Conquering the Impossible (30 page)

But the West Channel was also flooded. Its banks were impossible to find, or else so boggy that it was impossible to find a dry spot where I could pitch my tent. I wound up sleeping sitting up in my kayak.

The estuary of the Mackenzie River was changing its appearance every day. The river now meandered through curves lined with beaches of sediment. When I landed on the beach that I had chosen as a place to spend the night, I discovered that it had a muddy surface where I got stuck with my kayak. The beach was covered with grizzly tracks to boot—which made sense since this was where they crossed the river.

Nonetheless, I was completely exhausted, and I couldn't paddle another foot. To hell with the bears! I pitched my tent, wolfed down a little food and collapsed. If a grizzly bear had come sniffing around my campsite, it wouldn't even have woken me up from my deep slumber.

*   *   *

I wound up emerging from the river channel into Shallow Bay on the Beaufort Sea. Shallow Bay takes its name from the great quantities of sediment that are pushed out into the sea by the river and which have built up its bed. From here, the land was nothing more than a narrow, slightly dark line along the horizon. There was no more current to deal with, but there were waves, pushed by a north wind, which battered against the right side of my boat in an endless succession of rollers. My floats kept me from capsizing under this repeated assault, but it certainly wasn't pleasant traveling.

I was even more focused on observing my surroundings than when I was traveling overland, and I was even more at their mercy. I had to be more attentive than ever. Whatever might happen, I was glad to be out of the estuary, and I paddled optimistically and vigorously.

*   *   *

Nine miles of ocean lay between me and Tent Island, so-called because the Inuit always pitched their tents there before setting out to hunt beluga (they eat its blubber). In fact, I noticed that these orca-sized albino whales were all around me, spouting their geysers skyward and letting the sun reflect off their rubbery curves. There were hundreds of them! Their sheer numbers gave the general impression of an optical illusion, or a giant impressionist canvas. Overwhelmed, I stopped paddling and paused to take in this unique spectacle.

The whales swam toward my kayak, and I could touch them by just reaching out my hand. They could have overturned my boat with a stroke of their tails, or by surfacing underneath it, but their ultrasensitive sonar allowed them to avoid all obstacles with the grace of ballet dancers.

In the foreground of a horizon line now barely punctuated by the first foothills of the Brooks Range, the waves rolled forward and died with scarcely a whimper as they washed over the tundra that barely rose above the water and disappeared behind the ocean swells. The absence of a sharp-sloped shoreline made it difficult to find a suitable campsite. Moreover, the absence of ice and snow would have deprived me of drinking water, if it weren't for the fact that the ocean water was practically desalinated by the vast quantities of freshwater that the Mackenzie River Delta washed out to sea, even at this distance.

*   *   *

The next day, not far from Hershel Island, two- or two-and-a-half miles from the coast, I saw foaming waves crashing on the sandbars along the coast. The waves that break over the sandbars are higher when the wind is rougher and the bottom shallower, and I realized that I needed to venture out into deeper waters. I tried to sail out to sea, but a gust of wind that was too strong to fight drove me toward the breaking waves. One of the waves lifted me up and capsized my kayak despite the floats; it tossed me facedown onto the sandbar! My mast was driven into the sand, and the kayak righted slightly onto its side. The next wave hurled me once again, and although the mast kept me from capsizing completely, I was lying in the icy water, twisting desperately to keep my head above water. I was afraid I would lose the equipment fastened to the rear deck. Moreover, I wanted to get out of the kayak to right the vessel, but if I opened up my sprayskirt, the seawater might well soak my provisions and my fuel supplies. I tried pushing down on my paddle, but the waves that continued to break over me were too powerful.

There was no choice. I got out of the boat and by hauling on the fore mooring line, I was able to pull it farther up onto the sandbar. I did my best to drain the boat of seawater, but the waves continued to fill it. I hauled it a little higher onto the shoal, which allowed me to bail it out completely. I finished drying it with a sponge, and I could now see that the waterproof compartments had remained pretty well dry but that I had lost a few food rations and a water can.

