by Chris Bray
DAY 24: Lunchtime archaeology
After the terrifying seven hours of darkness during which we repeatedly scampered out to check the bear alarm and anxiously waved our torches into the inky blackness at every sound, we eventually decided to ‘call it a night’, and packed up. Training my binoculars on the bear, I saw him stand, scent the air, and then vanish. About an hour later when the hairs on the back of my neck settled down, we headed off down into the next muddy expanse. Quite hard going. We hauled cautiously up onto the bear’s esker, and then onwards, down into more marshy ground.
Lunch was one of those perfect Arctic moments. No wind, clear blue skies, a group of muskox ambling past the shore 100 metres away, passing in front of deep blue hunks of multi-year ice. It really was beautiful. Further along, Clark spotted strange piles of rocks ahead, and we unclipped to investigate. ‘They look like caches,’ Clark shouted over, ‘as if they were piled on top of something big, but now they’re just hollow inside …’
I clambered over. The lichen and other plant life around and inside each of these caches was prolific, as if whatever was in there had perhaps decomposed and greatly enriched the soil at each site. ‘Maybe they were food caches?’ I wondered aloud.
‘Or tombs, even …’ Clark added. We documented some very unusual-shaped stone tent rings and other features before shackling back up and hauling onwards.
‘This is what it’s all about!’ I said excitedly, ‘I love that we can look around and explore a little now.’
‘Yeah,’ Clark said, nodding, ‘I don’t feel guilty anymore, actually—it’s not like we’ve “given up”—we’re still giving it our all!’
Rather annoyingly, we both realised today that a few days ago—we can’t for the life of us remember when—we paused for a nut break on an enormous square-section length of wood that had washed up on the muddy shore. It was so large and conveniently shaped like a bench seat some 10 metres long that we couldn’t resist sitting on it and admiring the ice-strewn coastline in front of us. It only just occurred to us tonight that unlike the usual hunks of driftwood, this one was clearly manufactured, and looked remarkably like a section of a wooden mast from an old square-rigged ship, just like the Erebus and the Terror—Franklin’s missing ships! I wonder …
DAY 25: Denmark Fiord
After repairing our tripod, which had broken a few days ago, and re-wiring our failing laptop charger, we were off in good time this morning, keen to try for Denmark Fiord, a lengthy region of what should be open water, where the crushing pack ice of McClintock Channel is kept out by a long spur—an island, almost, connected by a land bridge.
The prospect of several days’ uninterrupted kayaking (and a chance to test out our new paddle) encouraged us onwards today, and despite sluggish terrain that greatly sapped our energy—and one group of aggro muskox that vehemently refused to give way, forcing us to double back and take an even slushier route—we were eventually rewarded with a distant expanse of blue. ‘It’s open water!’ I pointed excitedly. ‘Denmark Fiord!’
The last muddy bay we had to cross was immense, and already feeling drained and having eaten our last nut break ration for the day, we wearily stumbled down into it and inched our way towards our goal. The further we went, the stickier and deeper the mud became, and the more we struggled. ‘Keep … going,’ Clark gasped beside me, eyes glazed, ‘It’s getting closer …’ In the end we had to double-haul onto the final esker, where Victoria Island played another cruel trick on us. It wasn’t the final bay after all—yet another muddy expanse now opened up in front of us. Weary and broken, we didn’t even have the energy to complain, and simply marched slowly onwards down into our next torture session.
I made it to the final esker—and to the shore of Denmark Fiord—with enough time to quickly set up the tent and watch the joy spread across Clark’s face as he crested the rise and gazed out over the expanse of open blue water. It’s a magic campsite here, positioned right at the base of the land bridge out to the picturesque ‘island’ that we’ve so often stared at on our maps and satellite images from day one of planning, imagining what it’d be like to be here. It’s a real landmark, and we are absolutely thrilled to have arrived. What’s more, the wind is blowing gently south-easterly, ready for a brilliant day’s kayaking tomorrow down the fiord! Life is good!
We enjoyed a rehydrated meal of sweet and sour pork tonight—one of our favourites—while relaxing against our PACs, taking in this magnificent view. It’s all bathed in a beautiful evening light, and there’s even muskox wandering in the distance. We really are privileged to see such wild beauty. Neither returning empty-handed from fishing, nor reading a particularly graphic email from Dad warning us about the abilities of polar bears, could come close to denting our high morale tonight.
