Conquering the Impossible (40 page)

My courier was, in fact, the man to whom I had sold Nikolai's snowmobile in Pevek with the condition—these vehicles are in short supply up here—that he would use it to help me out, in case of need. I waited eight days, and then two natives of the Sakha, as they call Yakutia here, arrived. They brought me three gallons of fuel instead of the five gallons that I had been promised, and a very incomplete array of rations. What was missing had been stolen or lost. Their muddled explanations kept me from understanding.

Two gallons less fuel meant twenty-four days without fuel. Even more serious was that the diesel fuel had soaked into much of the food, making it inedible. I separated out what could be salvaged, and I supplemented it with provisions that the occupants of the polar station generously gave me out of their own reserves.

*   *   *

The Kolyma Plain, which began beyond Ambarchik, is an expanse of thousands of square miles of wet tundra with countless small lakes and deep rivers whose waters melt the permafrost, stretching out in immense, slow curves and twists. This is the most frigid part of the Arctic. During the coldest part of the winter, a record temperature was set here of 101 degrees below zero!

During the winter it is covered with a thick layer of ice that smoothes the surface and makes it relatively easy to cross. All the same, I chose to reach Chokurdakh from the sea, which represented a detour of 125 miles. And that's not counting the obstacles presented by pack ice, stretches of open water, and bears. However, I knew from experience that it would be seven or eight degrees warmer on the ice of the East Siberian Sea than on the permafrost of the tundra. What's more, this was the beginning of March and the sun was beginning to appear again, which meant that I could hope for a very slight rise in temperature. That rise in temperature—since the sun would be reflected off the ice—would be more noticeable on the sea ice than on dry land.

I skied across the frozen sea in a permanent blizzard, without a compass or a GPS, once again orienting myself by the angle of my course against the direction of the wind. In this absolute whiteness, it was impossible to see the shoreline between the ocean bristling with ice and the tundra absolutely without relief, just a few feet above sea level and just as white as everything else.

Two days after I left Ambarchik, one of my tent poles broke in two, smashed by the power of the raging storm, something that had never happened to me before. As it broke, the aluminum shaft tore the fabric, creating an L-shaped gap through which wind and snow entered the tent. The cold made it impossible for me to take off my gloves to fix the tear with needle and thread, so I warmed up a roll of silver duct tape, and I used it to close the hole. When I folded up my tent, I would just need to take care that this bandage stayed flat; otherwise, the duct tape would freeze and shatter like glass.

But twenty-four hours later, my do-it-yourself repair was beginning to show signs of fragility. I was forced to stitch it back together from the outside. I had to work bare-handed because it wasn't a job that could be done with mittens on. It was forty degrees below zero outside, and every thirty seconds I had to go back into my tent to warm my hands over my stove.

*   *   *

For five days running I had managed to follow a straight trajectory that took me close to land, between the Kolyma Plain and Bear Island. But my average daily distance dropped steadily because of the difficult surface of the pack ice and because of my growing weakness, which resulted from my inadequate diet. Each night I had to stop a little earlier. It would take me a full hour to brush off the snow that covered my clothes, filled my boots, and blew into my tent. By economizing on food, I had affected changes in my metabolism that, for the first time, made me gradually, almost undetectably, lose control of my own organism. To make up for the shortfall in calories, I drank more water. Any extra effort would then make me sweat excessively. A layer of ice would form on my skin under my clothes and chill me to the bone.

Days and days passed without the tiniest sign of human or animal life. This frozen desert is desolate in ways that make it even emptier than any of the actual deserts that I have crossed. There was not a footprint or paw print anywhere in this part of the world, not even the bear tracks that I had come to expect. It was as remote and surreal as if it were on an alien planet. I suffered almost physically from the sense of abnormality I experienced there. I walked along as if I was in one of those dreams in which you wonder when it is going to topple over the brink into the realm of nightmare.

