by Mike Horn
We became close friends, but I felt that in his eyes I was just another extreme hiker, like the three adventurers he had helped to prepare for a trek three years before. They set out to travel by foot from Arctic Bay to Igloolik, the last village on the Borden Peninsula, just before Fury and Hecla Strait, but they gave up along the way. Now it was up to me to show him my worth.
After three weeks in Nanisivik and nearly a month in Arctic Bay, I was growing restless, to say the least. But Claude insisted that I should wait just a little longer to be certain that all the conditions were right.
I got to know Lily’s grandmother, whom Claude supported just as he did the rest of the tribe. She lived in an igloo-sized wooden cabin lit by an oil lamp, and she sewed with a seal-bone needle. With Lily as an interpreter—the old woman spoke only Inuktitut—I told her about where my expedition would take me next and my planned passage through Cambridge Bay. The old woman told me a story of her parents, who had once spent five years of their lives finding and retrieving a boat—an abandoned schooner—from Cambridge Bay. Back then, the Inuit of the region used these schooners for hunting seals and narwhals, to sell their furs and ivory to the Hudson Bay Company. Lily’s great-grandparents set out with their sled, dogs, and children, and they sailed the schooner back on the tiniest patches of navigable water, hauling it over the ice the rest of the time. They all camped out together on the spot in igloos whenever conditions became too harsh.
Then when Lily’s great-grandfather finally returned to Arctic Bay five years later with his ship, the result of so much hard work, the village shaman demanded that Lily’s great-grandfather give him Lily’s great-grandmother. When he refused, the covetous shaman cast a curse on the schooner. Lily’s great-grandfather, who believed in enchantments and curses, never set foot in the schooner again.
* * *
The day before I was finally planning to set out again, some hunters contacted Claude by radio and informed him that the ice had suddenly melted in the Prince Regent Inlet, which had become a stretch of open water, impossible to cross on foot.
“We’re stuck on the other side!” they told him. And I was stuck on this side.
I gnawed on my leash for another week. The temperature dropped to twenty-two degrees below zero, and the ice froze over again, in part. It was mid-November, and by now it was almost perpetual night.
I finally ran out of patience. I decided I had spent enough time waiting, and it was time to move. Forget about Prince Regent Inlet. It was either that or wait for the twelfth of Never. So I decided to abandon the route entirely and go around the Gulf of Boothia to the south—unless I could find a way to cut across it. I’d likely have to go all the way around, which meant heading as far south as Melville Peninsula and then passing through Committee Bay before heading north again to Kugaaruk. It doesn’t seem like much when you look at a map, but in reality, this was a 750-mile detour to Cambridge Bay by way of a vast icy wasteland, extremely inhospitable and plunged into the relentless darkness of winter. It would lengthen my expedition by at least four months!
To add insult to injury, I would be traveling directly along the migratory route of the polar bears who pass through Committee Bay on their seasonal migration to their winter seal hunting grounds. The female bears with their newborns are especially ferocious. It all amounted to being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I had no choice.
Dealing with this situation struck me as more than I could handle, and I didn’t even really want to consider it for the time being. I would just hold out hope that I could find a shortcut.
* * *
Then on November 16, just as I was getting ready to depart again, the ice melted, but this time in Admiralty Inlet, a body of water that had never before had open water at this time of the year.
Admiralty Inlet, which runs north-south between Borden Peninsula and Brodeur Peninsula, was my route south. It was a frozen highway that ran between mountain ranges that were impossible to cross on foot, and I needed to use it to get at least as far as Nyeboe Fjord. By the time I got that far, the ice should be thick and dense enough to allow me to continue to Kugaaruk, on the far shores of the Gulf of Boothia.
But now Admiralty Inlet had become a navigable channel!
I was disappointed but not beaten. I have always believed that things always happen for a reason, even if it sometimes takes a while to figure out what that reason might be. A defeat, for me, is never anything other than one step on the road to victory. I have never thrown in the towel without a very persuasive reason.
* * *
So I bided my time until the end of November. The ice had finally frozen over again in Admiralty Inlet, and the thermometer was dropping further. I had green lights all the way.
Claude, who continued to share his invaluable knowledge with me, suggested a number of potential routes and showed me which islands to go around between Arctic Bay and Pelly Bay. No one had ever managed to travel between those two villages on foot in the heart of winter, and so no one knew exactly what I would be facing. There were only three things we knew for sure: it would be terribly difficult, I would be far from help in an area swarming with polar bears, and I could not afford to make even the slightest mistake.
After he had so generously shared with me so much of his time and experience, I was delighted to have an opportunity, in turn, to do something to help Claude. When the engine of his snowmobile locked up because of some poor-quality fuel, which had reportedly been destroying engines all over the Arctic, I helped him buy a new one. He depended on that vehicle for his survival because it was indispensable for the hunting he did to feed his family and his dogs. He would pay me back when he was able. Compared to everything he had done for me, it was a small favor.
Two days before my departure, at the invitation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), I enjoyed a delicious impromptu banquet. I spent the evening in the company of some exceptionally fine people. I could truthfully say the same thing about every member of the community of Arctic Bay, which, in the course of a month, adopted me as if I were one of their own.
