by Chris Bray
It was far worse than I feared. ‘Oh no!’ I cried, slamming my fist down onto the hardtop in dismay. ‘The rim! Look at it—it’s completely buckled in!’
We didn’t need this, not right now, when things were finally looking up. The poor rim—having been through so much—had finally given up. The entire side flange had collapsed in upon itself in two places, forming large pleats, the points of which were now sticking into the inner tube and about to puncture it. Wordlessly we unloaded the entire cart onto the tundra and steeled ourselves for another major repair job. It really needed to be popped back into shape, re-glued, and then reinforced with some spare aluminium riveted behind each tear.
We stared gloomily at what little was left of our epoxy glue, the few remaining pop-rivets, and the only bit of spare aluminium we had left—our mangled axle off-cuts. As we looked around for inspiration, Clark spotted that the other front rim was in a similar shape, also wielding a large buckle wound. We just didn’t have enough stuff to attempt a repair of this scale.
‘Maybe,’ I began, voicing what we were both thinking, ‘we should convert to two-wheel mode.’ Apparently we’ve been independently thinking this over for some days. A quick, scribbled calculation of weights showed that if we piled everything into one cart now, it should almost (12 kilograms over) be equivalent to the original load carried by each single PAC at the start—a load we know the carts can handle, just. It was a big decision; it’d mean no more being able to sleep on top of the cart, no more water-mode, and no easy way to double-haul anymore as we’d need one person to haul, while the other walked at the back, balancing the load to stop it rocking on its axle. On the bright side, though, we’d be able to steer a two-wheeled contraption, it’d be lighter, and we’d instantly gain two spare inner tubes, covers, a spare axle and spare rims.
As I looked at the crumpled rim which was still trying to gouge a hole in the inner tube, I half-heartedly let some air out to relieve the pressure to stop it puncturing while we thought things over. As the air rushed out of the tube it shrank away from the rim, and amazingly the rim started to un-crumple itself. At a ludicrously low pressure, the rim was almost round again. Clark was also watching the rim ‘repair itself’ and we gazed at each other, wondering. ‘We really shouldn’t ditch the four-wheeler until we absolutely have to,’ I thought aloud. ‘We’ve still got more than 150 kilometres to go …’
Clark agreed. ‘We may as well just go on, with ultra-low pressure,’ I continued, ‘until it does finally fall apart, and then we’ll scrap it.’
It was agreed. ‘You’re on thin ice,’ I warned the PAC, as Clark choked on another mosquito that flew into his mouth, ‘Any more of this veering to the left nonsense—or anything else to annoy us—and you’ve had it. It’ll be two wheels from then on!’
DAY 55: Keep going, rain, hail or twister!
Today’s terrain—a continuation of yesterday’s firm grassy tundra—made for brilliant hauling, and as the temperature climbed to 17.2 degrees, we pushed up the sleeves on our Icebreaker tops, sweat pouring off us as we marched.
By our second nut break, we were well on our way to 5 kilometres, still sweltering away in the humid air. As we chewed a handful of peanuts and mosquitoes (there are so many out here it’s getting ridiculous, I literally have to haul breathing through gritted, bared teeth to filter them out), I lazily gestured at a particularly impressive storm cloud curling and tumbling towards us, draping its grey curtain of rain below. ‘Looks like we might be getting a spot of rain soon.’ Clark nodded.
Moments later, the temperature plunged by an incredible 9 degrees (from 17 down to 8 degrees Celsius) as a cold front engulfed us. The sun withdrew, and we dived for our Gore-Tex pants and jackets, packed up our nut break and were about to shackle up and start hauling when I spotted something odd protruding from the cloud’s dark base.
‘Oh my God!’ I pointed excitedly. ‘A twister!?’
Sure enough, a long funnel cloud was reaching downwards, a tightly curling straw. Clark had the video camera rolling even before I got my camera out, and although the twister didn’t even reach the ground, it was still pretty spectacular. Several minutes later it sucked back into the cloud, and we started hauling, just as the rain struck. It was a full-on heavy downpour of astonishingly large drops, which then started bouncing off the ground around us—it was hailing! We grinned at each other through tightly drawn hoods, and as there was nothing else we could do, we started hauling. ‘You can’t break broken men!’ Clark shouted at the sky. ‘So up yours, Victoria Island!’
