Conquering the Impossible (4 page)

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On the fifth day I called Cathy, who was still in Cheredeny, to give her a progress report.

“I knocked myself out, slashed my face, and froze my ears. Other than that, I'm learning a little more every day, and my morale is rock solid.” From her end, my wife told me that all the other teams had given up and turned back. I had the racetrack all to myself!

Stunned by the news, I hardly knew what to think. How could it be that I alone, inexperienced as I was, could keep on going when everyone else had given up? Maybe I was just too dumb to listen to the simple common sense that was telling me to turn back?

My perseverance was indeed a product of my ignorance. Apparently the others had said that they had never seen so many gaps in the ice, that they had never seen such a fragmented ice pack. For my part, I had no previous expeditions to compare this with, and so these trying conditions seemed normal to me. And I labored on.

In order to move forward while hauling a 450-pound load, it was important that my skis only slide forward, which is why the points where they made contact with the ice were covered with artificial sealskins. And since the sealskins have an annoying tendency to shrink and come unglued in conditions of extreme cold, my sealskins were screwed to the bottoms of my skis.

But in the middle of one day's slog, suddenly I felt as if I were moonwalking like Michael Jackson. I realized that I had just lost one of my sealskins. It was still attached to one end of my left ski and was dragging pathetically behind me. I swore loudly and obscenely (I doubted that anyone was going to hear me). In order to reattach the sealskin, I would have to stop, take off my boots, pitch my tent, heat up the camp stove (a waste of cooking fuel), heat the bottom of the ski, preheat the sealskin, and reaffix it to the bottom of the ski. Then, of course, I would have to break camp before I could start off again.

As it turned out, the whole thing took three solid hours, and I was livid with frustration. Then, after another hour of progress, the sealskin came loose again, and I had to start all over!

*   *   *

It had been twenty-one days since I left Cape Arktichesky, and—despite many further problems with sealskins—my morale was high. The days were growing longer; I could get my bearings more easily; the temperatures were becoming comparatively mild (around twenty-two degrees below zero), and the sled was becoming progressively lighter as I consumed its contents. With my goal in sight, I felt like I was on top of the world.

The icy surface that suddenly appeared before me was clamped between two giant ice mounds, thrust upward by the opposing pressure of two masses of ice. This pressure, which can snap layers of ice five yards thick like kindling, launched shards of ice into the air that, falling to the ground like pick-up sticks, created these frozen hillocks. When the masses of ice pulled apart again, they left open water between them, which the cold quickly covered over again with a thin sheet of ice. The prudent thing to do would be to go around it. But in my current state of mind, I felt as if I were capable of walking on water.

I was carrying with me a sort of waterproof outfit, which I had brought for situations just like this—in which I had to venture onto what might prove to be thin ice. This “envelope,” which looked like a cross between a diver's suit and a fly fisherman's hip-waders, was loose enough that I could put it on over my regular outfit, including my shoes. It included sleeves that were closed at the ends, and it left no part of me uncovered except my head. If I were to fall into the water, it would save my life by preventing my clothes from getting drenched and by keeping me afloat with the air trapped inside. I could even use it to swim to the other side of a gap, if necessary. And once I was back on firm ice, I needed only to take it off, and I would avoid freezing instantly.

The only problem with this survival gear was that it took valuable time to put it on and take it off. At that moment I was in a hurry, and I didn't feel like taking an extra minute for anything. This valley didn't look too wide … I decided to go ahead and run the risk of crossing without my survival suit.

As I ventured out onto this fragile surface, I checked to see how strong it was at regular intervals using a method that Børge Ousland taught me. You bring your ski pole down hard on the ice, three times in a row. If the ski pole only breaks through on the third blow, then you have a 70 percent chance of making it over. But since the ice gets thinner and thinner as you approach the middle of the new ice, the 70 percent chance dwindles to 50 percent, and then 40 percent. The ideal margin of safety is indicated when the ski pole fails to break through until the fourth impact. In this case, my ski pole broke through on the second blow. I figured that I had a 50 percent chance of making it to the other side without incident.

