June 7, 2018
Day 26-28: The End?
Running out of food, running out of time and running out of snow, I looked down at my Citizen Promaster and noted that over an hour had passed and I still hadn't fallen asleep. After not getting a great night sleep the night prior, I figured I would easily doze off. While tired but not exhausted, I could feel the weariness in my body that seeps in during a long expedition like this. I should be tired, but I felt wide awake. Then I realized the reason: I had started thinking about 'the end'.
There is a singularity of purpose that makes the extended wear and tear of polar expeditions bearable. Everything that we do is hyper-focused on sustaining our ability to ski and pull our sleds in an unforgiving environment. Both our practice and principle is that of complete utilitarianism. However, in the waning days of the trip and with our goal in sight, my mind stretches past the immediate ice and snow. It's not stress - like worrying about all that I have to do. Rather, it's excitement about actually starting the projects that I had been dreaming about for the past four weeks.
In the end, I wasn't able to sleep, listening to podcasts and music, scrolling through photos of my kids and simply just staring at the tent ceiling. I started counting the number of nights that I've actually slept in a tent in my life - but realizing the actual figure was in the thousands, I stopped at the sheer absurdity of such a high number. In the end, I lay awake the entire night (which was actually the afternoon) and started the stove at approximately 10:55 pm when I promptly fell asleep until midnight. Unzipping the vestibule, it was another white out. The inReach weather hadn't looked good, either. My heart sank.
I meter hope carefully on expeditions. At home, I am an optimistic optimist often seeing the glass as not just full but overflowing. Here however, hope unrealized can have terrible consequences. Therefore, I choose a more realistic approach (combined with a bit of fatalism). While I have enjoyed this expedition and the extreme (at times) challenges that Greenland has presented, I miss Maria and the kids a lot and have already been away a significant portion of the late winter and spring (and now summer). As I looked at the weather report, I worried that we would be stranded on the ice for another four days.
Of course, the best way to be successful is to put yourself in a situation where you don't have another choice and to realistically get picked up by helicopter we had to keep skiing. Luckily, it wasn't a total whiteout as I feared. In fact, there were even a few patches of blue and as we started out, we were treated to a spectacular sunrise (at 1:30 am) - the first we had seen the entire journey. A little bit more optimism started to trickle in.
Even though we were skiing at night now, the temperature was above freezing. In less than a week we had gone from single digit temperatures with below zero windchills to rainstorms. The snow was now sun cupped and rolling and we skied up and down while the sleds alternately raced down an incline (running into us) then as we skied back up the other side of the small curve, snapping our tug lines tight pulling us backwards and off balance. Par for the course, Greenland would not let us off easy.
Later in the afternoon (but morning) the sky became overcast and the light turned flat. I had been using the Garmin inReach to text the helicopter company regularly as I was skiing with updates about the weather and our progress. Near the end of our day, the Greenland Air Charter manager texted back that, judging from our position, we were traveling in a heavily crevassed area. I looked around. It was a whiteout. I couldn't see much of anything. Ahead, I saw two black spots in the snow. At first I thought it was a bird, a pile of dirt or a rock sticking out. But as I strained my eyes, I realized it that we were in a potentially life threatening situation. It was too hard to know what was ahead. Obviously, we were at the edge of the ice cap, where glaciers pour off and flow toward the sea. We stopped and set up camp after probing the area throughly.
Then came another series of texts, setting up and marking a landing zone and regular weather updates. We waiting in our tents certain that we would be camped here for several days when I heard the familiar chop of air from an approaching helicopter. After 26 days of nearly every imaginable winter condition, we had crossed the Greenland ice cap.
The short flight to Tasiliaq, Greenland was breathtaking. Flying over calving glaciers, huge icebergs and pans of sea ice, I was amazed at the scene that unfolded beneath us. Truly spectacular and a sight that I will never forget.
And then we landed, and all the struggle and effort and worry instantly vanished. The temperature was fairly warm and for the first time in one month, we saw land, dirt and rock. We could see green grass sprouting in spots. All around was the lush smell of earth. Remove everything in your life and very quickly you learn to appreciate these little things.
That night we sat in chairs and had our dinner served to us on plates. The water in my glass (yes, glass) that wasn't melted from snow. Everything was so easy now.
It's easy to go from nothing to comfort. The transition is abrupt but I have done it so many times that it has become matter-of-fact. While I have spent YEARS of my life on expeditions, I have spent much more time living in a house and leading a 'normal' life.
I also know from experience that it will take some time to fully appreciate (and more importantly understand) this experience. This is definitely not the hardest expedition I have ever done by any stretch, but it was new and challenging all the same. Leading trips like this with clients (our strong team of Kat, Diogo and Dean - all very experienced adventurers) poses its own unique set of challenges as well. Often times, my job is simply protecting people from their best intentions. Other times, it's a choosing between carrot and stick. Most often, I am a cheer leader, reminding everyone that we all have the ability to complete really difficult things. And then there is the constant watch-like precision and efficiency of everything we do. I like working with diverse teams to achieve difficult objectives. In the end, this was a journey that the four of us completed together - each person adding their own unique character to our collective experience. From here on, the story of this adventure will be 'ours'.
