Swimming to Antarctica (21 page)

That night we celebrated with the people in Myvatn with a wonderful dinner at one of the villagers’ houses.

The next morning we flew back to Reykjavík and met with Petur Bjornsson. He was elated, and he said that what I was doing had reached the hearts of the common people. He said I was now a hero to the Icelandic people, that they would talk of the swim in years to come. I told him that I would always remember them, that no one ever achieves great things alone.

Jeffrey and I continued our journey. With the support of a crew in Gibraltar, I became the first woman to swim across the Strait of Gibraltar, from Morocco to Gibraltar; then, with an Italian support team, I swam across the Strait of Messina. From there Jeffrey and I traveled to Greece, and I swam around Delos Island, then across the Bosporus in Turkey, across Lake Kumming in China, and the five lakes of Mount Fuji in Japan. Each of these presented us with unique challenges and wonderful cultural experiences. But the one swim that would be the most dramatic of all in the around-the-world swim, and the most significant in terms of providing a key to the Bering Strait, was Glacier Bay.

The swim across Lake Myvatn stretched me, forced me to plod on through the cold. More important, I’d learned I could endure forty-three-degree water for nearly two hours. Now the question was, Could I endure intensely colder water for a shorter time? Glacier Bay, Alaska, would give me the answer to this question.

It took a lot for me to wrap my mind around it, to even begin to believe I could do it. Seeing those pure white and powder-blue icebergs bobbing on Glacier Bay’s waters was enough to make me realize this was going to stretch me further than I’d ever been stretched before. It took a tremendous effort for me to even think that the swim could be possible.

On October 4, 1985, the night before the attempted swim, a sudden cold snap hit Alaska. If Glacier Bay had been filled only with salt water, this wouldn’t have created a problem. But the bay contains sweet freshwater from cascading rivers and streams and melting glaciers. The night before the swim, air temperatures in Gustavus, where Jeffrey and I were staying in a family-run lodge, and in the bay dropped well below freezing. The cold night sky was lit up with auroras. Whirling and wavering bands of light, rose, lapis blue, and neon green, particles of light stretched across the midnight blue sky. They rose, drifted, spread, and disappeared, and then out of nowhere, another shower of light swirled in the sky. The solar winds were blowing, linking and unlinking their magnetic field with the earth’s. Speeding electrons were bursting through the earth’s atmosphere, colliding with atoms of gas. The atoms were absorbing energy and creating showers of colored light. The auroras were a sort of
meeting of the universe with the earth, and I took it as a good sign for the swim.

In Gustavus, a tiny town near Glacier Bay, at five a.m. Fritz Koshman, Dena Matkin, Debbie Woodruff, Jeffrey Cardenas, and I met at an ice-encased dock. We slipped and slid along the dock, until Fritz Koshman, the pilot, took our hands one by one and helped us carefully board the thirty-foot-long wooden skiff. Fritz was a stocky, broad-shouldered man with a bushy but well-kept beard and long brown hair. In addition to being a fisherman, he was known as a very good artist. He looked at me, and there was some hesitancy in his blue eyes.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“It got awfully cold last night,” he said. “I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to do this. Guess we’ll just have to see how far we can get.” But he didn’t say any more. He started the motor, and we began our journey through Icy Strait.

As we entered Glacier Bay, roughly an hour later, Fritz was leaning out of the cabin, his eyes locked on the glassy, gray-blue water. “If the water was choppier, then at least I could see the ice. Or if the sun would stay in front of the clouds, it would glisten. But now the water’s dark and I can’t see anything at all.”

“I don’t understand—what kind of ice are you looking for?” I said.

“Pan ice. It’s ice on the top inches of the water, about a quarter of an inch to half an inch thick. And it’s round, shaped like a pan. See, there’s some.”

I could barely see the ten-foot-wide section floating on the water.

“I’m not sure how far we’re going to be able to go. Pan ice can slice through the wooden hull of my boat. It could sink us in a matter of minutes. I don’t like this at all,” Koshman said.

As if we were moving through a minefield, we zigzagged northward through Glacier Bay, past tall dark pines, small rocky islands, and fishing camps that had been closed for the season. We motored deep into the Alaskan wilderness. The sputter of the boat’s tiny motor was the only engine voice in the bay. We were alone, and beside the mountain walls we were very small.

As Koshman turned his head to steer the boat, we plowed into a transparent sheet of pan ice. It sounded like something snapped, and then there was a heavy thud. The boat shuddered, and so did we.

“I don’t know how much farther we’re going to be able to go. I’m going to have to go slower. And I need all of you to look for the ice.” Koshman sighed deeply.