DAY 26: So much for that idea
A particularly violent gust of wind slamming against my side of the tent woke me at 4 am and I lay there in my sleeping bag, feeling the tent thrash around wildly. The act of unzipping the vestibule and poking my head out caused an icy wind to explode into the tent.
‘What’s happening?’ Clark’s dazed and muffled voice escaped his sleeping bag.
‘It seems,’ I began, utterly crestfallen, ‘that not only has the wind swung 180 degrees and is now roaring onshore, but it’s also got a lot stronger. There goes our beautiful dream of kayaking merrily down the fiord.’ It was a real blow, and we both ate our porridge in silence, staring morosely out at the whitecaps and waves dashing themselves onto the shore, and pondering what to do.
One more week and we’ll be halfway through our allotted 65 days. What an eternity it seems. Two months would flash past back home, barely noticed, yet out here each day is a lifetime of experiences, a sea of challenges to overcome, hardships to endure, moments of bliss, beauty and awe to savour forever. In fact, so much seems to happen out here that, come afternoons, we can almost swear that the morning’s incidents happened days ago—it’s as if our brains struggle to fit in so many experiences into one ‘day-sized’ compartment. ‘That was this morning!?’ It’s a real shock sometimes.
We decided to spend today filming and photographing a whole list of things on our list, such as converting to/from haul/kayak mode. It’s just too heartbreaking to start hauling along the muddy coastline when on a good weather day (tomorrow?) we could easily paddle three times the distance.
Amazingly it was 6.30 pm by the time we finished filming and dragged our PACs back up to camp. We got a lot done, and were so busy that we didn’t even pause for lunch, or half our nut breaks! Even our day’s chocolate ration remained untouched in our pockets! Clambering inside the tent, we quickly had lunch, two nut rations, a mug of ridiculously rich hot chocolate, and dinner in quick succession. Having just eaten basically a whole day’s ration in the space of about 30 minutes, I actually feel full for the first time in a long time! It’s great!
DAY 27: Kayaking the fiord
Miraculously, the wind swung back 180 degrees during the night, and after breakfast we hauled our PACs down to the water’s edge, changed into our drysuits, converted to kayak mode and pushed off. Without even paddling, the wind blew us onwards at almost 1.5 kilometres per hour, as small tumbling whitecaps scurried past. ‘How good is this!’ I called out, thrilled that the weather—although cold, grey, increasingly windy and even starting to spit rain—was for once helping us on our way.
Hearing no reply from Clark, I pulled my hood back and looked around. He was a fair way back already, madly digging at the water with our little makeshift paddle. ‘This thing’s shit!’ he grumbled bitterly when he finally caught up.
‘Well, we’ll take it in turns,’ I said, holding out my paddle which he accepted gratefully.
While it was certainly awkward to use, I got a rhythm going with the little paddle and got quite used to it, happily scooping my way along at the same rate as Clark was kayaking. Whenever we swapped back, however, Clark would fall behind. To relieve his growing frustration, I decided to permane
ntly swap my paddle for his makeshift paddle. ‘Besides,’ I said, trying to keep up morale, ‘I think it looks cool—all metal and pop-rivets—it’s got the same rustic charm as my PAC.’
The further from the windward side of the fiord we paddled, the larger the waves grew, and soon we were surrounded by huge rolling, breaking, churning waves—lifting and spinning our PACs, surging over the stern and sides and emptying bucketloads of icy water across the cockpits. For our first nut break of the day we pulled onto a tiny island and sat side by side, backs to the buffeting wind, and decided to eat lunch instead. ‘It’s pretty crazy out there,’ I nodded, ‘I wonder if anyone has ever been on this island before?’
It somehow took us an hour to get under way again, and by the time we’d managed another 3 kilometres and ducked behind a point for shelter, Clark was flagging. ‘I’m just not a kayaker, I guess.’ He shrugged apologetically. Strangely, I felt I could paddle on for hours.
After a revitalising nut break and bailing several litres of water out of our PACs, we again pushed out into the washing machine and headed for a spit of land in the distance. Over a kilometre out from shore, paddling our home-made PACs through this bracing weather, muskox on the shoreline, potentially a bear around the next corner, I suddenly felt a real sense of pride and accomplishment. We really are living the dream out here—this is a real adventure!
