Conquering the Impossible (12 page)

Unfortunately, there were many disadvantages to this kind of travel that detracted from the speed I gained. First, because I was following my kite, pulling on the line as if on the reins of a horse, I might veer off course by as much as fifteen or twenty degrees without even realizing it. The kite kept my hands full, so I couldn't check my navigational instruments. I had to use the angle of the wind against my face to determine and correct my course as best I could.

Another problem was that my legs would plow down through the snow, which would pile up to my knees, and it was hard work to maintain my balance against that pressure. I would eventually fall down, get back up, and start off again. The physical effort was exhausting. Finally, I was traveling practically blind because my view of the horizon was blocked by the cloth of the kite spread out in front of me. It was difficult under such conditions to maintain the focused concentration that I needed to stay upright, as well as anticipate irregularities in the terrain and the sheets of ice jutting up under the snow. In this last respect I was happy that the crevasses were behind me for now.

Despite everything, with the help of the wind the advantages of kites clearly outweighed the disadvantages. As I became more expert in handling this new tool, my improving skills had noticeable effects on my daily performance. One day, when the wind was steady and the snow was stable, I made sixty-six miles, which consoled me the next day as I sat in my tent all day, held prisoner by the suddenly nasty weather. The following day, without the help of my kites, I did a veritable marathon distance of twenty-three miles. The day after that I racked up forty-six miles, half of that with the help of my kites and half without, since the wind had shifted direction in the middle of the day. On the tenth day I set a record with eighteen hours of kite-aided travel and eighty-nine miles covered. I was back in the race! If I kept this up, I had a good chance of beating the speed record for crossing Greenland.

I was just 137 miles from the finish line when catastrophe struck. I was hooked up to my 237-square-foot kite, and I didn't realize at first that the wind was beginning to pick up speed. When the wind suddenly dropped, it was the calm before the storm, too brief a calm for me to react. A moment later, a terrifyingly powerful squall came rushing at me and literally lifted me into the air. This was the katabatic wind that blows off the center of the Greenland ice cap and down toward the coast. This country is also known for the “pittarak,” a type of typically Greenlandic hurricane that blows flat along the ice and whips up such a flurry of snow that you can no longer see your own legs. When the weather forecasters warn that a pittarak is on the way, people batten down their roofs and tie down their sleds, their snowmobiles, and anything else that is not solidly anchored to the ground.

In just a few seconds I had gone from a standing start to thirty miles per hour! That's fast on the ice. Especially with a sled weighing 265 pounds harnessed to your hips and a visibility of roughly zero. At first, all I could do was try to stay on my feet, holding on with all my strength to the cables stretching out to my kite. I went tearing through deep piles of powdery snow, sailing over sheets of ice, bumping over hillocks, hurtling over mounds, and whipping across hollows. The violence of the squall kept me from reeling in my kite, which had gone completely mad, jolting me in all directions, slinging me right and left as if the kite were the puppeteer and I was the puppet dangling at the end of the strings. I could have cut loose from the kite, thanks to an emergency release device that worked with a carabiner. But I didn't even want to consider it; I couldn't stand the idea of losing my kite. The only thing I could do for the moment was to keep up with the kite and hold on.

So I held on. But after four minutes of this bouncing and jolting, I could tell that my legs were not going to last much longer. Completely exhausted, I finally decided to release the kite.

It was at that exact moment that I plunged into a hollow filled with soft snow. One of my legs sank into the snow, and the other leg kept on traveling. I was spun around and then hurled against the ice.

