Conquering the Impossible (29 page)

As soon as I set foot on the Beaufort Sea, the sun, which was up twenty-four hours a day by now, began to melt the fresh snow and covered the ice with lakes. All of this water melted through the frozen surface, opening up enormous dark holes, which became treacherous traps. The entire surface would gradually break up and shift, then be pushed northward by the winds and currents.

It's not only because seawater is so harmful to snowmobiles that the locals stop traveling on the ice once spring has arrived. The Far North has many tragic stories, like the story of the man who set out one day from Tuktoyaktuk with his sled and his dogs and who suddenly found himself on a drifting ice floe, separated from his team. They found the sled and the dogs floating out beyond Cape Bathurst. He was never found.

With my feet and legs constantly soaked, and an unrelenting fear that I would fall into a fissure concealed beneath the layer of water, I progressed with difficulty toward Cape Dalhousie. And then chance came to my aid in the form of an ideal wind for breaking out my kite. Under a perfect blue sky, I found myself sailing along on the ice—or rather, on the water. I was practically waterskiing along that sparkling mirror whose surface my skis barely grazed!

*   *   *

I rounded Cape Dalhousie and was beginning my descent along the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, when I chanced upon the most impressive polar bear tracks I had ever seen. To judge from their size, it must have been a real monster. Frankly, by this point I had had my fill of bears. I had come within a hair's width of being mauled and eaten, and I wasn't eager to enjoy that experience again.

The tracks zigzagged between the ocean and dry land, indicating that the beast was hunting for food. The tracks headed south toward Tuktoyaktuk, just like I was, but the bear wouldn't venture close to a human settlement unless it was overwhelmed by hunger. Instead, I figured the bear had scented open water at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and it knew there was a good chance of finding seals there.

Tiny snow crystals, still visible in its tracks, proved that it wasn't far ahead of me. It was unlikely to turn around and head back toward me, but between its wandering path and the speed of my kite, I was certain to catch up with it. I decided that it would be a better idea to pitch my tent and let the bear get ahead of me. Twenty-four hours from now, it would have covered over a hundred miles and would have disappeared safely into the delta.

I wasn't more than twenty or so miles from “Tuk” when Jean-Philippe Patthey arrived, accompanied by Sebastian Devenish and Raphaël Blanc, my cameramen.

The thaw had begun early that year, and the area around Tuktoyaktuk was flooded. The ice had broken away from the mainland, and the sea was flowing between ice and land, creating a liquid corridor about fifty feet across. I covered the last miles over ice covered with lakes, knee-deep in water. The skin on my feet, constantly drenched for more than a week, peeled away in strips the same way it had in the swamps of the Amazon jungle. When I ventured to use the kite, the shifts in wind direction regularly dumped me headfirst into the water, dragging me for fifty feet at a time.

In some areas a fine layer of ice had formed on top of the water that pooled on top of the main ice layer. This thin floating ice was too fragile to support my weight, so I walked along, shattering it as I went, playing the human icebreaker with my shins.

Sometimes I would fall and find myself up to my neck in water, with my sled floating behind me. Luckily, the water temperature was thirty-six or thirty-seven degrees, and the air temperature was just below freezing, which saved me from hypothermia.

Sebastian and Raphaël were impressed with the spectacle.

At the end of the day I was so exhausted that I pitched my tent on the first reasonably dry spot I found. The Lord only knew when I would find another.

*   *   *

After Cape Bathurst all the territory I traversed, or nearly all of it, proved unknown and unexpected. I had planned for the beginning of the thaw and changes to the terrain, but I had no idea that these factors would cause me so many problems. I had foolishly held onto the notion that springtime could only bring good things—sunlight, warmth—and make my progress easier. In reality, my difficulties had only changed in nature.

*   *   *

When I first glimpsed Tuktoyaktuk on June 2, 2003, I immediately nicknamed it “brown town” for the color the melting snow gave to the land around it, its few streets, and its houses. It was a striking contrast with the completely white universe in which I had been living since I had set foot on the North American continent.