Besides repeated pauses to adjust and add more bandages to our shredded wheel covers, one last obstacle came our way before the end of the day—a sizeable river emptying a large lake system that we’ve been hauling below for days. The water was too deep for boots, so we threw on our drysuits, and waded in, towing The Nugget behind us. Our wheel covers were now so full of tears and tourniquet bandages that as we rolled through the water, each tear scooped up pocketfuls of water as the wheel turned, then emptied as it rolled past the top, like an enormous Chinese water-wheel garden feature.
Safe on dry ground on the far bank, we checked the PAC-o-meter: 13.40 kilometres—a new record! We both know what that means—an extra dehydrated meal for dinner tonight!
DAY 56: A good day’s hauling
After coffee and oats we spread out our various topographical and aeronautical maps, brought Google Earth up on our Eee PC and turned on the GPS, trying to ascertain what might be the path of least resistance for us and our Nugget. There are so many contour lines in this part of the world, all looping around each other, scribbling wildly hither and thither that sometimes it’s impossible to work out if the slope should be going up or down. After an hour of this, we think we’ve settled upon a likely route from here to the west side of the island. Veering around the odd lake and avoiding the worst patches of mountains and cliffs, the route is still fairly direct, and we’re confident it’s the best we can do. However we look at it, though, it’s going to be a nightmare of hauling up and down some terribly steep hills, and plenty of river crossings.
There was the lingering chance today of some real excitement. We’d received an email last night from a diamond mining exploration team who are temporarily camped on the island, saying they were actually intending to do some ‘sampling’ in our area, and might ‘drop in for a coffee’!
‘How crazy would that be!’ Clark laughed. We’ve seen no other humans for 56 days, and the thought of having a helicopter roar down beside us is quite surreal. ‘Oh, that’ll be them, I’ll pop the kettle on …’
Despite convincing ourselves we heard the drone of an approaching chopper several times during the day, we sadly had no visitors, and the whole day turned out to be a bit of a non-event. It’s weird, actually; I can’t even remember anything much about it at all. I feel a bit like I’m developing amnesia out here sometimes. We just … hauled, I guess, and the terrain (thankfully) stayed the same, the weather (unfortunately) stayed the same, and the hours and kilometres ticked past, and—amazingly—nothing serious broke.
DAY 57: No more ice hauling
Unfortunately it seems our days of hauling over floating lake ice are behind us. While there were still small rafts of ice wandering around the surface of the large lake we came to today, the firm pancake has gone, even on a lake this size. We settled instead on following along the tundra shoreline, which to our delight was not too bad, despite the odd steep sideways slant and patch of boulders.
Except for a herd of muskox, we didn’t see another living thing today, although quite frankly, we could have walked right past anything and not seen it—with the weather the way it is, we have just been ‘existing’ during the day, physically present hauling wearily onwards another 8 or 9 kilometres, but mentally already in the tent, waiting for warmth and dinner.
In order to extend the number of days we could potentially exist out here if we need to, over the last few days—even though we’re still hungry—we have been cut
ting back on our rations. Instead of 125 grams of chocolate each per day, a few days ago we dropped to 100, then 50 grams. We have totally cut all the butter from our diet (about 50 grams each per day normally), and today we decided to also cease our daily couscous meal, so we’re skimping now, but it will give us more options in the future. With less than 140 kilometres remaining, we figure that besides injury, about the only thing that could prevent us eventually getting to the far side would be running out of time, which is equivalent to food. Having come through so much to get this far, we owe it to ourselves to do whatever it takes—including volunteering to go extra hungry now—if it might improve our chances. We’ll see how we go, anyway.
DAY 58: The longest journey
Slowly but surely, we are getting more and more exhausted out here. Every morning for about the last week—despite our best efforts—we have inadvertently slept in, and risen feeling increasingly weary. This morning was even worse: we woke at each alarm: 7.30, 8, 8.30 and 9 am, but each time we faded away back into a daze of sleep.