I stood there, motionless, for a fraction of a second. That was enough time for the 265 pounds of my Kevlar sled, hurtling along at thirty miles per hour, to catch up and hit me flush in the head. Half-conscious, covered in blood, I was dragged across the ice by my sled like a runaway horse. Out of the thirty lines that run out to the kite, many had parted, but the ones that were still attached were sufficient in number to drag me along, at least in this raging wind. I desperately tried to reach the emergency release carabiner, but, caught in a welter of lines where the straps to my sled and the ropes to the kite were tangled together, I couldn't move at all. I couldn't get my legs free because of the skis. Snow was packed into every tiny opening in my clothes, and my body began to freeze. I slammed against something and lost my glasses, as well as the GPS that I wore around my neck. Luckily, I had a second GPS in my sled, and I still had my compass! I was sliding at top speed along the ice, and the bumps and razor edges of the surface tore at my face like a grater. Snow filled my nose, my mouth, and my eyes. A thought began to form in my head: if my sled hits me again, it'll kill me.

I would have given anything to make the wind die down, but instead it began to blow twice as hard. The situation had become so dire that I started to wonder if I would ever live to tell the tale.

But I refused to give up. By struggling with the lines and ropes that wrapped me up like a kitten in a ball of yarn, I finally managed to get one leg loose and extend it ahead of me. Then, since I was still unable to get a hand free to reach the release carabiner, I started sawing the lines of the kite that were still intact with the metal edge of my ski. Those lines are made of Kevlar, and they were theoretically supposed to be unbreakable. But because they were stretched out by this extreme tension, they finally wound up snapping, one after the other.

There must have been fifteen of those lines. Each time that I managed to saw through one of them with my improvised rasp, the cloth of the kite collapsed a little, and my speed would drop a little. My leg got tangled up again, and I managed to free it again. Once I finally managed to recover the use of my arms, I immediately snapped the release carabiner. My kite flew away, tumbling in the furious gusts of wind and vanishing into the blizzard.

Finally, lying motionless on the ice, I slowly calmed down and did my best to evaluate the situation. With the exception of my lost glasses and the kite, I still had all my equipment. I took stock of my physical condition. Nothing seemed to be broken, but I was shaken and could barely stand up.

I hastily pitched my tent, squirmed into my sleeping bag, and was soon fast asleep.

*   *   *

The next day, after many hours of skiing, I finally spotted a tiny patch of color on the white horizon. As I drew nearer, I could see that it was my kite; its lines had caught in a crag, and the snow squalls had flattened it to the ground. It was unusable, but I was overjoyed at having found it. The next time I met up with my team, I would have them take it to the manufacturer to see if it could be repaired.

*   *   *

According to the last position recorded on my lost GPS and my current position, shown on the other GPS, I had been dragged more than two miles. On the ice, at that speed and under those conditions, that was a long way! The moral of this misadventure—which could so easily have turned to tragedy—was that once again I had been reckless. I just wanted so badly to beat that speed record for crossing Greenland.

I had narrowly avoided being killed, but my average speed was far better than I could have dared to hope. Twelve days after leaving Angmagssalik, I was no more than fifty miles from Ilulissat. If I managed to keep up the pace, I would have completed the crossing in fifteen days, not twenty!

On the thirteenth day I made thirty-seven miles. Unfortunately, I was going to have to slow down now. As I began my descent to the coast, I entered crevasse territory again.

A steady wind was pushing my kite and I kept sailing along on the smooth surface of the glacier. Everything was cloaked in an unbroken grayish-white fog all the way to the horizon. I felt as if I were a pilot, flying through the clouds.

Suddenly, a shadow flitted across my field of view, so quickly that only my subconscious must have registered it. I would never have noticed it if it weren't for the expanded field of view that you tend to acquire on the ice.

But I still couldn't process what I had seen.

I had a sudden surge of adrenaline as it dawned on me that I had just seen the steel-blue mouth of a giant crevasse. And where there was one, there were more—ready to devour me.

I had reached dangerous territory sooner than expected. I absolutely
had
to come to a halt. But at the speed I was traveling, there was a considerable stopping distance. I would have to haul down my sails and slow down gradually; otherwise my sled, moving along at nineteen miles per hour, might hit me once again. I let out the kite cables little by little to give some slack and reduce my speed. When I had finally come to a stop I strapped my kite cables to my sled, and once I'd struggled out of my harness I ventured out into the pea soup of fog in which I couldn't even see the tips of my skis. A few yards farther on, my heart skipped a beat. Half of my kite was dangling down into one of the largest crevasses I had ever seen!