“This is really dangerous for a boat,” Debbie Woodruff said, staring into the water.

Dangerous for a boat—what would it do to a swimmer?

Woodruff knew how dangerous the bay could be; she’d spent years fishing for crab there. She was a large, strong, capable woman with long, wavy brown hair, a small round face, and brown eyes. As an added bonus, she was also a certified emergency medical technician. In case something went really wrong during the swim, she had spoken with her fishermen colleagues. Because of the high mountain walls surrounding Glacier Bay, it would not be possible to directly radio an emergency team for help. So she had contacted her fishermen friends who were fishing south of us out of the bay, where there wasn’t a problem with ice. If we had an emergency, she would radio them, and they would pass that information to the rescue team.

Fritz Koshman stifled a curse as a piece of ice cracked and shattered. “I don’t like this at all,” he said.

I turned to Woodruff. “If it’s that dangerous, do you think I should ask him to turn around?” I was filled with mixed thoughts and emotions. No matter how you looked at it, this swim was dangerous. Admittedly, that’s what made it very exciting. But there was a point where it would be too dangerous, a point beyond any reason, and I didn’t want to reach that point before I climbed into the water. I didn’t want to endanger the lives of the crew or hurt myself; no swim, however important to the end goal, was worth that.

“Fritz knows what he’s doing. If he doesn’t think it’s safe, he’ll turn back,” Woodruff said confidently.

The boat moved as if in slow motion into Glacier Bay.

“There’s ice off the bow—ten yards! Steer right, more right!” Debbie yelled.

Koshman turned the wheel, leaning and pulling with his entire large body, and he managed to steer the thirty-foot boat out of harm’s way. He kept adjusting the course, making sudden abrupt turns. This took an enormous amount of concentration, skill, and nerve—especially when he came upon a section of pan ice and had to choose whether to steer around the larger pieces, knowing that he was going to snap through smaller pieces and possibly damage his boat.

We motored deeper into the bay, where there was more freshwater runoff from streams, rivers, and brooks, and the pan ice became even more abundant. Navigation was a nightmare. We heard ice snapping and crunching beneath the bow, then more crackling as the boat moved over it. The sound penetrated the boat’s floorboards and traveled through our bodies.

Fritz ran to the bow and looked over the side. The wood hadn’t been cut—at least, not yet. He hurried back to the steering house. He wiped sweat off his brow and sucked in air nervously. “I’m not sure we can go much farther,” he said. “I don’t want to damage my boat, or sink us.” He looked ahead, as if trying to decide the best starting point for the swim.

No one saw it coming, although we all had been completely focused on the water. We hit an iceberg. It was what Debbie Woodruff described as a baby berg, just two feet wide, and most of it was below the water’s surface, except for a patch of ice that was only a foot wide. When we hit the iceberg, the impact sounded like a giant boulder had slammed into the boat. Fortunately, the berg just bounced off us without making a hole, but this first encounter heightened our anticipation. We watched the water, hoping we wouldn’t miss another submerged berg. Our anticipation continued to increase when we sighted two larger bergs, two to three feet high and wide. When we passed within a couple yards of them, it felt as if we were standing naked in front of an open Sub-Zero freezer.

How could I even believe this swim was possible? What was I thinking?
Maybe it’s time to reconsider. Maybe the smart thing to do is to gather up all my marbles and just go home.
Sometimes I wasn’t
sure why I did these things. I stifled a shiver. This was more than I had expected.

Strong currents began coming at us from a multitude of directions now, flowing at up to a knot, pushing pan ice and bergs into us. It was like getting hit by comets flying at us from outer space, smashing into us from every direction.

Suddenly, the boat lurched to one side when a piece of ice connected with the propeller. Koschman checked the line; it seemed to be okay. He told us he couldn’t make the boat go any slower, to reduce the impact of the icebergs. If we hit one hard and it punched a hole in the side of the boat, we would sink quickly. Survival time in this water for an untrained person was less than ten minutes.

Shaking his head, Koshman turned to me and said reluctantly, “Maybe we should turn back now. But if we do that, we won’t be able to come back tomorrow. The ice will be worse. You won’t have a chance to try this swim until next year. And I know you really want to do it now.”

“I really do. It’s important for my long-range plan. But if you feel that we are putting your boat and the crew in real jeopardy, then I think we have to turn back,” I said, unable to conceal my disappointment.