Of course, Greenland would have the final say (again). A rain and fog crept in when we weren't looking and our flights back to Kulusk and then Iceland were cancelled.
Image: Tasiliaq homes.
There is a singularity of purpose that makes the extended wear and tear of polar expeditions bearable. Everything that we do is hyper-focused on sustaining our ability to ski and pull our sleds in an unforgiving environment. Both our practice and principle is that of complete utilitarianism. However, in the waning days of the trip and with our goal in sight, my mind stretches past the immediate ice and snow. It's not stress - like worrying about all that I have to do. Rather, it's excitement about actually starting the projects that I had been dreaming about for the past four weeks.
In the end, I wasn't able to sleep, listening to podcasts and music, scrolling through photos of my kids and simply just staring at the tent ceiling. I started counting the number of nights that I've actually slept in a tent in my life - but realizing the actual figure was in the thousands, I stopped at the sheer absurdity of such a high number. In the end, I lay awake the entire night (which was actually the afternoon) and started the stove at approximately 10:55 pm when I promptly fell asleep until midnight. Unzipping the vestibule, it was another white out. The inReach weather hadn't looked good, either. My heart sank.
I meter hope carefully on expeditions. At home, I am an optimistic optimist often seeing the glass as not just full but overflowing. Here however, hope unrealized can have terrible consequences. Therefore, I choose a more realistic approach (combined with a bit of fatalism). While I have enjoyed this expedition and the extreme (at times) challenges that Greenland has presented, I miss Maria and the kids a lot and have already been away a significant portion of the late winter and spring (and now summer). As I looked at the weather report, I worried that we would be stranded on the ice for another four days.
Of course, the best way to be successful is to put yourself in a situation where you don't have another choice and to realistically get picked up by helicopter we had to keep skiing. Luckily, it wasn't a total whiteout as I feared. In fact, there were even a few patches of blue and as we started out, we were treated to a spectacular sunrise (at 1:30 am) - the first we had seen the entire journey. A little bit more optimism started to trickle in.
Even though we were skiing at night now, the temperature was above freezing. In less than a week we had gone from single digit temperatures with below zero windchills to rainstorms. The snow was now sun cupped and rolling and we skied up and down while the sleds alternately raced down an incline (running into us) then as we skied back up the other side of the small curve, snapping our tug lines tight pulling us backwards and off balance. Par for the course, Greenland would not let us off easy.
Later in the afternoon (but morning) the sky became overcast and the light turned flat. I had been using the Garmin inReach to text the helicopter company regularly as I was skiing with updates about the weather and our progress. Near the end of our day, the Greenland Air Charter manager texted back that, judging from our position, we were traveling in a heavily crevassed area. I looked around. It was a whiteout. I couldn't see much of anything. Ahead, I saw two black spots in the snow. At first I thought it was a bird, a pile of dirt or a rock sticking out. But as I strained my eyes, I realized it that we were in a potentially life threatening situation. It was too hard to know what was ahead. Obviously, we were at the edge of the ice cap, where glaciers pour off and flow toward the sea. We stopped and set up camp after probing the area throughly.
Then came another series of texts, setting up and marking a landing zone and regular weather updates. We waiting in our tents certain that we would be camped here for several days when I heard the familiar chop of air from an approaching helicopter. After 26 days of nearly every imaginable winter condition, we had crossed the Greenland ice cap.
The short flight to Tasiliaq, Greenland was breathtaking. Flying over calving glaciers, huge icebergs and pans of sea ice, I was amazed at the scene that unfolded beneath us. Truly spectacular and a sight that I will never forget.
And then we landed, and all the struggle and effort and worry instantly vanished. The temperature was fairly warm and for the first time in one month, we saw land, dirt and rock. We could see green grass sprouting in spots. All around was the lush smell of earth. Remove everything in your life and very quickly you learn to appreciate these little things.
That night we sat in chairs and had our dinner served to us on plates. The water in my glass (yes, glass) that wasn't melted from snow. Everything was so easy now.
It's easy to go from nothing to comfort. The transition is abrupt but I have done it so many times that it has become matter-of-fact. While I have spent YEARS of my life on expeditions, I have spent much more time living in a house and leading a 'normal' life.
I also know from experience that it will take some time to fully appreciate (and more importantly understand) this experience. This is definitely not the hardest expedition I have ever done by any stretch, but it was new and challenging all the same. Leading trips like this with clients (our strong team of Kat, Diogo and Dean - all very experienced adventurers) poses its own unique set of challenges as well. Often times, my job is simply protecting people from their best intentions. Other times, it's a choosing between carrot and stick. Most often, I am a cheer leader, reminding everyone that we all have the ability to complete really difficult things. And then there is the constant watch-like precision and efficiency of everything we do. I like working with diverse teams to achieve difficult objectives. In the end, this was a journey that the four of us completed together - each person adding their own unique character to our collective experience. From here on, the story of this adventure will be 'ours'.
Of course, Greenland would have the final say (again). A rain and fog crept in when we weren't looking and our flights back to Kulusk and then Iceland were cancelled.
Image: Tasiliaq homes.