DAY 28: Interview from an iceberg
In true Arctic style, the weather changed dramatically again overnight, and we awoke to a perfectly still day without a breath of wind. Heavy mist and cloud was still hiding the sun, and so we decided to go easy on charging our electronics as the solar panels would be struggling. Worryingly, our GPS doesn’t seem to accept charge anymore anyway, as its supposedly waterproof charge connections have corroded away, and so we’ve been checking our position on a ‘need to know only’ basis for the last few days. Thankfully this morning, however, after doing some serious surgery on it I got it functioning again, and with the tide by then having slid conveniently up to our tent door, we didn’t even need to drag the PACs before hopping in them and pushing off into the mirror-like fiord.
We paddled past an increasing number of small icebergs—all shapes and sizes. ‘This is awesome!’ I said after a time.
‘Maybe we should get some pics?’ Clark agreed enthusiastically, and after performing a hair-raising balancing act—easing ourselves out of the cockpit and up onto the stern of our PACs—we withdrew our large padded, waterproof Ortlieb camera bags from inside and set ourselves up. We spent several hours drifting around, paddling back and forth in front of the most picturesque bergs getting some great shots.
‘We could try and get some footage of us both kayaking past,’ Clark said, ‘if we could find a suitable iceberg.’ I knew what he was thinking, and we soon found a large, stable-looking berg with a bit of an alcove melted into it. We gingerly paddled into the berg until our PACs bottomed out on invisibly clear submerged ice.
‘This should be interesting,’ I grinned, as I hesitantly stood up in my PAC and, trying to brace myself on the slippery ice with my paddle, gingerly stepped out into what looked like water. Climbing up onto the berg itself was incredibly slippery, and I had to take my gloves off so I could dig my fingers into the frosty surface as I shimmied up on top. Clark joined me and we set the video camera up, pressed ‘record’ and tried not to rush as we slid back down the iceberg, clambered back into our PACs and reversed our way back down the alleyway of ice. The two of us then paddled back and forth past the video camera’s field of view for as long as we could bear, before returning to collect the video camera from on top of the berg. ‘That’ll l-look … a-awesome,’ Clark said, through chattering teeth as he clumsily folded the tripod away.
Dialling in for our weekly Sky News interview, we were put on hold, listening to world news as we shuffled endlessly around and around in circles, stomping our feet and jiggling our arms in a bid to keep warm while we waited. At last I was live: ‘Yeah, things are going well out here,’ I began, ‘we’re currently standing on top of an iceberg, saw our first polar bear this week …’ The interview went really well—the sat phone even conveniently cut out just as they asked the unanswerable ‘Why do you do it?’ question—but by the end we were both shivering wrecks.
Chilled to the core, we just couldn’t seem to get warm as we paddled along the shore looking for somewhere to camp. Nothing but flat, tidal mudflats. Getting noticeably weaker from the cold, we at last spotted a bit of a drier-looking patch ahead and well inland: the lesser of many evils. We pulled ashore and stepped out into boot-deep, sucking mud. ‘This is going to take forever,’ I groaned, shackling up as Clark wearily splashed over to help push.
It turned out to be the longest stint of double-hauling we’ve done so far. On and on, slowly ploughing great wheel ruts into the muddy slurry behind us as we strained and strained to gain each step. Finally we made it, turned around and sloshed back to Clark’s PAC. Cold, wet, numb and delirious, we didn’t exchange a word as Clark shackled up while I leaned into the PAC from behind. It was late by the time we were back staggering around camp setting up the tripwire, and past midnight before we finally lay flat in the sanctuary of our tent, gradually coaxing our knotted back muscles to relax.
DAY 29: Stocktaking
We awoke at 8, 8.30, 9, and eventually came to again at about 10.15 am. Rain lashed the sides of our tent, the windchill taking the 4 degrees Celsius down to minus 8.8 degrees. We independently began a few chores inside the tent and ate breakfast, all the while each quietly revelling in the fact that it seemed the other showed no sign of wanting to get out, haul the PACs all the way back to the fiord and keep going. Without a word, we agreed that today would be our first rest day. We deserve it. Today makes this journey now one day longer than Jasper’s and my Tassie wilderness trip.