I had just had an icy bath, and I was shivering from the cold, but I needed to plunge back into the rollers, to get back out into the open sea. The waves were coming in a series, and I counted them to identify the sequences and figure out when there would be a lull during which I could try to make it through. If I guessed wrong, the huge waves would toss me back onto the shore.

By paddling like a madman, I managed to get through the barrier of the rollers. The wind died down, and I took advantage of the calm to paddle as far as possible from the sandbars.

Soon, I couldn't even see the land except when the massive swells lifted me high. I was drenched, but paddling warmed me up.

Heading due west, I coasted along the shore at a safe distance. And when the wind began blowing offshore, I took care not to get too far out. If a squall were to push me out to sea, I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it back in.

Suddenly, the wind started veering madly in all directions. It was time to head back in to dry land. I barely had time to turn the kayak landward when the wind started to blow again, this time from the shore. I paddled hard, but not too hard, to save the reserves of strength that I would need in order to make a final effort. I had been paddling long days for nine days straight, and I could feel a fatigue coming on, caused both by the overloaded kayak and the fact that my arms weren't in shape for the workout they were now getting.

As I got closer to the coast, I realized that the currents had pushed a number of small icebergs between me and it. The waves, many feet high, partly obscured them, but their sharp ridges came into view periodically, pointing up menacingly.

The waves were likely to hurl me full onto them, and the impact might well be fatal.

At this point, I had a difficult choice to make: either allow myself to be pulled out to sea by the wind, with slim odds of making it back in to land, or else allow the waves to shatter me on the icebergs.

As if things weren't uncomfortable enough, I suddenly felt a pressing urge that—after twenty hours on the water—soon became irresistible. The sea was choppy, and the wind was blowing furiously: there was no chance of undoing my sprayskirt to urinate overboard. Overwhelmed and exhausted, I peed on myself like a baby. I was drenched with seawater on the outside and with urine on the inside, and all day long all that I had eaten was a chocolate bar and some peanuts. Exhaustion swept over me.

I had only one aspiration: to sleep. However, access to the land was blocked off by a barrier of ice floes and icebergs three football fields wide. And there was no question of falling asleep sitting in my kayak. The minute I failed to pay close attention, the waves would toss my little craft to its destruction on the ice. And if I found myself upside down in the water, wedged between blocks of ice, it would be impossible to right myself. My kayak would wind up broken in two; my equipment would sink to the seabed; and I, without even a life jacket to help me, would drown.

Staying as focused as fatigue would allow, I paddled in to where the waves were breaking. Constantly pushed back out to sea, I worked my way back in, trying repeatedly to find a way through. But the ice was growing thicker and thicker around me.

Paddling constantly against the offshore wind, I could only think of one solution—to wait for the smallest in a series of waves, surf over it with my kayak, plunge down among the blocks of ice, and then jump out onto the ice and haul my boat behind me, climbing up until I reached a surface where I could rest safely.

Only the first half of the icy wall was moving, the part where the waves were breaking. The second part of the wall was fixed to the shoreline. So I didn't need to get all the way across to reach safety. But if I fell down between the icebergs before I made it across, I wouldn't be getting back up.

The consequences were clear: succeed or die.

I positioned myself just outside a gap that looked clear enough to paddle through. I waited for the last in a series of waves—the smallest one—and launched myself forward. The wave took me in, among the icebergs, and dropped me … with the bow of the kayak on the ice. I was repeatedly raised, then shoved down, lifted up on one side while the other side plunged under, and I attempted to regain my balance by pushing my paddle against everything within reach. It wasn't easy, in a giant ice shaker filled with ice cubes each the size of a truck.

When a series of large waves came in, I felt sure that they were going to turn me over like a pancake and snap my kayak like a twig! I didn't have time to get out of the kayak. The first wave lifted me up and sent me crashing against the ice. My rudder splintered, and the kayak cracked all over. The second wave smashed me against an iceberg, and the bow of my kayak was wedged against it. Another slab of ice bobbed up beside me, and ripped off one of my float arms. My kayak was going down. The third wave lifted the rear of the kayak and drove me bow first into the water, but the functioning float arm was wedged between two blocks of ice, so I couldn't get clear. The next wave tore me away from the iceberg and spun me around forty-five degrees so I was facing the waves now.