Once we were finally out and about, we gave our two rear wheels some very much needed TLC, deflating and adjusting their ‘covers’ (if you could call them that—they are now nothing but a collection of rags held together with string and webbing). It’s becoming incredibly frustrating—we have to spend almost as much time stopping and caring for our tyres as we are hauling. We’re still managing to stagger about 8 kilometres each day, but we’re now mentally traumatised by the paradox surrounding the burning question: how many more days? If the terrain holds up and we manage to maintain our speed, we could be there in as little as thirteen or fourteen days. But ironically, if our cart breaks, we could be there in just six or seven! Freed from this ungainly beast we have in tow, we could easily just put some supplies in a drybag and walk—if not run—to the end, and have the rest collected later by air. Surely the challenge we set ourselves was ‘to cross the island’, and for that we needed the PAC only to get this far—the challenge wasn’t ‘to drag this thing across the island’. For some inexplicable reason though, we’d feel guilty leaving it behind, unless we really had to.
‘What about,’ Clark said with a wry smile, ‘if it just happened to break, you know, overnight?’
I couldn’t deny having briefly thought of sabotage myself. Fuelled by this dilemma, our minds perpetually prey upon themselves as we inch ever so arduously onwards, feeling our inner strength fade daily.
Around lunchtime today this trip officially became the longest journey of our lives—it feels like it too. On Day 58 of our 2005 trip at 1 pm we were standing on a snow-clad esker as Willie Laserich flew in to collect us. We still have 125 kilometres left to go in a direct line. We just want to get there now—it’s tantalisingly close, yet still so far.
DAY 59: Visitors!
Well and truly submerged in a deep sleep, both Clark and I suddenly found ourselves being forcibly dragged upwards towards the surface of consciousness by a throbbing, growling noise getting closer outside. By the time we’d wrenched ourselves up into a dazed sitting position, the roaring, beating sound was unmistakably that of a helicopter, apparently about to land on the tent.
I ripped open the zip and shoved my head out, blinking in the bright light. It was indeed a helicopter, buzzing 100 metres away and banking around for another pass. We dived for our jackets and donned our stained, crumpled shorts, suddenly feeling rather self-conscious about our Icebreaker leggings and our dishevelled appearance as figures inside the chopper waved enthusiastically.
‘Dammit!’ Clark cursed. ‘Why do we always oversleep these days?! Wish we were hauling!’ I shoved my beanie over my serious case of bed-hair—my hair’s so long that it gets in the way of my eyes now—and we both sprang from the PAC in bare feet, reaching for our cameras as the chopper came to a graceful landing about 50 metres away, just outside our bear tripwire alarm. Dazzling smiles were visible through the chopper’s glass front even before the doors swung open and three figures stepped out and walked towards us, beaming. Our first contact with other humans in 59 days!
Hurrying over to disarm the bear alarm, we greeted them with a hearty, ‘G’day,’ shook their hands and then Clark politely ushered them into our tripwire enclosed ‘yard’. Our visitors were from the De Beers temporary diamond mining exploration camp—two geologist students and a pilot—on their way to perform a site sample 20 kilometres away. Still half asleep, we found ourselves fielding a bunch of questions, explaining this and that about our cart and the expedition.
When we got a chance, we started asking our own questions, about the terrain ahead. ‘Yeah, it’s really pretty to fly over—dramatic,’ was their response. ‘All these valleys and hills …’
Great!
They all produced cameras and posed for shots of themselves with the two crazy Australians. I then brought out my camera and tripod, and wandered around looking for the best place to set it up, trying to get the PAC, chopper and us all in shot, but the sun made it all back-lit.
‘Yeah, if you’d just move the chopper over about … there,’ Clark indicated jokingly, but the young pilot grinned and said, ‘Sure. We’d best be on our way, but if you direct me where to go, we’ll hover wherever—and then just wave us off when you’re done.’
We did just that, and after a few more passes and much waving, the helicopter swung around and roared off back the way it’d come.
