by Helen Thayer
Seven nerve-wracking hours later, our boots crunched across thin coastal ice. In a world still no more than two feet wide, our GPS unit faithfully confirmed our position: We had arrived at the northernmost tip of tiny Pullen Island. Judging by the fragile ice underfoot, we had practically gone ashore.
We peered into the swirling whiteness at something long and bleached white. Further investigation showed the object to be a weather-beaten log. At first it made no sense in that treeless place. Then we remembered that logs from southern forests float down the Mackenzie River. Upon reaching the Beaufort Sea, swift ocean currents sweep them west until Arctic storms cast them onto the northern shores.
We retreated to more stable ice to set up camp as dusk darkened our claustrophobic world. We were relieved to escape into our tent, where we could look at something besides the blank whiteness of the fog.
There was no wind. For once the ice was still. Before sliding into our sleeping bags for the night, we checked outside but could see nothing. Alone in the Arctic darkness, I felt a brooding mood descend upon our tent. I wondered aloud whether the bears would be kind enough to keep their distance tonight.
“No use worrying about them when we can’t do much about it,” said Bill.
“Well, I’m not going to allow them to ruin a good night’s sleep,” I said. I definitely did not want to sleep in two-hour shifts as we had before. Bill and I are both day people, and I always found it particularly difficult to stay awake during night watches. Even the threat of polar bears was sometimes not sufficient to keep me awake. Bill claimed that I fell asleep on my feet.
Although troubled by the fog and bears, we rested well for the first two hours. But then Charlie suddenly rose and listened at the door. Bill opened the zipper, which sounded loud in the perfectly still night. Perhaps Charlie needed to relieve himself, I thought, but he didn’t move. His head turned to his right, then slowly moved to his left, as though following something unseen.
We had learned long ago to respect Charlie’s reactions around bears. Now we remained quiet, although my pounding heart felt as though it was about to leap out of my chest. My brain silently screamed, Is there a bear out there? Both Bill and I carefully reached for our shotguns. In cold climates, we don’t keep firearms in the tent. Any condensation in the firing mechanism would freeze, rendering the weapon useless. Instead we leave our guns in the cold vestibule, with a portion of the butt barely inside the door. We made slits in the door at floor level for just this purpose.
After five or ten minutes that seemed like forever, Charlie relaxed. His tail fanned back and forth, and after two yips he spread himself out on my sleeping bag with a contented sigh to resume his sleep. The episode was over for him, but we, still clutching our shotguns, continued to listen to the deep silence and its echoes in our imaginations.
Soon, though, the biting cold sent us back to our sleeping bags. “It had to be a bear. But Charlie seemed to send a friendly signal,” Bill whispered, as though afraid any noise might attract an unwelcome guest.
I agreed, still feeling exposed and vulnerable to whatever had caught Charlie’s attention. We were puzzled by his friendly reaction, which was more in keeping with greeting a wolf than a polar bear.
Sleep came only fitfully for the rest of the night. Dawn greeted us with the same silent mist. Hoping it might lift, we waited. But after several of the most boring hours of the expedition had passed, there was no improvement. At least in a storm we could listen to the wind. Here the only sound was the cracking of the ice pack as it moved. After a short discussion, we decided to begin our trip back to the mainland and hope conditions would clear. Although sorry to miss seeing Richards and Pullen Islands up close, we felt unsafe lingering amid so many bears.
As I loaded my sleeping bag onto the sled, I looked down. Right beside the runners was a large set of polar bear paw prints and two sets of wolf tracks that continued right past our tent, only three feet in front of the door. Now the nighttime picture was clear. When Charlie had listened so intently he must have known there was a bear outside, but his yips had been a greeting to the two wolves following the bear.
Bill agreed, but wondered just how far the bear had traveled and in which direction. Might he still be nearby? Charlie showed no sign of scenting a bear, but Bill was taking no chances. “Just in case they didn’t go far, let’s get out of here,” he said.
We packed our sleds in record time, attached skis to boots, buckled our harnesses around our waists, and set off. Movement might give us a false sense of security, but it was better than contemplating a dubious future in the claws and jaws of a hungry polar bear.