When the time came for me to set out once again into the unknown, they all began to worry at the idea of seeing me go, willing prey to the night and the bears. Each member of the community tried to convince me not to go, and I could see the sadness in their eyes when I courteously but firmly refused to heed their advice.
* * *
It was two in the afternoon when I departed, but it was so dark that I couldn’t see a thing except for the headlights of Claude’s new snowmobile. He had come to bid me farewell. Without a word he wrapped me in his arms. In the darkness his eyes were glistening with tears, and he turned his head away to conceal his emotions. Although I may have been just another professional adventurer to him at first, I was now a true friend.
But I felt certain that we would meet again before too very long. If, as I feared, I was going to have to trek all the way around the Gulf of Boothia, I would certainly be needing supplies around Christmas. I already expected to rely on him for that.
* * *
I set off, and when I turned around to take one last look, I saw Claude’s silhouette, dwarfed by his surroundings, as he waved slowly in the frozen air, as if he were waving the flag of our friendship. Then he was gone, and I had nothing ahead of me but the icy night of that late November of 2002, as I set out to walk along the length of the Borden Peninsula.
It wasn’t the first time I had left a place where I had made friends—probably leaving it forever. However, it was the first time that I was leaving the human warmth of an adopted tribe and striking out into the utter darkness of the Arctic night. You can’t change your nature, and I am a man of the south and require sunlight. To make things worse, I knew that every step was taking me farther and farther from my intended route because I was being forced to make this huge detour.
For all these reasons, my departure from Arctic Bay remains one of the most heartbreaking that I have ever experienced.
&n
bsp; My eyes quickly became accustomed to the half-darkness into which my forehead lamp cast a pitifully small shaft of light. There was no risk of losing my way because I was following a clear course between the two long lines of cliffs that enclose the Admiralty Inlet. I had to get used to being a beast of burden again, an exhausting experience that I had not enjoyed since crossing Greenland two months before. My cargo, which back in Greenland had included just ten bottles of pure benzene, now included thirty bottles and weighed forty-five pounds more.
In order to ease myself back into shape, I covered only a modest distance the first day before pitching my tent for the night (that is, the darkest few hours of the day).
* * *
After the first five hours of travel each day, I began to suffer from hypothermia. In that relatively fragile state, I had just seven minutes to pitch my tent. Any longer than that and I would begin to die of cold. If anything delayed me, it meant death. In those temperatures that would be the situation every time I stopped.
* * *
Four days after leaving Arctic Bay, I had a great surprise. When I emerged from my tent I found myself nose-to-nose with an Inuit family. They were on their way back from a fishing expedition for Arctic char and had stumbled upon a lunatic camping in the middle of the ice field: me. Guessing that I was on my way somewhere, the man asked me my destination. When I answered, “Alaska,” his almond-shaped eyes grew round with astonishment. He shot back, with the brevity that is so typical of the Anglo-Inuit language: “And plane?” I felt like I was dreaming! He, an Eskimo muffled in his seal and caribou skins, dressed the way his ancestors have for centuries, was pointing out the advantages of flying.
The Inuit woman was looking at me with a sense of concern that I could clearly read on her tanned features, prematurely aged by a life that was as harsh as the climate. “You come back with us to Arctic Bay,” she said. “Winter coming; night fall; temperatures drop real low; bears in migration. You go die.”
I replied as diplomatically as I knew how that I was deeply touched by her concern, but that with all due respect for her and her family, I knew what I was doing, why I was doing it, and that I was quite determined to continue. Again, the man and the woman tried to persuade me to go back with them, to give up, to turn around, and after we said good-bye, they came after me again to beg me to reconsider one last time. Once it became clear that they could not change my mind, the Inuit man told his son to offer me his second pair of fur gloves.
By the way, the only reason I hadn’t adopted the local style of dress, which would certainly have been less complicated, was that it was not well suited to long expeditions like the one I was undertaking. The natives of the Far North go out into the wild to hunt or fish, but when the distances grow longer they allow themselves to be pulled by their sled dogs or else they ride on their snowmobiles. To each his own way of life and to each his own equipment.
The friendly harassment to which I had just been subjected might seem excessive, but I didn’t see it that way. It is theoretically impossible for human beings to survive at the extreme temperatures that prevail here. You cannot survive in the Arctic winter unless you stay in one place, as the Inuit do, living on their supplies of food and on their body fat. Walking requires considerable effort and uses up an enormous amount of calories—in my case, between eight and ten thousand calories a day, five times the normal rate. Chocolate, nuts, unsaturated fats, starches, butter, and vegetable oils—my entire diet was swimming in oils and fats. I was basically living on fats. All the same, I was losing weight every day, which was a bad thing for two reasons: first, because every extra pound of fat on my body would offer extra protection from the cold; and second, because if I was carrying that weight on my body then I wouldn’t have to weigh down my sled with unnecessary supplies.