The appearance of “Tuk” had been shaped by the great number of floating fir and larch logs carried down by the Mackenzie River and used by the native population to build what they called sod houses. These were wooden houses, completely covered with large blocks of peat moss or sod, a material with exceptional insulating properties. Nowadays, the sod houses still stand next to prefab huts and trailer homes—among them the Tuk Inn, where I moved in with my team. The owner, Paul, was an Inuit who purchased the property after retiring as a ranger in the nearby Mackenzie Reindeer Grazing Preserve. He and his wife, Norma, presided over a collection of rooms and added capacity when they could afford to.

The stopover at Tuktoyaktuk was an important one, because here I was going to switch over from winter equipment to summer equipment. This almost solemn transition attracted some of my sponsors and numerous representatives of the European media—including an editor from German
Playboy
—as well as my first American journalists, whose interest in me and my story increased as I got closer to Alaska.

I explained to them that over the next few days, since the mouth of the Mackenzie River was becoming a patchwork of floating ice and swampland, I would wait for most of the ice to float out to sea, and then I would paddle up the river in a kayak against the current and then cut westward to get across the delta. Because of the lakes that would have formed on the ice that remained, my kayak would need to serve, variously, as both boat and sled. That was why I had selected a polyurethane kayak from Prijon. Fiberglass or Kevlar kayaks would be lighter—a distinct advantage when hauling the boat across the ice—but the polyurethane plastic kayak would withstand wear and tear and impacts better, plus it would be easier to patch in case of leaks.

The kayak was about fifteen feet long and contained two waterproof compartments that would hold my provisions and fuel. The rest of my equipment would be stored in waterproof bags and fastened to the rear of the kayak with the weight distributed evenly. In order to keep the excess weight from sinking the boat, Steve Ravussin and I had transformed the kayak into a sort of trimaran by adding two short floats or “shoes,” each about a foot and a half long, to improve the boat's stability. The shortcoming of this system was that the aluminum arm that joined the floats together prevented double-paddling, forcing me to use a simple, less effective, “Indian-style” paddle. I made up for that, when the wind was favorable, by hoisting a removable aluminum mast with a sail; the mast was stored in my backpack.

The rudder at the stem was controlled by a double rudder assembly that I operated with my feet. There was a centerboard fastened to the arm of the floats, so that it was within reach and easily maneuverable. The cockpit, which featured a built-in compass, was enclosed by a waterproof neoprene sprayskirt, which fastened around my waist to keep icy water from getting in. Finally, a spare double paddle was fastened in two parts on either side of the bow.

*   *   *

My friends and the journalists left after filling up on anecdotes and interviews. Jean-Philippe went back to Europe with my sled, my skis, and the rest of my winter equipment. I was alone again, content with the four days that we had spent together and ready to resume my journey on June 7. By that date, according to statistics based on annual satellite analyses, the river should be clear.

But the thermometer dropped suddenly again, and the ice stopped breaking up at the river's mouth. On the eighth, I was still in Tuktoyaktuk. Norma and Paul insisted on giving me a place to stay as long as necessary. They also continued to refuse to accept a penny from me.

On June 16, ice was still covering the Mackenzie Delta, and I no longer had the right gear to cross it on foot. I would be forced to haul my kayak over the slushy late season snow. Yet a miracle occurred during that night, as if, while I lay sleeping, a huge broom had swept all of the ice away. There was hardly a speck of ice anywhere on the delta, but the wind blowing between thirty and forty knots that had “swept up” was still keeping me from leaving.

There were two schools of thought about the best way to leave Tuktoyaktuk by kayak: either paddle around the Mackenzie estuary via the Beaufort Sea, or paddle upstream to reach the Reindeer Channel and follow it to Shallow Bay on the far shore of the estuary.

The next morning, the three-foot waves surging across the estuary made me choose the second option.

For the first time during the expedition, I was dressed in summer clothing. I wore wool socks and sneakers that would dry easily and fast (I also had a pair of insulated neoprene slippers), and long underwear beneath my Gore-Tex trousers. Same thing on top: an insulating stretch shirt and Gore-Tex wind-breaker, a hood covering my baseball cap, and neoprene gloves.