Charlie displayed no such fear. His calm demeanor embarrassed us as we hurried away from the ghostly forms we imagined in the fog. He walked placidly ahead of me, knowing all was well and perhaps wishing his humans would get a grip on their emotions.
As we followed the compass needle southeast, leaving the shoreline of the island, the fog continued to thicken. The presence of bears and heavy fog made us suspect there was a much larger expanse of open water close by, possibly to the north.
As we travel side by side through life, Bill and I make a solid team.
Fog forms when frigid air temperatures meet warmer water. Because of the constant movement of the sea ice, wide cracks and sometimes persistent or permanent areas of open water exist in both summer and winter. Called “polynyas,” and caused by currents, wind, and warm upwellings, these are treasure chests of wildlife, including seals. And of course, where there are seals, there are polar bears. Thus our surroundings provided plentiful clues about the conditions ahead.
As we fumbled our way along, Charlie suddenly stopped, his tail gently waving back and forth. He yipped twice and was answered by several wolf yips close by to our right. Then, with his head proudly erect, Charlie stepped in front to lead us, as if to display his alpha status. We suspected that these were wolves who already knew us.
Not being able to see them was spooky, but knowing they were close by provided a certain sense of companionship. We never felt threatened. They might have been following us out of natural curiosity, we speculated; the possibility that they were following a bear also occurred to us. As there was nothing we could do about the latter, we decided that our only option was to rely on Charlie’s highly tuned senses to warn us if we came too close to a bear.
Many times during past expeditions, a problem had cropped up that we were powerless to solve. We soon learned that all we could do was keep going and work through it as we went, rather than stop and allow ourselves to become paralyzed with paranoia. Judging by Charlie’s occasional glance to his right during the next hour and his tail fanning in acknowledgment of wolves unseen, we guessed that we were somehow paralleling their path across the ice. Considering what we had learned last summer about wolves’ intense curiosity and Charlie’s friendly, relaxed gestures, we were convinced that we were being accompanied by wolves and not bears.
Finally, a mile from the coast of Pullen Island, we again traveled over thick, solid ice. Our progress was still agonizingly slow as we groped our way along, frequently consulting our compass and GPS unit.
The ice showed frequent splits. Now and then the pack ice shuddered, toppling large chunks of ice. Gaps widened as we crossed, then dropped the ends of our sleds into the inky water as we hastily pulled them to safety. The ice taunted us with heart-stopping cracks, high-pitched whines, and pings that erupted from the depths.
We skied another half mile to where the surface appeared more stable, and camped there. Troubled by the unpredictable movement of the ice and the unrelenting fog, we ate a cold dinner without lighting the stove in case conditions worsened, forcing us to leave in a hurry.
Halfway through dinner, the distant rumble of breaking ice grew louder. We scrambled out of the tent. The sound seemed to come from the west, but the fog muffled everything, making it difficult to determine the exact direction. In case another major ice breakup was on its way, we loaded the sled
s and set a course to the east, adrenaline speeding us away from the ominous sound.
Bill led, and as I skied practically on his heels with Charlie at my side, I suddenly paused to look behind me. I had heard a swish, swish and was sure that another skier would emerge from the gray gloom. But no one was there. Bill had also heard the sound and stopped.
Mystified, we concluded that the ice was playing one of its never-ending series of tricks on us. Swish was just another word in its vocabulary. All around us it quivered. A four-foot pinnacle fell over. We skied onward as the mysterious nonexistent skier kept pace. Frequently exchanging leads in the increasingly rough terrain, we took turns scouting for the best route.
Suddenly the ice split. Ice towers crashed around us. A pulsing vibration swept through the fog. We wanted to run but there was nowhere to go. We were in the midst of an ice eruption. Frightened, we ripped off our skis and lashed them to our sleds. I kept a firm, protective grip on Charlie’s leash as he pressed hard against my leg, telling me he was afraid.
