Conquering the Impossible (3 page)

The only residents of the island were a Russian who had lived there in isolation for the past ten years with his wife and son. For the past decade he had been transmitting weather reports in Morse code—he didn't even have a fax machine, let alone e-mail—to people who had never met him. Imagine ten years of living there like a lighthouse keeper, forgotten, in the middle of the sea. He told us that a colleague of his was eaten by a polar bear, right between the compound's two buildings that stand only about fifty yards apart. He showed us a home movie—not of the colleague, of the bear—and generously provided me with all the space I needed to test my tent and the rest of my equipment under the island's harsh conditions.

When the weather finally allowed, Cathy, Annika and Jessica, my brother Martin, Jean-Philippe Patthey, Sebastian Devenish, my cameraman, two of my sponsors, and a journalist all piled into the helicopter with me, and we set out on the one-hour flight to Cape Arktichesky on the edge of the Arctic ice cap. This was the closest point on the European continent from which it was possible to hike “overland” to the North Pole.

We flew over hundreds of miles of an unbroken icy white surface. When the chopper set down, I was the first one to jump down. The cold gripped me like a vise. It was forty degrees below zero and, standing there on the ice field for the first time, I wondered anxiously whether I really was capable of accomplishing what I came here to do.

Jessica, my younger daughter, hopped out of the helicopter right after me. She walked a short distance, stopped, and stared out into the immense whiteness as if she were trying to understand. Then she turned and walked back toward me with a question in her eyes: “Daddy, what are you doing here?” That pretty much summed up the general feeling in that moment.

I was now fully aware that from here on, I would be totally alone in the face of my challenge. Until now, I had been helped, surrounded, financed, supported, and conveyed by people who believed in me. But once that helicopter lifted off and carried away the last of those people, it would be up to me to play this game—me and me alone. I remembered feeling something comparable, four or five years ago, when the time came to bid farewell to my team and to set out, all alone, to cross the Amazon jungle on foot. That time, I had won the bet.

The helicopter couldn't stay on the ice field for long because there was a danger it might freeze and be unable to take off. We hurried to unload my equipment and to carry out the brief, traditional ceremony: we drank a glass of vodka and shot a flare into the sky.

Cathy, my brother Martin, and I all clustered together, embracing in a short prayer. The Lord's help would never be unwelcome.

Nobody said another word. The emotions were beyond words. Everyone knew that what I was about to try to do would define the next stage of my life. The terrible cold, which made it difficult even to breathe, and the maddening drab gray only heightened the sensation of anguish. And now the time had come to say good-bye. My daughters were crying, and so was my wife. Their tears froze on their faces. Everyone climbed back into the helicopter, which quickly took off. I turned my back on the aircraft as it labored into the air, to face what awaited me. For the moment, what I most needed to do was to forget what I was leaving behind and focus all my attention on the task at hand.

I attached the sled to my harness. The load I would be pulling was exactly eight feet behind me. That distance was carefully calculated. If it were any closer, I might find that by pulling I would also be trying to lift the sled, but on the other hand, if it were any farther away, I would be expending needless effort trying to drag it over bumps and rises in the ice because the front of the sled would remain flat, glued to the surface. The harness rope was made of a special nylon that would not absorb water, slip, or break from freezing. Last of all, the ski poles had wrist straps that were loose enough that they would not cut off the circulation at my wrists.

I tightened my hood snug around my face. The fur narrowed my field of vision to a very small circle, and I took my first step on the ice field, harnessed like a beast of burden. I realized that the 465 pounds of the sled weighed a ton. The slightest irregularity in the ice would snag my sled and stop me short. And I would have to travel five hundred miles like this! Braced against the load, I pulled with all my strength and finally developed a rhythm of sorts.

