozen lake and diving through one to emerge from the other. Nothing on earth would make me attempt such a thing.
Rune’s method of determining the ice’s strength seems very rough science to me, but I know from last year that he is right. Having made our way less than a quarter of a mile west we reach a point he has spotted where he thinks we can cross. This time the ice survives until the third poke, and my heart in my mouth I unharness my sledge and ski across without mishap then pull my sledge across after me. This is just the first of hundreds or even thousands that we will encounter, and although it is stressful for me I know it is equally so for Rune in other ways as he feels responsible for me. ‘I know how I am going to react, David,’ he says, ‘but I don’t know how you will react.’ Apart from this we trust each other completely as a team and we are building a good routine again, starting from the moment my alarm goes off under my ear at 6.00 a.m. and I lean over to wake Rune with a prolonged shout of ‘Rooner!’ As the cook he must get up first, and he claims to enjoy this time by himself listening to music on his Walkman and smoking the first of his never-ending stream of cigarettes. This only makes the inside of our tent all the more resemble a steam room, our condensed breath filling the air and forming into hoarfrost that covers everything.
I am the main navigator, which is a very complex business. Although we are heading north the compass actually points almost due south, since we are north of the moving Magnetic Pole, and the compensation for magnetic variation even fluctuates during the day as the Magnetic Pole oscillates due to the sun’s activity. We can check our position with a GPS, but the batteries for this need to be warmed before it can be used. Often it is easier to navigate by the sun, but that also requires being certain our watches are set to the correct time zone, which will become more difficult when the lines of longitude converge as we reach further north. Rune is better suited to be the point man, finding the simplest route through the rubble and around or across the pressure ridges or leads of open water, the fastest way not necessarily always being the most direct. As the far faster skier he can scout ahead and check the possibilities for our best path, and although we have constant minor arguments about our overall direction and best route we are both astounded how much easier the terrain has been this year, which we know may all change on the evening of our eighth day, Thursday 12 March, with a full moon and spring tide.
And it is truly terrifying when it comes. The titanic forces of the tide produce what seems like an earthquake at sea, as huge pans of ice clash together or are ripped apart. The noise like rifle shots as the ice cracks and the continual sound of falling rubble are frightening, and even worse is the constant vibration. What petrifies us most as we lie helpless in our sleeping bags is that there’s no way of knowing if a pressure ridge will suddenly be thrown up 30 feet under our tent, or if the ice will split apart beneath us so we are hurled into the freezing ocean. Despite the night’s huge upheaval the state of the ice when we manage to get moving in the morning is not quite as bad as we had feared, but although I do not take a reading I know that overnight we have been swept back between 1 and 2 miles, so we are just making up ground against the continually moving ocean.
Day ten sees us confined to our tent, with high winds and visibility of no more than 18 inches, but we can afford this as we have made such good headway. The next day sees us set a new record distance of 7¾ miles, so it is brandy and a cigar to celebrate. Even our little arguments serve to bond us more closely together. I’d complained that the warm juice we drink from a thermos during the day wasn’t hot enough, and the next day’s flask is so hot that when I take a mouthful I have to spit it out. In addition to ‘Old Man’ and ‘Kid’ that we call each other, I have now become ‘Dr Livingstone’ after the medal I had received, and Rune is naturally therefore ‘Dr Nansen’ after the great Norwegian Polar explorer. By the end of day twelve on 16 March we cross our first degree, the 84th Parallel, and last year it had taken us twenty-nine days to reach this far. We only have a couple of days’ fuel remaining however, and decide to order a resupply on day fourteen, even though this will make our sledges much heavier again. The rubble is dreadful now, and we just have to hope that we can find a suitable landing strip.
The Twin Otter is a remarkable plane, with pilots saying they only need a flat(ish) 100 feet to land, but even they need 1,200 to take off again. We daren’t order the resupply before we have actually found a good enough place, since then the plane might have to turn back and we’d still end up paying for it. Fortunately the skies are blue and clear when we get going, and after an hour we climb a pressure ridge and I hear Rune whooping when he reaches the top. When I follow him I can see what he is so excited about, a perfect pan of ice spread out in front of us. Ideally we’d have travelled more than the mile or so we’ve come so far today, but we both know this is the ideal spot and too good to pass up, so we set up our tent and radio John to arrange things.
The Royal Marines have abandoned their attempt, we are told, and a rescue mission has been launched, although what has gone wrong he does not know. Then it is time to heat up the tent at long last and for Rune to check the frostbite on my toes. I have a big blister on the front tip beneath the nail which looks bad, and I hope it will hold-up.
When we wake on day fifteen and radio Resolute to confirm the weather is holding we are told that a plane is already on the way. This means a sudden desperate rush to get ready, arranging all our equipment into three piles, one to go back, one to remain with us, and the third to be exchanged for new supplies, as well as all the fuel and food we will be receiving. We have to get this right, and avoid sending back by mistake something we will need. When we finally hear the drone of the approaching aircraft I let off a parachute flare to alert the pilot of our position, very foolishly nearly hitting the plane itself. Rune screams at me and holds his head in his hands, and I know we both have the same vision of the near-disaster that I almost caused. It takes three attempts for the pilot to put-down, our strip clearly not being as long or flat as we thought, but eventually the aircraft comes to a halt. Immediately bedlam ensues, as we rush around dismantling one tent and simultaneously attempting to erect the new one, piles of food and equipment all over the place.
No Such Thing as Failure Page 14