By ‘rest day’ I just mean we didn’t haul anywhere—we crammed the day full of jobs that have been piling up. I culled photos on the laptop to free up space while Clark snaked his iPod earphone wire along our trail drawn on paper maps and held it against the scale on the side. ‘We’ve done about 180 kilometres so far!’ he announced proudly. Not bad. As our other unbreakable polycarbonate spoon has also broken, I set about carving a new spoon from a muskox horn I’d picked up a few days ago. Doug had referred to horn as ‘the Inuits’ plastic’ and after heating it over the stove to soften it (inadvertently filling the tent with the pungent odour of burning hair) and whittling away at it with my Leatherman, I proudly held it out for Clark to inspect. Wrinkling his nose, he kindly said he’d stick to using the broken unbreakable one.
Next we decided to go through all our overall food rations, to check if we have been eating through them at the correct rate. Motivated by the possibility of having to correct any oversupplies, we emptied the PACs of food and inspected them one at a time. The sugar bag was first, and after literally measuring out the number of spoonfuls we had left, Clark gleefully reported that we had enough to have an extra spoon per person, per day! ‘Oh, yeah!!! That’s going straight into our breakfast porridge!’ I grinned. Currently we’re only allowed half a spoonful.
Oats were next, and after re-checking twice, Clark delivered a bombshell. ‘We … um, have to cut back on oats a bit, I’m afraid. We’re going to have to make do with about half what we’ve gotten used to.’
For two hungry men, this was devastating news. ‘I half-wish we hadn’t just checked the rations,’ I commented.
‘Better half rations now than no rations later,’ Clark observed. Butter, peanut butter, rice, chocolate, pasta and dehydrated meals were all on track, he reported.
An evening thunderstorm rolled in and, curled up inside our sleeping bags, we could hear thunder above the rain.
‘What’ll we do if it hails?’ A little pang of apprehension begged an answer.
‘The tent’d be shredded …’ Clark thought aloud.
‘I guess we’d have to drop the tent, and … crawl under the PACs?’ I suggested
, and picturing this dismal scene in my head, added, ‘I’m sure it won’t hail.’
DAY 30: Beaten by the wind
Clark somehow managed to pad out our new half-quantity of breakfast oats with enough water that it almost seemed normal, and with a whopping one and a half spoonfuls of sugar, it tasted amazing! After brekky we bit the bullet and agreed to press on today—although the wind’s in our face, it’s not too strong. We drysuited up and began hauling our PACs across the mud to the coast, passing the largest wolf tracks we’ve seen. I couldn’t resist taking photos, but soon my battery ran out. We have lots of empty batteries at the moment—there’s been no sun to charge anything for days.
Ten metres further on I stopped dead in my tracks, staring in shock and amazement, trying not to fall down into the biggest polar bear tracks I have ever seen! Talk about feet the size of dinner plates—our 30-centimetre ruler dropped pathetically inside the enormous imprints! ‘These things are massive!’ Clark said to the video camera, ‘I—I can’t even imagine how big the bear must have been …’ They looked fresh too—no sign of the rain or tide having smoothed them.
‘Wow,’ I breathed. ‘It’d have been well within sight of our tent, too.’ It served to ram home, again, the very real threat and terror of being hunted out here, just as we were starting to become a little less nervous. Nearby, we also found tiny bear cub prints no larger than those of a wolf. Huddling together for a nut break, our backs to the wind, our fingers were too numb to pick up individual nuts, and we were forced to eat from our cupped, muddy hands.
Launching our PACs, we began paddling along the shoreline into the wind. Around 1 pm we decided to push on, to have lunch at an island looming ahead. We struggled doggedly onwards as the wind blew harder and harder. The island vanished behind an ominous veil of rain and mist that bore down upon us, soon engulfing us completely. The sea grew steadily rougher, forming 1-metre waves and whitecaps all around us, and the bitterly cold wind lashed the rain hard into our faces, making it difficult to see through our goggles as each wave crashed up over the bow, ran along the deck and poured into our cockpit skirts, necessitating constant draining. I was giving it my all; grimacing, even grunting with effort through gritted teeth with every stroke. Two pm came and went, and snatching glimpses of the shore through the mist, using rocks (bears?) and herds of muskox as reference points, I realised we were actually slipping backwards! I raised my paddle above my head, signalling to Clark that it was hopeless, and we swung sideways and headed directly for shore as the water raced past. I was utterly exhausted and losing coordination—sometimes failing to grasp the paddle as I changed sides, only realising when my hand slammed into the deck.