I drank nothing more than the strict minimum during the day in order to spare myself the ordeal of urinating outdoors in conditions of extreme cold. After my breakfast—tea or coffee with a big bowl of cereal—I filled two thermoses with a hot vanilla-flavored energy drink with a milky consistency. I took a few gulps of this drink approximately every two hours. This “liquid nutrition,” as I called it, rehydrated me, warmed me up, and quenched my thirst and hunger. However, that didn’t keep me from munching all day long on cashew nut bars or dried fruit, chocolate, or homemade brownies packed for me by Cathy. I also avoided wearing red-tinted sunglasses because experience taught me that the color red tended to make me hungry.
* * *
Ten days after leaving Arctic Bay, I called Børge Ousland on my satellite phone to give him a progress report. But instead of receiving congratulations, I was greeted with a brusque, “That’s too cold! I have never traveled in that territory during that time of year. Head back to civilization.”
In my situation I needed someone to urge me to outdo myself, to win, not to give up. The situation was eerily reminiscent of my earlier attempt to reach the North Pole. I ignored his advice, but each time I turned a deaf ear to good advice—each time I refused to heed the call to reason—I could feel a heavier burden of responsibility on my shoulders.
* * *
A few days later, I met my first polar bear.
It was one of those days when my kite, buffeted by only a slack breeze, dragged me forward with intermittent jerks like an old jalopy on its last legs. The polar bear that suddenly ventured across my path about a hundred yards away seemed less interested in me than in the large colorful rag that I appeared to have on a leash. Startled by the bear’s presence, my reflex was to shake the kite with all my strength. The result was immediate. Frightened by that unidentified flying object, the bear turned and galumphed away. I could see his sizable white posterior as he took off at full speed over the ice.
I had just discovered a secondary use for my kites, unexpected but valuable.
Since I couldn’t sleep with a kite fluttering overhead, I also used a nocturnal antibear alarm system that was developed by my friends Laurent and Daniel during their time in the Swiss army. This system, which we refer to as “bearwatch” required that I surround my tent with a wire hooked onto three stakes about twenty yards away from the tent and about a foot and a half above the ground. Polar bears, which drag their paws as they walk, have almost as much difficulty stepping over the wire as they would slipping beneath it. The slightest contact between the wire and a foreign body will trigger the launch of a flare. The sound of the flare blasting off would frighten the animal, and the light of the flare as it drops back to the ground suspended by a parachute would allow me to see the bear clearly.
My bearwatch alarm system allowed me to sleep soundly. It had only one small defect—its sensitivity meant that it could be set off by a moderately rough windstorm.
* * *
One day the roar of a snowmobile in the distance announced the arrival of a visitor. When the engine drew close and came to a halt, I discovered to my joy that it was Claude Lavallée. It had only taken him a single day to get here from Arctic Bay, whereas I left two full weeks ago. Before the ice got too thick, he was going fishing one last time on a lake not far away from here for fish to feed to his dogs.
“I needed to come,” he said, “to give you one more chance to turn back.” And, once again, I politely declined. Since accompanying him to the lake did not involve much of a detour, I agreed to go. During the forty-eight hours that we spent together, I slept under his canvas tent and I fulfilled my duties as apprentice by helping him to set his nets and haul the big fish out of the icy water.
* * *
Before long, the weather started to turn ugly and Claude was forced to hurry back to Arctic Bay. Otherwise he ran the risk of being pinned down out here. While breaking camp and packing and loading his equipment, he asked me one last time if I was absolutely dead set on going on.
“We are friends now,” he said, as if to excuse his nagging. He already knew my answer, but I could sense that he wasn’t so much trying to keep me from going on as he was trying to be ce
rtain that I understood what I was taking on.
For a good long while, Claude Lavallée would be the last person to have seen me alive. I was hoping that this “good long while” would not take on a sense of finality.
This time, roles reversed, it was Claude who left me. I found myself alone again in a night filled with ice and rock and hellish cold.
I was alone again and contemplated my situation. What had driven me to ignore so stubbornly the advice of everyone I knew, including people who live here and know this country much better than I do? Pride? Stupidity? As the days went on, I determined to stop questioning myself. If I let myself be consumed by doubt, I was certain to be beaten by the forces of nature, which sharply outnumbered my own.
* * *
The landscape around me slowly shifted as I marched along day after day. The Admiralty Inlet extended before my skis like a broad boulevard, except when the tides complicated matters. Winter was still young, and the ice had not yet reached its full thickness. Each flow of the tides lifted the ice and moved it away from the shores, making it impossible to reach the shore. I was forced to wait for the tide to ebb and push the ice back against the shore before I could reach dry land and pitch my tent.
In this part of the world, where a few inches of ice was all that stood between me and an ice-cold bath, everything seemed to be moving and shifting continuously.
“Everywhere you go around here, the ocean is alive,” said Claude. “Never forget that you are walking on a living creature.” He also warned me to be especially careful of every bulge or unusual rise in the frozen surface. “Sometimes it’s ice, and sometimes it’s snow. Put your foot on it, and down you go.” This advice, which I took to heart, saved me more than once, even though it was hard to make out the level of the ice in the darkness, and the snow, which fell intermittently, made the night even darker.