Ahead of me, a full day's march away, there was an opening in the ice field, blown apart by frequent Arctic storms. We had noticed it during the flight in, and now, to help me avoid it, the helicopter flew straight over my head, marking the line of the exact course that I would need to follow. This was a welcome pointer, as my navigational tools were limited. At this time of year, in these latitudes, the sun only jumps over the horizon for a short moment like a small, yellow flea. The intense cold freezes the liquid crystals in GPS devices, rendering them useless, and conventional magnetic compasses spin around wildly and are ineffective this close to the North Pole. In short, there was nothing to orient myself except for a little bit of sunlight and plenty of wind.

The helicopter made a 180-degree turn and passed overhead one last time, zigzagging a final good-bye. I followed it with my eyes until it was nothing but a dot in the distance, and then it vanished entirely. Nothing remained except the terrible cold, the immense emptiness, and me.

The harsh hostility of the weather I had faced since arriving at these latitudes was nothing compared to the loneliness that I was discovering now. It was a solitude rendered all the more oppressive by the certainty that, in this setting, even the smallest mistake could be fatal.

But my spirits rose again. I had plenty of excellent supplies and equipment, and I had what seemed to be a considerable store of knowledge and skills. I could draw on my endless reserves of energy and determination. The only thing I lacked was experience in this kind of environment; here, everything was new to me. On the ice field it is experience that allows you to judge the direction in which this or that portion of the ice cap is shifting. It is experience that warns you to stay in your tent when conditions become too dangerous to go on, and experience helps you plot the best route possible, despite the shifting landscape and the movements of the pack ice itself, which regularly breaks off of the main ice field and drifts away.

I picked out an ice floe on the horizon that was taller than the others and selected it as my landmark. I headed for it. For three or four hours I made steady progress. Then the wind started to blow harder and harder, becoming increasingly violent. Already my lack of experience posed a first—and serious—problem: I did not yet know at what wind force it would become impossible for me to pitch my tent.

I decided to set up my first camp too early, rather than too late. Then, a second problem: out of the immense variety of equipment carefully stowed under the tarp that covered my sled, I did not know with any confidence exactly what items would be indispensable to me inside the tent.

I set up my shelter half a mile away from the open gap between the ice field and the piece of pack ice I was now on. I did my best to make camp as far as possible from any fissures in the ice, which might very well widen into yawning stretches of open water during the night. On that issue, I had been very clearly and thoroughly briefed; on a recent expedition similar to mine, a Japanese explorer made this very mistake, and he and his tent were swallowed up whole.

During the night, I could hear the ice cracking over toward the open water; it was the sound of blocks of ice breaking off and crashing together. My little “island” was breaking up; it was crumbling like a giant cookie. Without moving at all, I could tell that I was getting dangerously close to the edge. And it was impossible to get out of the tent, repack my sled, and move away. The wind had picked up and was blowing so ferociously that I couldn't even poke my nose outside the tent.

As long as I was stuck in the tent, I decided to take the opportunity to become familiar with my portable stove, which is not so much a heating device as it is a way of making my food edible. The food packs were frozen to start with, but now they were doubly frozen. At these very low temperatures—once my body heat “warmed up” the interior of the tent, it was still twenty-two degrees below zero—the fuel was much harder to light than under normal conditions. The flame of the lighter had to be held against the fuel for quite some time as it slowly thawed and finally caught fire. Because I did not yet have a practiced hand, I scattered fuel all over the place. I had to be especially careful not to catch my tent on fire! If I lost the tent, I was a dead man.

Finally, once I had a working camp stove, I enjoyed the first of the dishes that were so lovingly prepared for me by Philippe Rochat, a stuffed chicken that was a true culinary delight. And there was an added treat: a note, signed by Philippe's wife, Franziska, an athlete in her own right who had won the New York Marathon. “Have courage, Mike,” she wrote, “we're with you!” There were tears in my eyes. With Philippe manning the stove and Franziska keeping up my morale, I suddenly felt much less lonely.

Rolled in my sleeping bag like a mummy wrapped in its bandages, I spent the next forty-eight hours a prisoner in my fabric bubble, listening to the howling winds and the ice cracking louder and louder, warning of the rapidly encroaching seas.