*   *   *

I said good-bye to Paul and Norma and climbed into the cockpit of my kayak. I set out into the mouth of the river. Another leg of my expedition was beginning. A new challenge and the excitement made me forget about the winter entirely.

My bottle of drinking water was tucked under my sprayskirt and my trail snacks were in the pockets of my parka—once I started out, I wouldn't stop until the end of the day. I hoisted the sail with the crank, I dropped my centerboard into the water, and I was off.

Paddling is less a matter of pulling the paddle toward yourself than of hauling your boat toward the paddle, using it as a point of support. In other words, it's the kayak that goes toward the paddle and not the other way around. Extending the stroke behind you and pulling the paddle out of the water too late actually pulls the kayak downward, thus slowing it down. The stroke should follow a straight line, and the paddle should be planted in the water as far forward as possible to extend the distance covered. Finally, the straighter the paddle is when it enters the water, and the more of the paddle's surface is immersed, the more effective the stroke will be.

To keep from wasting energy, I used my whole body—feet, legs, hips, shoulders, and so on—in each stroke. I tried to be as connected as possible to the kayak, whose rigidity constitutes an especially effective transmitter of energy. In order to minimize my effort and prolong my endurance, I created a lever effect between the lower hand, which pulled, and the upper hand, which pushed.

I changed sides every hundred—or two hundred—strokes of the paddle. Since that tended to cause the kayak to veer in one direction, I used the rudder to compensate for it. The rudder's role became even more crucial when the boat approached the shoreline, to keep the kayak from turning sideways and being capsized by the waves. I had a cable that allowed me to lift the rudder, to keep it from breaking on impact with the rocky bottom. Kayakers know that to reduce the wear and tear on the rudder caused by the constant pressure of water, it is important to use the rudder deftly, delicately, and as sparingly as possible.

*   *   *

Despite the wind, when it was blowing in my favor, and my razor-sharp stern (considering the distances I would have to cover, I wanted to reduce the water resistance as much as possible), I noticed that my kayak was answering only flabbily to my strokes. However hard I paddled, I couldn't get any forward motion—at least, not as much as I should have. If it was a matter of weight, my food rations would become much lighter with the passage of time; if it was because I wasn't in very good shape, that was a different matter. In a few days my upper body, which hadn't gotten very much exercise since the beginning of the expedition, would regain much of its strength.

*   *   *

On the first day, facing into the wind and fighting a four-knot current that pushed me downstream whenever I stopped paddling, I spent my time slaloming between residual ice floes and trying to find my way through the labyrinth of braided channels of the Mackenzie River. It was cold and plenty of water was making its way into the kayak, but the hard work of paddling often made me feel uncomfortably warm. So I took off my wind-breaker, keeping only the fast-drying insulating layer on my upper body.

In twenty hours of nonstop paddling, I had covered only twenty-three miles. Soaked and exhausted, I spent the first night along the East Channel (the Mackenzie has three channels—the East, Middle, and West Channels) on a small rocky beach.

I began to wonder if it had been a good idea to go up the river against the current, but there was no time to waste on second-guessing.

*   *   *

When I woke up, the wind had died down, and the river was smooth as glass. I decided to take advantage of the lull and try to reach the Reindeer Channel. Since the river was still running very fast, I hugged the banks. The problem was that the thaw had made the river overflow those banks, and the shoreline was difficult to make out. I would repeatedly find myself scraping bottom in water that was barely a foot deep. When I returned to the middle of the river, I had better clearance, but the current became a problem again. I stopped after twelve hours and nineteen miles covered. In order to reach the Bering Strait before September, the beginning of storm season, I would need to cover at least twenty-eight miles a day.

*   *   *

The next day I got lost in the maze before finding Reindeer Channel. After another few hours of hard work, I was in the West Channel. Finally, I could stop fighting the river's current! Now my kayak was shooting forward like an arrow with each stroke of the paddle.