“We have only a couple miles to go. The thing is,” Kochman said, “I want to get the swim off as soon as possible. It’s late afternoon, the sun’s going to set soon, and when that happens, the air temperature here will plunge. More pan ice is going to form, rapidly. And that will make our trip home very difficult. But I’m more concerned about getting locked in the ice. The air temperature could drop more rapidly than I’ve anticipated, and if that happens, we could get stranded.”

“You mean like Shackleton’s expedition? You mean we could be trapped in the ice?”

“Yes, it happens easily here. We could be stranded for a day or two, or more. The ice can also freeze around the boat, compress the two sides, and crush the hull. So if we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to hurry. We’ve got to get in and out of here fast.”

“I will go as fast as I can,” I promised.

There were bears in this area. Dena Matkin had told me all about them. She worked with the Forest Service as a biologist, spending her time studying bears and humpback whales. She said that older adult bears who were no longer strong enough to fight younger bears for territory with an abundance of food were pushed north into the Muir Inlet, near the Riggs Glacier, where we were headed. Here, because of the glaciers and glacial rock, food was scarce. The bears in this area were always very hungry, and it was dangerous to camp there. Against the warnings of park rangers, one tourist had decided to go camping in Glacier Bay and wandered off on his own. After a couple of days the rangers began searching for him; all they found were his feet in his boots. No, we would not be camping.

The air temperature dropped a few more degrees. It was probably in the mid-thirties, and I blew my breath into my jacket to trap the warm air and keep me warm. I couldn’t afford to get cold before I started swimming. If I started warm, I had less of a chance of going into hypothermia, or at least more time to work with before my temperature dropped too low. This was scary stuff.
How am I going to do this? How am I going to be okay? How am I not going to get cut by that pan ice?

Matkin provided a solution. She was an expert with small boats. While studying humpbacks, she spent a lot of time rowing out among them, and she had developed skills that enabled her not to disturb them. She said we would not encounter any humpbacks because the water was too cold; they had already swum to Hawaii. On my swim, she would row a small dory in front of me, and would act like a mini ice breaker while Koshman, Woodruff, and Cardenas monitored us and the ice from the boat.

Woodruff pulled her long wavy brown hair back into a ponytail to get it out of the way, then began radioing her fishing friends down the bay to inform them of our status. The captains were relaying this information to Matkin’s friends at the Forest Service, and they were updating an airplane pilot who was on standby in case of an emergency. The airplane would be able to provide support as long as the weather held, and as long as there was light.

Muir Inlet narrowed to a mile. Here we were surrounded by an awesome towering amphitheater of majestic serrated white glacial peaks and steep shale midsections and bases. In the distance, half a mile at most, was the Riggs Glacier, a breathtaking mountain of white, blue, and green ice compressed for millions of years, a sort of massive frozen history of time. Its enormous beauty and power seemed to say, “Look at me; I am Alaska, the heart and essence of it, wild, pristine, and enduring.”

Fritz suddenly turned and started to land the boat on a crumbly black shale beach about a mile from the Riggs Glacier.

“Can’t we get closer to it?” I asked. I wanted to see it more closely, from many sides.

Koshman shook his head. “It’s not safe. The glacier can calve without warning, and those huge blocks of ice weigh thousands of pounds. They tumble into the bay at thirty or forty miles an hour, and when they hit the water they create waves up to twenty feet high. A large berg can capsize a boat or take it under. I’ve seen it happen before. We’d better get moving,” he said.

While Matkin rowed the tiny boat into position and Koshman picked his way through the icebergs to the beach, I pulled off my parka, sweats, shoes, and socks, and looked to the opposite shore for reference points. In a straight line the distance across was one mile, but with the ice, current, and icebergs, we wouldn’t be going straight. I knew this would be the longest mile I’d ever swum.

Small shale pebbles from the mountain ridge above our heads began sprinkling the beach with rocks. They were dropping every minute or so, and starting to increase in size. Once Koshman landed the boat, he said, I’d better hurry; we could be in for a rockslide, and he wanted us offshore before that happened.

Quickly I climbed up on the boat’s railing. As I started to come down over it, the part of my Lycra swimsuit where the strap joins the chest got caught on a hook inside the railing. The strap was stretched out like a rubber band, and I was at an angle where I couldn’t pull myself back into the boat and I couldn’t reach over the railing and free myself; I was suspended in midair, bouncing up and down and laughing really hard.

I tugged on the strap, yanked it. It was strong material, but finally I ripped a hole in it and tore myself free.

On the ground, I tied the suit together, but the knot wouldn’t hold. It kept slipping out. “Okay, forget it. I’ll just swim like this. I’ll just keep my right arm in front of my chest until I get into the water,” I said.