The kite had twenty feet of line. Another twenty feet and that would have been the end of me.

I realized that I must have overflown a certain number of narrower crevasses, whose frozen snow bridges only supported the weight of my rig because of the speed at which I was traveling. And now, in the blinding fog surrounded by mortal traps that I could sense all around me, I no longer dared to move even an inch. I feverishly pitched my tent exactly where I had come to a halt and settled in for the night.

The next morning the weather cleared up, and my fears proved to have been justified. I was in middle of a veritable labyrinth of crevasses. That I had made it as far as I did without being killed was a minor miracle!

All this merely confirmed what I already believe. There is a God, and he even has time to look out for me. On this segment of the journey alone, that would actually be a full-time job.

It took me two whole days to get out of the crevasse-filled area and back onto the steep slope that ran down to the coast. Those were two days during which a furious gale never stopped howling in my ears. At a distance of six miles from the camp of Paul-Émile Victor, I contacted Jean-Philippe Patthey and suggested that my crew come to meet me. Jean-Philippe reported that my boat was shipshape and ready, and awaited my arrival. It didn't take me long to spot the boat, in spite of the snow blindness caused by the loss of my sunglasses. There it sat, far below me, riding on the luminous surface of a fjord like a tiny scale model on a mirror. To reach it, I would have to cross an area of streams whose beds were cut into the surface of the ice and whose raging flows could easily pick me up and toss me into the crevasses before I could resist. My feet were freezing from tramping through the water, but I made it through.

I had crossed the Greenland ice cap in fifteen days and eight hours, setting a new record.

This first land segment of my journey allowed me to get familiar with my gear, and I now knew how to coax maximum performance from it. My gear and I were ready to face the impending Arctic winter. One part of the journey had just ended, and another was about to begin.

Upon arrival, my most immediate concern was the extra food that I had on hand, having taken less time to make the crossing than expected. There was no thought of abandoning that precious cargo on the ice field, and so I stuffed my face out of gluttony and in order to increase my fat reserves to protect against the coming cold … and because I definitely deserved a banquet!

 

3

The Courage of a Bear

O
NCE AGAIN AT THE HELM OF THE
ARKTOS
,
I sailed out of the camp of Paul-Émile Victor heading for the village of Ilulissat, a little farther south, accompanied by my logistical team. There I met up with Cathy, three representatives from the Banque Mirabaud, and my cameraman, who wanted to get in a few photo sessions.

My five days in Ilulissat were primarily devoted to readying my boat for its next big journey, which mostly involved filling it with all the food we could fit, and completing my polar outfitting with a view to all the potential situations I might encounter on the Canadian ice field. Because I had prepared for everything imaginable, I was more concerned with what I would encounter that was unimaginable to me now. And so I brought as much gear as I could in order to handle a variety of climatic and geographic contingencies.

After leaving Ilulissat I sailed around Disko Island and then, instead of heading directly northwest toward Canada, I sailed north along the Greenland coast, toward Upernavik. That way I could take advantage of the favorable currents and microclimate that brought unusually fair weather to that region. The landscape was magnificent, but there were more icebergs than there are eighteen-wheelers on the turnpike. And they were much bigger than the eighteen-wheelers, too, these huge masses of ice many miles long, which would sometimes take me hours to sail around. As I admired the base of the icebergs immersed in the crystalline water, I thought to myself that the amount of floating ice that broke loose in that area every year held enough freshwater to supply the United States for ten years! This section of the Greenland ice cap was the largest source of icebergs in the entire Far North. If it were to melt completely, it would raise sea level around the world by thirty-five feet. It was a disaster movie whose screenplay the directors of our environmental agencies should read carefully.