When the storm finally subsided just enough for me to step out of the tent, I discovered that I was a mere ten yards away from the coldest bath of my life. This discovery, along with the fact that the blizzard was continuing to gust ferociously, sort of gave me the blues. I was starting to feel that nothing was going my way. Using the satellite phone, I called my comrade in Cheredeny to ask about the weather. He told me that where he was, the terrible weather conditions had made it impossible for a helicopter to take off for the last four days. All the other polar expeditions were grounded; they were being forced to delay their departures. I was the only one on the ice.

So, in short, no one could do a thing to help me. I had jumped into the water all by myself, and now I was going to have to learn to swim. I comforted myself with the thought that at least the weather couldn't get any worse. When I used my satellite phone to call Nicolas Mingassan, who knows what he is talking about, having organized a great many polar expeditions, he supported my strategy. “Stay put,” he advised.

My confidence gradually returned. I had plenty to eat and a sleeping bag to keep me warm, so I was well equipped to withstand the siege of the elements.

When the weather finally let up, it only revealed a new and truly insurmountable obstacle. The gap in the ice that lay between me and the North Pole had become a veritable ocean inlet, nearly twenty miles across!

I spent four days in the same spot, hoping that the same ocean currents that separated my piece of the ice cap from the main ice field would decide to rejoin them before much longer. There were no signs of that, however, and I couldn't stay here forever. Such big gaps in the ice field inevitably attract seals, which surface to breathe. The seals in turn attract polar bears, their chief predator. From on board the helicopter that set me down at Cape Arktichesky, I had noticed a large number of polar bears heading this way. They would certainly pounce on a tasty piece of prey like me unless I could get moving.

The helicopters were able to take off again, and now the Australian and Japanese expeditions left Cheredeny to be set down in about the same place as me, near Cape Arktichesky. Once they realized that the ocean gap that had developed was insurmountable, the pilots refilled their fuel tanks and ferried their passengers across the inlet. As they did so, they flew overhead and got a fix on me; they contacted me once they were across, asking me if I would like to be shuttled across as well. Since it looked unlikely that the ocean currents would reunite my ice floe with the main ice field, I decided to accept their offer.

Having taken advantage of this airlift, I could now make a new departure, a real one this time. The others were well ahead of me, but we weren't all boxing in the same weight class—the other expeditions were nearly all multiperson ventures. If there was anyone that I was “competing” with, it was the one Japanese trekker who, like me, was trying to solo to the North Pole.

*   *   *

A heavy snowfall was sweeping horizontally across the unbroken surface of the ice field. I moved forward, angling slightly eastward to offset the westward drift of the ice cap. Little by little, I tried to chip away each day at the lead that the Japanese explorer had on me.

On the third day, I called my ice wizard, Børge Ousland, on my satellite phone. He asked me how much progress I was making.

“Between seven and nine miles a day,” I replied.

“Fantastic!” Børge cried. “I've never averaged that much distance at the beginning of an expedition.” Then he added, “If you make it through the first fifteen days, then you've done it—you'll make it to the Pole. Hang on, Mike!”

Day after day, I struggled to haul my sled over the crevasses in the pack ice. One day when I was trying to cross a yawning gap that was becoming visibly wider by the moment, I took off my skis, gathered my strength and my nerve, and I jumped, still tied to the sled. But I fell short, slipped, and half knocked myself out, cutting my face on the sharp ice along the edge. There I was, up to my waist in icy water, while my sled, back on the wrong side of the crevasse, inched farther away as the ice continued to drift.

I managed to get out of this predicament, by paddling over to the opposite side, using jagged handholds on the wall of ice in front of me to haul myself—dripping—up onto the steep bank of pack ice. I then expended every ounce of strength and adrenaline I had to float my sled across the open water and pull it up and onto the ice bank now behind me. Somehow I made it, but I was clearly taking too many risks. If I kept this up, I would be dead before I got to the Pole.