On Our Way

I woke at 5.30 am and peered outside the hotel window to see if the blizzard had gone. There was snow everywhere but no sign of any raging wind. All our sledges were packed and we were ready to go. I was apprehensive but didn't fancy waiting another day in the Discovery Hotel in Iqaluit. We ferried the sledges to the airport and were relived when we found out that the flight was due to leave at the scheduled time. It was the smallest plane I've ever flown in and when the pilot walked past me he didn't look old enough to drive a car let alone a plane. I managed to get a window seat and spent the flight looking through the clouds down at the icy landscape. I felt as if I was flying to the edge of the world. There was no sign of any life below, just a large expanse of white. It was mesmerising. Our first stop was Pangnirtung where we had to leave the plane and wait in the small airport lounge. Well, it wasn't really a lounge, just a space with some chairs. I got chatting to some Inuit women and they painted a depressing portrait of life in Pang - as it is known. One said that 70 per cent of the population hunt, but that hunting is increasingly hard. This is due to the fact that the sea ice is changing so rapidly that they are having to travel farther and farther afield for any wildlife such as caribou and seal. Before I'd embarked on the trip I'd spoken to an Inuit Hunter at the Pangnirtung Hunters Association who had told me that the hunters were facing a lot of problems in the area due to the melting sea ice. Experienced hunters could no longer read the state of the ice and were having accidents. He also told me that they had killed a Polar Bear that very week.
After our short stop at Pang, we flew on to Qikiqtarjuaq (Broughton Island), the start of our trek. But before we could go anywhere we had to go to an 'orientation' with the Park Ranger.
The subject turned to Polar Bears again. As I sat there listening to the ranger's advice on what to do if we saw a Polar Bear I couldn't help but wonder whether I was in the middle of a dream, or nightmare. We were warned that Polar Bears might carry Rabies which was one of those additional facts I wish I had not been told. While we weren't allowed to carry a firearm we were advised to take some Polar Bear flares which sounded rather like a token weapon. The fact my brother is in the police and knows how to handle firearms meant he could have been the perfect Polar Bear assassin. But I also know he'd come to the Arctic to escape violence and crime. Before we left I handed him a newspaper cutting detailing the high levels of crime and violence in Nunavut. He pored over the figures like the true expert he is, pointing out the high crime and suicide rates among the remote communities such as Pangnirtung and Broughton Island. It was strange to think that only a few days before we'd been in the comfort of suburban England and there we were on the edge of the park...

Frobisher Bay

Last night I dreamt I was at Frobisher Bay. I was trying to walk on the frozen sea ice. I couldn't see as my goggles steamed up and I couldn't breathe because I wore a suffocating black face mask. I tore off my goggles and mask and saw that the others were walking slowly ahead of me. They looked like astronauts on the moon wearing bulky windproof outfits, walking in slow motion on the white lumpy surface. Ahead of us were several ships sitting on the sea ice. Forlorn. They looked as if they could have been on a film set. This didn't look like the real world. We saw a sledge and some huskies tied up. My brother wanted a photograph of me by the sledge but I was struggling to walk, let alone pose. This was our first day in Iqaluit. A blizzard had meant our connecting flight was cancelled and so we had the afternoon to explore Frobisher Bay. It was like diving straight into a freezer - and staying there. My Baffin boots felt heavy and I was nervous I'd go through the ice. We were out for less than an hour when we turned back to the hotel. I trudged into my room and buried my head in my hands. How on earth was I going to manage to walk for ten hours a day in minus 25 during our trek across the Auyuittuk National Park? I later found out that there is such a condition as Arctic Shock and suspect that I was suffereing from it at that moment. As one of the novices in the group I had never been so far north or anywhere so cold. I had never been on an expedition and hadn't been skiing for ten years. Luckily, I was sharing a room with the lovely Swede, Susannah, one of our guides, who had been on previous trips to the North Pole and across Baffin Island. She said all the right things about it being 'bloody freezing' and bound to feel odd taking those first baby steps on sea ice. Before long, we were eating the chocolate out of our munchy bags and sipping some brandy - to give us strength, of course. I felt safe back in the warm, but worried that I might let the others in the group down if I couldn't somehow get my Arctic act together. Later, someone confided in me that it had been tough out there, the big white, and that it was a good thing our flight had been cancelled so we had an extra day to acclimatise. So much white, it gave me a fright. But it wasn't all bad and I have to admit that there was something alluring about the expanse of snow, the frozen sea, the blistering wind. This was the beginning of the adventure - and over the next few blogs I will recount the rest of the trip to you...

Best Journey In The World

On Sunday night, I was glued to the TV watching The Worst Journey In The World. This followed the tale of Bill Wilson, Birdie Bowers and Apsley Cherry-Garrard who crossed Ross Island to retrieve penguin's eggs. They later laid supplies for Scott's failed attempt to reach the South Pole. The drama brought back many memories of my trip across Baffin Island. Watching the men pull sledges across the ice in freezing cold temperatures, I thought, 'I've done that'. Admittedly, their sledges looked a lot bigger but, even so. I found myself examining the amount of ice on their hats and clothes which transported me back into my ice-coated kit. Brrrrr. My balaclava froze on my face and I really did think I was going to get a frostbitten nose. I wriggled it as often as I could to avoid losing it.
On his return, Cherry-Garrard said, "Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been devised."
Admittedly, we weren't attempting to reach either Pole but at one point we were told, 'This is North Pole weather'. A cheerying thought when you can't touch your ice-coated eye-lashes for fear they will break. Back to the words 'cleanest and most isolated' - I remember one person on our trip marvelling that they had never before seen so much virgin snow. As we looked in the distance all we could see was an expanse of bright white, sparkling snow and ice. Pure. Clean. Untouched. It was a remarkable sight. It took my eyes a while to grow used to the intensity of the white and the light. Now to the word 'Isolation'. There was a sense of isolation as we only met a couple of Inuit hunters during the twelve day trek. But that was a good thing. I don't think anyone in the group would have been pleased to have bumped into another crowd. The fantastic thing about this whole experience was the fact we didn't encounter any Westerners at all. No tourists. No mobiles. No make-up. God, I was worried, but then it was so cold I forgot all about lipstick. Luckily, my whole face was covered most of the time aside from my eyes.
We often walked in single file pulling our sledges behind us so there was plenty of thinking time. How often does anyone get that? From time to time someone would walk beside me, check I could feel my fingers, and then move on. As the days wore on, the conversation went from 'Can you feel your fingers?' 'Are you warm enough?' to 'Do you fancy the North Pole next year then?' Ho, ho, ho. The truth is, I felt as if I was in an Arctic wilderness but I didn't feel isolated.
Despite adversity, the group who went across Ross Island 'kept our tempers even with God'.
It may have been minus 75 but they did what the British do very well and kept their chins up. The upper stiff lip and all that.
The image of one of their group's frostbitten fingers brought a lump to my throat. Then, when another lost all his teeth it looked ghastly.
It struck me on our trip that there is such a thing as Arctic Etiquette. People were very polite and kind even when up against it. However, I am no Arctic Angel and had a few Arctic Moments. The worst was when it was minus 50, blowing a hooly, and we suddenly had to put up our tents. I lost it...ever so slightly. Afterwards, one member of the group said he'd loved it when that happened. Not when I lost it, but when we had such extreme conditions. That's what he'd wanted to experience in the Arctic. I mean, what would be the point of going all that way and simply having 'A Walk in the Park'?