The distant rumbling, now much louder, closed in on us. I stared at sections of falling ice as though hypnotized. Time stood still as my heart tried to hammer its way out of my chest. A crack in the ice zigzagged past us, widening to three feet. Then a ghostly moan came from the direction of a pressure ridge we had just crossed. As we watched in disbelief, the entire thing collapsed on itself with a thunderous roar, sending blinding particles of snow dust into our faces. A hundred feet away, a flat area suddenly erupted upward under powerful pressure from the ocean depths. Plates of ice rose and slammed on top of each other. We hurdled a wide crack. In front of us a ridge jerked fifty feet apart.
Bill yelled, “Run!”
We haul our sled up and over the teetering blocks of ice.
The three of us raced for the opening with Charlie in the lead. We escaped across an ice bridge just before tons of ice slammed behind us. Dashing across a smooth spot, we leaped over a three-foot chasm, dunking the tails of our sleds into the dark water as we barely made it to solid ice.
Vibrations pulsed through our bodies. We were in the path of a freight train with no escape. To our left, ice spanned a twenty-foot-wide water lead. Bill went first, then Charlie, then me; but just as I lunged to safety the bridge fell, dragging the tail of my sled into the water. I had made it by a microsecond.
We searched for safety and escape, dodging violent eruptions and widening cracks. Charlie moved in unison with us.
After what seemed an eternity, the deafening noise slowly faded into the distance. We collapsed onto our sleds, emotionally and physically drained. Even a visiting polar bear would not have impressed us after our close call. We were thankful to be alive.
After we were sure the danger had passed, we looked for a suitable campsite as dusk settled around us. The fog had thinned, with visibility improving to five hundred feet.
The ice was still in such upheaval, though, that we could find no place to pitch our tent. There was nothing to do but press on, which meant attacking the pinnacles, the ice blocks and ridges carved into an endless array of abstract shapes that blocked our path in all directions. An hour later, nearing exhaustion, we were still struggling to heave our sleds up and over yet another ridge and through more teetering ice blocks. Even Charlie was tired. Darkness had descended, leaving only the reflection from the ice to give us a little gray light.
But now the stiff breeze became a strong wind that blasted our bodies with waves of spindrift. Snow forced its way down our collars and into the smallest openings in our clothing. Our jackets, masks, and parka hoods caked up and turned rock hard. A layer of ice covered Charlie’s thick coat, and his face was a white mask.
The fog disappeared in the gale, but in our new misery we hardly noticed. Cresting another pressure ridge, we saw a level place ahead. We aimed for it, and although it turned out to be a sloping ice pan, it was the best we had seen in a long time.
The strong gusts tore at the tent. Bill threw himself across the flapping fabric while I grabbed the ice screws and fixed them into the cement-hard ice. The wind howled at us in the darkness. Just as my fingers turned numb, the screws went in and we shoved the tent poles through their sleeves. After we anchored the sleds close to the door, all three of us fell inside to begin the warming process.
After much windmilling of my arms, my fingers throbbed with the excruciating pain of returning circulation. Bill’s hands had not fared much better, but as he gritted his teeth through the agony of warming, he knew his fingers were safe from severe frostbite. Charlie shook himself free of snow and ice, but at least he showered it near the door.
After I swept the snow into the vestibule, we unloaded our sleeping gear and food from the sleds. Finally everything we needed was inside. We lit the stove, cooked rice and instant potatoes, and ate dinner. Now warmer, reasonably well fed, and in our sleeping bags, we looked at our watches. It was 2 A.M.
“What a day,” I mused. “Sometimes I wonder why in the world anyone would ever want to live like this.”
“Makes the red blood cells wake up,” was Bill’s understated reply.
As we finished the last crumbs of our day’s ration of food bars, we talked about how scared we had been. The adrenaline rush caused by the terrifying events had pushed us to react instantly, but it had also pushed us to an emotional edge, where only the instinct to survive had forced us to keep going rather than shut down in panic.
Later I wrote in my journal: “Today I have been scared to death. My heart beat so strongly it’s a wonder it’s in a fit condition to continue. Dodging for our lives does not impress me as a relaxing pastime. My prayers are for smooth skiing and unlimited visibility in bright sunshine. And no polar bears.”
