NORTH POLE EXTREME SKI 2007

 

By Eric Philips

 

This year was my fourth guiding season at the North Pole, and by far the most challenging. Seems like all this talk of climate change came to roost on top of the earth during April this year. For the second year running, the fiord outside Longyearbyen, the Norwegian gateway town to the North Pole, didn't freeze over winter. Then, on April 13, during a string of storms rarely seen in the High Arctic, the ice runway that services Borneo, the Russian drift station near the pole, cracked open, delaying the Antonov-74 flying schedule by almost a week, no flights in or out. This was frustrating for the people waiting to return to Norway, heartbreaking for the teams waiting to fly to the ice. But Russians being Russian, they built another runway when the weather cleared.
 
Fortunately our team only suffered a half-day delay and after the usual preparations and some ski training around Longyearbyen, we flew to Borneo on April 21, spending a short hour at the base to fill our thermoses and grab a cup of coffee before choppering a further 30km south to a point 100km from the North Pole. Given the slight shortening of our schedule, we collectively made the decision to start our expedition 100km from the pole instead of the full degree of approximately 112km. During an ‘average’ season this would be achievable, but April of 2007 would be the anomoly to swing all the norms.

Making up the team was Peter Gregg and Paul Bonney from Adelaide. Both are experienced skiers and had recently walked the Kokoda Trail in New Guinea. Good friends for over 40 years, it was a delight to hear their giggling and joking coming from their tent each evening. Rob Knight from Hobart joined the team days before departure and, just to show off his determination and stoicism, suffered a suspected broken wrist by slipping on the ice the night before flying to Borneo. With his humour and youthful vitality he was a welcome addition to the team. Rob shared a tent with Sara Kameswaran, an Indian girl living in San Francisco. Sara had skied to the South Pole months earlier and came to the team as the most experienced client. Despite her diminutive size she had a dogged determination that was always a joy to witness. She would become the first Indian woman to ski to both poles. Paul, at 49, and Rob, at 22, would become the oldest and youngest Aussies to ski to the North Pole.

After being delivered to our lonely start point on the Arctic Ocean, we wasted no time and strapped on skis and harnesses for a couple of hours of hauling, covering a decent 3.4km. The sky was a sparkling blue with the temperature around -15C, reasonably balmy for spring in the Arctic, and the surface was good, giving us further daily distances of 15km...bang on target if it wasn't for the incessant drift that took us backward as we skied and slept. This drift, amounting to 6-7km per day, is not unusual and in my experience doesn't last for more than a few days, either slowing, stopping or changing direction. Not this year. It had been drifting in the one direction for a week already and continued for the 9 days we were on the ice, and beyond.
 
By our third day Paul and Pete had developed nasty blisters on their feet but plodded on with not a word of complaint. Rob’s wrist was clearly giving him grief but luckily its only functional angle accommodated a reasonably effective ski poling angle. Sara was flagging in the afternoons, possibly due to a diet lower in fat than the guys, but her experience had taught her the importance of the polar plod. The afternoon also brought a chilly north wind that both bit at our faces and sped our backward drift, yet despite these we covered over 16km (only to lose 3km overnight).

The following morning we were on the ice by 8.30 after waking to the alarm at 6am, very good going for a new team. With a full moon comes ice movement, the bigger tides creating cracks that expose the ocean below and pressure ridges that grow and grind their way across the icescape. In turn we ground over them, often removing skis to clamber over the chaos. At one point we found ourselves in the middle of a pressure zone that suddenly came alive. Massive floes, seemingly the whole horizon, were floating past us and we hurried to cross the fractures lest they open up mid-crossing, separating the team. The area then erupted, with cracks forming beneath our skis and plates of ice rupturing and bobbing around us. The air was alive with the sound of splintering, cracking and groaning ice. It was incredibly exciting and a rarely-witnessed display of the power of this environment. Lunch in the lee of an uncommon iceberg brought a welcome relief from the breeze.
 
That evening our daily scheduled call to Borneo revealed that the second runway had broken. Not surprising. We were again to feel the power of the Arctic when at 3am I awoke to the sound of groaning ice. Our camp was under siege. Dressing hurriedly, I got up, dived out into the cold and took a quick look around, a bearable task in the 24-hour light. The old pressure ridge we'd camped next to was cracking and our campsite had split in two. I got everyone up and we tediously moved the camp 100 metres away to firmer ice where we got a couple more hours rest before confronting the new day. We had again drifted back 4km. Ironically we experienced a good surface for much of the day and scorched over the ice, covering 17km in 8 hours. Spirits were high and we believed that, with luck on our side, we’d reach the North Pole in another 3 days under our own steam.

The evenings are always a delight, an opportunity to mull over the events of the day, rest weary muscles, get stuck into some tucker ( and the odd nip of Scotch or Aquavit) and sleep the sleep of warm kings. The morning was a mess, new pressure had formed everywhere, a chaotic landscape that still moaned, buckled and heaved as we booted carefully through it. Twice we crossed open water using our kayak/sleds. Securing two of the kayaks side by side, I use the raft to cross very thin ice, utilising a ski to paddle and prod my way across. Always the most difficult part is alighting from the sled onto the far shore but once negotiated we could set up a ferry using tow ropes. Despite the perceived danger this technique presents, I have done it many times, developing a fast and safe method to cross leads that would otherwise present frustration and delay. All agree that it’s a welcome distraction from the hard work and a lot of fun.
 
But to add to our woes the light over the next couple days was flat, in effect rendering us blind to the unconformities of the surface, like driving with a foggy windscreen. At one stage I looked back to see Sara, following in my ski tracks, clambering over a sizeable bump where either side was flat and easy. This lack of contrast and resultant errors in route-finding have a great impact on our pace. This was demonstrated the following day when the surface was free of big pressure and rubble yet the light cut our distance back to a disappointing 13km. So hampered was our overall progress that our chances of reaching the pole under our own steam slipped away. After a week we had walked 90km of the 100km target (actually we had walked around 120km including the drift lost) yet we were still 30km away, an unachievable distance with only a day remaining. The evening sked resulted in an arrangement to call in a helicopter the following day and we reluctantly flew to within a few kilometres of the pole. For the second time we were deposited on a lonely stretch of ice. Tauntingly, the weather had cleared, still and blue with perfect vision. Contrary to the quality of the sky, the surface was worse than ever, and we were surrounded in all directions by huge walls of pressure. We would not ski to the pole, but walk.

Now, the pole so close by, we could truly absorb the beauty of our surroundings and headed north in a state of bliss. By mid-afternoon we were on top of the world, a feeling that can’t be explained in words. What an achievement for novice polar trekkers and smiles beamed from their faces. I had now trekked to this mathematical point six times and although there is nothing visually distinctive about it, there is always a mood of surreality that envelopes me. I know too that Rob, Sara, Paul and Pete, despite our short helicopter flight, felt the same. There is nothing easy about walking 100km to the North Pole, particularly during a season such as this one, but more importantly one comes away with an intimate perception of what this enigmatic place is all about. After finding 90.00.00 to mark in our GPS's, we set up camp and reveled in our hard-won achievement. When the chopper picked us up the following day, we were 8km from the North Pole. Flying for 40 minutes back to Borneo, Pete commented that it was almost unfathomable that we walked over all that chaotic ice.
 
Things are changing up in the Arctic, I felt it this year for the first time. Warmer, stormier, with consistent ice pressure and movement rarely seen in this quarter of the ocean. But it was humbling too to know that, despite my growing experience on pack ice, it will always remain unpredictable and that my best laid plans can never be a sure bet. That’s the brutally beautiful nature of the High Arctic.

 

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