Artic Expeditions
The plan is simple – fly to Resolute Bay in the high Canadian Arctic, walk to the 1996 position of the Magnetic North Pole and then fly back – the reality is very different. Plans involving the Arctic take an amount of flexibility hard to comprehend in the UK so from the moment we arrive at Heathrow we must be prepared for anything! We spent three days in February packing everything for the expedition into 11 kit bags and 11 pulks (sledges) that each weighed the required 23kg – however we still needed an extra 9 bags at the maximum weight permissible – 32kg to pack everything a total of 794kg and that’s not including the two bags of skis. So getting everything checked in takes time and patience but the staff at Air Canada are fantastic and have arranged a special check in so things should go smoothly. Things change when we reach Ottawa as our next carrier First Air allows only 2 bags at 32kg each so when we land we will re-pack the bags before putting them in storage overnight before heading off to the Lord Elgin Hotel for the night. Dinner and maybe a small beer (our last until we return to Ottawa) before turning in for our second day of travelling.
Our flight next morning takes us from Ottawa to Iqaluit the capital of Nunavut. Here the cold begins to bite and the weather has the potential to really alter our plans. This far north people come first and scheduled flights are often changed. Just because you have a ticket doesn’t guarantee that the plane will take off, that even if it does you will be on it and if it takes off and you’re on it your baggage may not! The weather dictates everything and if needs be you and/or your luggage can easily be bumped to the next flight. After a brief stopover another flight (fingers crossed) will take us and our kit up via Nanisivik to Resolute Bay our starting point.
The South Camp Inn will be our home for two days where we will repack for a third and final time, distributing everything from tents to fuel to food into our pulks. Everything we need for 32 days on the ice will be in the pulks when we leave Resolute – the expedition is unsupported so there’s no re-supply and each of us will pull the equivalent of a 15st man behind us. We plan to start walking on 1st April (after noon to avoid April Fools!) and from then on at a steady pace with the weather with us to cover the 360 miles to the Magnetic North Pole.
If the weather is against us we stay in the tent until conditions improve – the four man tents are roughly 6/7ft square and are very snug with four people in so everyone hopes that our tent bound days are few!
The mornings start early. Someone has the task of poking their arm out of the sleeping bag before the heaters are turned on to tap the tent and dislodge all the ice that’s formed due to the condensation from our breath. After this the stoves are turned on and the tent begins to warm up. What follows is 2-3 hours where enough water is made from melting snow to provide everyone with two full litres of water for the days walking and enough for 2/3 drinks and breakfast before we decamp. We’re carrying tea, coffee, hot chocolate, herbal/fruit tea and powdered juice but breakfast is always Alpen – 125g per person for walking days with a reduced ration for tent bound days – roughly three portions according to the recommendations – we carrying 40.5kgs of it! This will provide the first bit of our daily calorie intake of about 4500 calories – we’ll be burning about 6500! When the camp is ready we break and start to walk.
We stop every hour during the day for not more than 5 minutes to take on water, using the hot flask water to melt snow as we go along to increase our fluid intake to around 3-4 litres, and food from our day bag – a bag that you wouldn’t recommend anywhere else than in the Arctic. You pull your pulk up behind you and use it as a seat while you get your flask and day bags out from the front of your pulk.
Each person carries 30 day bags and each bag consists of the following plus anything that is added in Resolute, normally cheese and/or salami:
50g Dairy Milk total 1.5kg 50g Whole Nut 1.5kg 50g Wine Gums 1.5kg 50g Fruit Pastilles 1.5kg 60g Dried Fruit – currants, raisins and sultanas 1.8kg 53g Brazil Nuts 1.59kg 37g Nutrigrain Bar 1.11kg 50g Nine Bar (alternate days) 0.75kg ----- 11.25kg
From mid to late afternoon we keep an eye out for a good campsite, when we find one, we make camp. The aim is to put the tent up and have the stoves lit in 5 to 10 minutes because as soon as we stop walking we will begin to feel the cold and deteriorate. Before the tent is fully up someone goes inside and start to lay out the roll mats, laid door-to-door and the therm-a-rests laid side-to-side to give maximum thermal coverage and lights the stoves, the other three will get everything they need overnight into the tent and secure the tent by covering the side with snow until about 6 inches deep, this keeps the tent in place and means that the wind doesn’t come under the flysheet. Once all is done and the pulks are secured to the tent everyone settles down for the night.
Again lots of drinks including soup – we are carrying enough soup for everyone to have 2 per night – that’s over 700! Then a freeze dried meal with a menu including shepherds pie, Thai Chicken and Chilli Con Carne and a treat of a dessert, custard with apple pieces, on alternate nights. Forgot to mention the appetizer of pork scratchings! There may be other treats available – some people choose to bring a favourite something to munch in the evenings or have been shopping in Resolute. All though the evening snow is being melted for water and stored in the flasks for re-boiling in the morning. Bed time is early normally about 8-9pm and everyone gets into their bags and warms them up before the stoves are turned off as the temperature drops to the ambient temperature very quickly and getting to sleep is easy after a hard days walking and well needed to recover enough to do it all again tomorrow.