The next wave hoisted me higher, higher … and then broke just after I made it over the crest. The trough in its wake pulled me back, and I was still looking out to the open sea. With one twisted float arm pointing uselessly at the sky, I saw the next series of massive waves approaching. The first one crashed down with full force onto the front of my kayak and took me down. This time, I was completely underwater. I shot to the surface on the other side, but the next roller swallowed me up again. Since I no longer had a rudder to steer with, I paddled forward furiously on the side of the broken float. So it was the missing float that saved me, by allowing me to make longer strokes and to come up fast on the next wave, which lifted me up and crashed down on the stern of my kayak. After I floated over the next wave, I saw with a sigh that I had done it! I had escaped from the icebergs and made it back out to sea through the barrier of the rollers!

I had really thought that I wouldn't make it out alive this time. Sure, I could have abandoned my kayak to give myself a better chance of reaching dry land. But without food or shelter, and no way of calling for rescue, I would have died anyway.

Still in a state of shock, I resolved not to try to make it through the ice floes again until I could find a safe and reliable opening. If the wind was dragging me out to sea, I could at least nap, following the swell, and recover my strength for a while as I drifted. But I wasn't very comfortable with the idea of sleeping aboard a kayak with a float on just one side, especially since my kayak was still weighed down with a month's supply of fuel and provisions.

I kept on paddling along the iced-in border of the shoreline, until all of a sudden I saw coming toward me an immense ice floe, which in short order had wedged me against the icebergs clustered along the shore. If the ice floe continued on its course, I would be crushed.

But this huge expanse of ice actually formed a floating breakwater, behind the shelter of which the ocean was suddenly smoother than a marina. I took advantage of the calm to accelerate, and caught up with another large chunk of pack ice, drifting near the shore. It would still be impossible to get in to dry land unless I was willing to take on the challenge of another fifteen-hour battle, and I definitely wasn't up to it. I could easily commit a fatal mistake in my fatigued state. It would be a better idea to get some rest before charging off to the attack again.

I pitched my tent on this second floating chunk of ice field, which was also drifting in toward shore and breaking apart with resounding cracks. But it would take more than that to keep me from sleeping—I had been operating in overdrive since that morning. I would wake up every two or three hours all the same, just to make sure that the ice wasn't cracking apart beneath me. Aside from that, I slept like a baby.

When I woke up, the sky was blue, and a beautiful day was dawning. The weather was balmy enough for sunbathing, but that would not have been advisable. The ice on which I had been sleeping had been busy melting and cracking apart while I slept, like an ice cube in a bathtub. My tent was practically in the water.

I was racked with aches and stiffness for the first time in a long while, but otherwise I was in excellent shape. I patched up my rudder with epoxy adhesive, improvised a repair of the broken arm of my float with a piece of driftwood, and set course for dry land once again.

My route was blocked by a labyrinth of ice and water, where my kayak had to serve alternately as a boat and as a sled. Sometimes I would take a running leap from one floe to the next and then haul my kayak toward me. Or else I might use the kayak as a bridge between floes, if the gap were sufficiently narrow. But when there was a gap of fifty feet or so of water, my tactic was to run as fast as possible, pushing the kayak right up to the edge of the ice, and then leap into it as it went into the water. The momentum was usually enough to take me and my boat to the other floe.

Paddling, jumping, hauling, and surfing, I improvised my way toward Hershel Island, where the ice had absorbed the slushy melting snow until it had become passable once again. Wearing sneakers and using a makeshift harness, I was dragging a boat that was certainly not built for the purpose, much less to carry a load of 240 pounds. When a wide fissure in the ice allowed me to drop my kayak into the water, I hauled it from the water as if I were some kind of ancient slave laborer. When along the coast, where the ice always melts first, a broader gap of open water allowed me to use the kayak for its intended function, I was forced to maneuver along the jagged trajectory of the shore.