To our immense delight, the sun came out today, and the wind died also. Unfortunately this allowed the mosquitoes to plague us again as we wound our way around a few lakes, crossed the odd patch of boulders and even a short section of Ditch Terrain, before struggling up an almighty climb to the saddle where we are now. Ahead the terrain looks okay-ish for another kilometre or so, and then it looks quite terrifying: hills and escarpments, valleys and cliffs … But as ever, tomorrow’s another day. We managed 7.11 kilometres on the PAC-o-meter today, which is reasonable, considering all the time wasted tending our wheel covers.
DAY 60: Two months in …
After somehow managing—for once—to force ourselves to respond to our alarm at 7.30 this morning, we got off to a good start. A consistent breeze blew all but the hardiest mozzies away, and all in all, things unfolded well. I saw a few wolf prints and Clark spotted two arctic hares which promptly bounded away into the amazing jumble of boulders that hemmed one side of our route for much of the day. The geology of these crumbling mountains we’re navigating is quite spectacular. It looks exactly like the whole landscape is made from regular stone bricks, all stacked upon each other—some having tumbled down while others remain, forming perfect walls and even flights of neat stone stairs leading into what resemble great ruined fortresses. It’s amazing to look at—but hell to haul over. I guess we are getting there, though, just slowly. One or two punctures at a time.
DAY 61: The last map
Although it’s not over till it’s over—Victoria Island has certainly taught us this, if nothing else—we’re steadily getting more excited as we draw gradually nearer to the end of our journey. Our conversations are increasingly turning to discussing the things we’ll do first, the things we’ll eat, and the luxuries we’ll enjoy as soon as we escape back into civilisation.
To our surprise, after a less than ideal morning’s haul during which Clark lost his beanie, our afternoon’s progress was great—slow but steady. The last few hours saw us facing the highest and longest hill climb for the entire expedition—an imposing gathering of three 100-foot contour lines on our map, an ascent which we have long been dreading. Rising to a lofty 400 metres above sea level, it marked the highest point on our route. It was a long, hot, mozzie-filled slog, and as breaks are awkward on such a slope with The Nugget wanting to roll back down, we just put our heads down and stuck it out, one step at a time.
We were almost at the top when I realised we didn’t have any water with us for cooking dinner. There was a moment’s awkward silence as we both gazed in dismay back out over the spectacular lake-strewn landsc
ape now well below us several kilometres away, but thankfully a frantic search of the map revealed we should find a tiny lake right at the summit, and so we continued onwards, our day’s energy ebbing fast. Almost there. Almost there.
Here we are! Camped beside the lake, on top of the world, having somehow racked up 9.8 kilometres today, and ceremoniously crossed onto our very last topographical map—showing us and the west side on the very same bit of paper! That—together with the knowledge that ‘on average’ it’s all ‘downhill’ from here—is a real psychological boost.
DAY 62: Under 100 kilometres to go!
Just before we fell asleep last night we agreed that in the morning, we’d get hauling as quickly as possible, and squeeze some serious kilometres to firmly put us within the ‘100 kilometres to go’ boundary.
I must say it was a struggle to find last night’s enthusiasm this morning, but once under way, the kilometres whipped past, despite the supposedly ‘flat ground’ promised by the topographical map actually being a series of hills and valleys which must have all cunningly stayed within the same 100-foot contour line limits, making them invisible to our route planning. Still, while the uphills slowed us, the flats were fast, and the downhills even faster.
With great ceremony we theatrically limped across the ‘100 kilometres to go’ line mid morning, and ever since, it’s been as if ‘the end’ is now somehow suddenly close enough to imagine—close enough for the first time to dare to hope. This excitement is what really drives us onwards now, rather than just the fear of not getting far enough from our start. Over our peanut butter flatbread we reminisced how so very often during the last 62 days we were both certain that the far side of the island was absolutely hopeless, that we wouldn’t—couldn’t—make it. As early as Day 6 when we realised our Kevlar covers were tearing, we have spent so many of the subsequent days hauling in despair after various setbacks—knowing we couldn’t possibly get there—and wondering why we were still trying. It’s incredible what you can do with a bit of perseverance, blind optimism and brute stubbornness.