After further reflection on our day, I added: “Fear is a strange thing. I’m more convinced than ever that conquering fear isn’t about bravery, but rather about how we handle it. If we had panicked we might have been killed, but the extreme adrenaline rush gave us the advantage to think at top speed and react as never before. Fear is like a wall. To survive, we forced our way through the wall that engulfed us and reached down into our innermost souls. We emerged with the ability to react in a way we had not known was possible.”
As I set about the task of moving Charlie off my sleeping bag, I said to Bill, “I hope we’re never tested like that again.”
I thought of home and all our animals—goats, sheep, alpacas, donkeys, cats, and dogs. They seemed so far away. I missed them. But this train of thought would only get me into trouble, I knew. I switched my thoughts to memories of the wolves we had come to see and concentrated on the many tender sights we had witnessed, such as the limping female’s companion taking care of her. My sadness evaporated. I thought of dear old Beta and all the summer wolves we had come to know so well. In my mind’s eye I could see Alpha and Denali roving over the snowy tundra. The pups would be following, no doubt with Beta and Mother keeping an eye on them. I took the small brown rock from my pocket and again pressed it to my lips in silent prayer. My optimism was back.
My attempt to shove Charlie over and claim my full share of our bed was a complete failure. He merely spread out, lay his head on me, and went to sleep. I gave up and slid into the narrow sliver he had left for me.
We fell asleep to the sound of a wild storm, which now that we were safely in our tent was music to our ears because we knew the wind would push the fog away. At 5 A.M. we both awoke to silence. Unzipping the door, we looked out—only to be greeted by the same old fog. I prayed that by daylight it would be gone. And indeed, at 8 A.M. a gentle breeze tugged at the tent walls. The fog had thinned rapidly. We ate breakfast and packed, delighted.
Our late start rewarded us with an expanded world of blue skies and visibility that stretched to the horizon. But as we took in the view, our suspicions were confirmed. Ahead along our route, only a half mile away, was a vast area of open water.
A shadow spreading across the pale sky signaled the reflection of the dark open sea. As we
closed in on the chasm, it showed itself to be more than a mile long and at least half a mile wide, displaying the typical green-black color of frigid Arctic water. Six polar bears paced along the its edges, hunting seals as arctic foxes and two wolves we recognized as Smudge and Crab kept close watch, hoping to share in the bounty. One bear saw us and approached, but after he satisfied his curiosity he returned to the water. Another two wolves who resembled the immature members of the sea ice pack watched us suspiciously, then turned back to keep an eye on the bears, who might provide a meal at any moment.
Twelve foxes scurried around, some with noses close to the ice, picking up what seemed to be tantalizing scents. Normally curious, they paid no attention to us. Charlie stopped to look the scene over, then raised his muzzle to catch the scents too. After sending a few yips of greeting to the wolves, he walked on without so much as another glance in their direction. He had apparently concluded that the bears were busy and had no interest in us. We could not bring ourselves to be quite so casual, though, and kept a wary eye on them just in case.
Taking a more southerly route to avoid the water, we found ourselves skiing over ice that, although jumbled in places, was the best skiing we had so far encountered. In another mile we noticed a bear three hundred feet ahead, feeding on a seal. Patch stood close by, as if waiting for his chance to share the meal. But the bear replied with a loud growl whenever the wolf took a step forward. At two hundred feet away, we stopped. Charlie, although interested, showed no alarm. The bear concentrated on his meal and the wolf who might steal it.
Soon Patch lay down and seemed content to wait. After consuming more than half the carcass, the bear withdrew a few feet and sat to lick his paws. Patch dashed forward to rip chunks of meat from the seal and gobble them down, as if worried that the bear might change his mind. Indeed, in several minutes the bear rose and, after a short growl, resumed his meal while Patch again retreated and watched. This time the bear finished off the seal except for a few small pieces. Apparently satisfied, he walked toward the open water and allowed Patch to eat the last bits.