Two yards. Three yards. Four yards. I moved forward gingerly, doing my best to avoid sudden movements or jolts, placing my skis on the ice as if I were walking on eggshells, and distributing my 185 pounds of weight as well as I could over the surface of the two skis. Polar bears are capable of moving across very thin ice because they are masters of the art of distributing their weight. At that moment, I wished I were a bear.

I had almost reached the other side when an ominous cracking sound filled the air. As I heard the sound, I could feel the ice giving way beneath my feet. It had collapsed beneath the 400 pounds of weight that my sled still carried. A second later, I was up to my neck in ice-cold water. My skis, still attached to my feet, weighed me down and threatened to drag me under. I struggled to find a grip and clamber up the blocks of ice on the near wall, since my sled prevented me from swimming to the far side. Luckily, the sled was still floating and remained upright! If it capsized, it would sink under its weight and drag me straight to the bottom with it.

In order to free up my hands, I let go of my ski poles, and they dangled, still strapped to my wrists. Inside my head, my survival instincts rushed through my possible courses of action: “Unhook the sled! No, use it as a raft! No, it might overturn. All your equipment would be soaked and ruined, and it would take you down with it anyway.”

Little by little, I regained confidence and a modicum of self-control. I gradually realized that my immediate situation was serious but not as catastrophic as it seemed at first. I was immersed in water that had a temperature of about thirty-seven or thirty-nine degrees, which was actually quite warm compared with the air temperature, which must have been close to forty degrees below zero. It wasn't in the water that I ran the real risk of dying of hypothermia; it would be when I emerged from the water. And that meant that I still had a few extra seconds to think about what to do next. I absolutely had to (1) find a way of getting back onto the ice, (2) remove my skis, (3) get undressed, and (4) get into some dry clothes.

I had kept my ice axes with me. They were within reach, in pockets that were specially added to my parka. And yet I didn't even have the reflexes to use them. It was with the sheer strength of my arms—and, above all, a miracle that I cannot understand to this day—that I managed to climb up the six-foot-high ice wall that separated me from the surface of the ice field. I was weighed down by my drenched clothing, I had my skis on my feet, and my sled was still attached to the other end of my harness, but I made it. Once I was up on the ice, I sat down and used all my weight to pull the sled up and over the wall. And yet there was no time to stop and take a deep breath—even for a second. The water that had drenched my clothing was already beginning to freeze. My first reflex was to grab fistfuls of fresh snow and cover myself with it. Because of its absorbent properties, the powdery snow “dried” me off quickly and kept me from freezing completely. Now, what I needed was to pitch my tent, so that I could preserve at least some warmth and change my clothes inside the cloth bubble. But with all the clumps of ice that were covering the landscape, there wasn't even the smallest flat surface on which to set up my tent. While I ran in place furiously to try to warm up, the ice was solidifying on my clothes and cracking with every move I made. I could feel the ice beginning to form on my flesh.

Finally, I found a clear space, just big enough for my tent. I pitched the tent—in twelve seconds by my watch—and rushed inside, ripping off my clothes and hopping into my sleeping bag.

But now I was not much warmer than I would have been standing naked on the ice. I absolutely had to light my camp stove. My daily ration for fuel was two “units,” (a full bottle held six of my self-defined “units,” or one liter), enough to heat up my food and melt ice for drinking water. If I used more fuel today, I'd have no water to drink tomorrow. A shame, certainly, but tomorrow would be another day, and right now I needed to worry about surviving today.

A few seconds later, I was out of my sleeping bag, huddled next to the flame of the camp stove, completely naked so that the heat did not need to pass through my clothing in order to reach me.

Because it is my body that heats my clothing and sleeping bag, not the other way around (the clothing and the sleeping bag do nothing more than hold in my body heat), the first thing that needed to be heated up was me.

As my body gradually returned to a normal temperature, I did my best to dry out my clothes but soon realized that a complete drying operation was going to use up all my remaining fuel. So I limited myself to drying off my boxer shorts and my thermals. For the rest of my clothing, I had a different idea: I threw the clothing outdoors and waited five minutes. Then I dragged my clothing, completely frozen, back into the tent and got all the ice off it by brushing the clothing vigorously. I had just invented freeze-drying: in order to extract all the moisture from a garment, first turn it into ice.

The next morning, in completely dry clothing—I changed only my wool socks and the linings of my boots, because I couldn't get the ice out of them—I started off again toward the Pole. As I went, I swore solemnly to myself that I would never fail to put on my insulating survival gear, and that I would never venture out onto thin ice. Even if I had to take a six-mile detour.

This close call made me think back to an experience I had in the virgin jungle of the Amazon. My original goal had been to make it through the jungle. Then, after being bitten by a poisonous snake and struggling for five days, balanced on the brink of death, my goal changed. It became to stay alive … then make it through the jungle.

In this case, survive … then make it to the North Pole.

*   *   *

The days were growing longer; the temperatures were becoming milder; my average continued to improve as my sled grew lighter; I was losing weight, but I was in great shape. Life was good.

“Look out for bears!” Franziska Rochat warned me in my fortune for the day, which came with the meal cooked by her husband. Philippe had developed seven different meals, one for each day of the week. Thanks to him, I was dining as I never had before on an expedition. And thanks to his wife, I got “mail” twice a week.

Everything was going nicely. I had been out on the ice field for more than twenty-five days, and Børge Ousland predicted that I would be successful if I could only make it past the first two weeks. Another reason to stick to my resolution to avoid any more needless risks.

I gave Børge a call, as I had developed the habit of doing every ten days or so, to update him on my morale and my progress—my location, how much food I had left, how my sled was working, and so on. He was enthusiastic. According to him, I couldn't fail now.

And I was increasingly tempted to agree with him as I got closer to eighty-five degrees north latitude (ninety degrees, of course, is the North Pole). This far north, the ice became more uniform, smoother, and therefore easier and safer to cross. The only drawback: lost polar bears that rove the ice field may well be aggressive because of a lack of food.

I was willing to deal with the bears. The only thing I wanted was to finally experience what I had prepared for for so long, and what I believed at this point I amply deserved. I had earned this victory, and they couldn't take it away from me.

That night, I heard the usual sounds of ice cracking all around me. It sounded like a crackling wood fire or a giant hand striking thousands and thousands of matches. During the night, gaps opened all over the ice field. All it would take was for one of those gaps to yawn open directly beneath my tent, and I would wind up like that Japanese explorer.

All of a sudden, that worry disappeared, only to be replaced by another. Amid the popping firecracker sounds of the ice, I could just discern the muffled shuffling of footsteps in the snow. I could hear the faint crunching of powdery snow being pressed down by the weight of a …

A bear!

It made perfect sense. They are capable of smelling a fissure in the ice field from thirty miles away, along with the conditions that fissure creates—a little space of open salt water, perfect for hunting seal.

And, in fact, I felt about as vulnerable as a seal, a prisoner in my sleeping bag, with only my head sticking out. I couldn't see a thing, but I could hear the footsteps of the wild beast as he approached. Now I could hear his rough breathing … very close to me. And suddenly, here he was! His curiosity had been aroused by my tent, an object as big as he was, dropped here as if from another planet. He stuck his snout into the tent, in an attempt to sound out the intentions of the alien creature. The muzzle of the huge bear, its shape clearly impressed in the stretched nylon, was just a few inches from my own face. I felt as if I could count his fangs, behind which loomed half a ton of muscle, flesh, and claws. My heart must have been racing at about three hundred beats per minute. Instinctively, I got one arm free and wrapped my fingers around the barrel of the sawed-off shotgun I carried with me at all times.

The bear began to sniff around my tent, curiously trying to determine whether this unidentified object contained something good to eat. Like, say … me. I experienced some difficulty getting out of my sleeping bag. My breath had frozen the zipper.