When Cathy told me over the satellite phone that Annika and Jessica had won their ski competitions, I felt a sense of pleasure and pride that made me briefly forget about what I was enduring. I wanted to share my fatherly pride with someone. When, as I got closer to land, life finally manifested itself in the form of a fox, I climbed up onto a small butte to yell after the fox, with all my strength, “Annika and Jessica won the slalom and the downhill competitions!”

To conserve on the fuel I still had, I began to melt less snow and drink less water. As a result, my exhaustion became so extreme that my body finally refused to obey my mind's commands. My legs worked in slow motion. When my sled hit a bump, I stopped short. It took an incredible effort to haul it over the tiniest obstacle.

I was covering just five and a half miles per day. I was practically standing still, and I didn't even realize it. Cathy made me aware of it by asking me over the satellite phone what was going on. I would never make it to North Cape at this rate.

Just as I was reaching my breaking point, a will greater than my own took charge and forced me to stop, spend a day or two in my tent, eat until I had my fill, and drink until my thirst was quenched. The provisions and fuel that remained might not get me as far as Chokurdakh, but one thing was certain—I would never get there at all if I kept on moving like this.

*   *   *

This complete halt restored my strength and my speed, and now my daily distance was hitting twenty-eight miles on the good days. I was back to eating ten thousand calories a day, which also helped to lighten the sled and increase my speed. But Chokurdakh was still far away, and even at a quickened pace my provisions would be gone long before I got there. I considered the possibility of hunting. But hunting what? And how? There wasn't the slightest sign of life in the surrounding area.

The four months of that terrible winter had worn me down. I was making mistakes that I didn't used to make. One day when I was hauling my sled along, I suddenly felt an abnormal cold around my crotch. I lifted my parka and realized that I had left my fly open. It was impossible to grab the zipper with my mittens. I had to stop, pitch my tent, light my heating stove, warm my hands, and unfreeze my zipper before I could close my fly—an hour and a half to do something that would have taken two seconds if I hadn't been so careless in the morning.

*   *   *

The mouth of the Indigirka River, which would take me to Chokurdakh, was about sixty miles away when a bank of dark clouds appeared on the horizon. The day had been dead calm with hardly a breath of wind. But there was a sort of palpable menace in the air, something electric and indefinable. And suddenly the dark line advanced from the horizon straight at me. In the space of a few seconds, it swept over me like a tidal wave, and everything went white.

I told myself that it was a passing weather front and kept trudging along, assuming that it wouldn't last.

It lasted two days.

Once again I found myself turning my back to the wind to keep my sled from flying away, obliged to keep on moving because the raging storm kept me from pitching my tent. The wind kept me from even opening the sled. Without food or drink, I was growing weaker. The stronger gusts would regularly throw me to the ground, push me along the ice, and pile swirling snow up on me. And each time, I got back to my feet. Until I had been battered one time too many, and I stayed down on the ground.

I had been moving forward through the storm for twenty-four hours. I could almost immediately feel the snow covering me up. But I didn't feel cold because my exhaustion had dulled my senses.

With my body and my face glued to the ice, all feeling lost in my hands and feet, I was letting myself slide gently under. I had demanded too much of my strength. Nature was stronger than me; I accepted my defeat. I was so tired that I preferred to die, and, for that matter, it didn't hurt a bit. Cutting your veins in a warm bathtub must produce the same pleasant sensation of distance. With my eyes closed, I was letting myself flow into an absolute state of rest. No more pain, no more cold, no more leaden sled to haul …

Moments before I dropped off forever, a voice that could have been mine suddenly started to question me: If I found myself in such a predicament, it was only because I had believed in myself, right? Hadn't I believed in myself in the face of all the reasons not to, in spite of everyone who said I didn't have a chance? And all the people who had believed in me, who had helped me, who had supported me—was I going to let them down? What about my wife and my daughters?

As if through a mist, I suddenly saw Annika and Jessica the day I left North Cape. My boat was slowly moving away from the wharf, and my girls were calling out to me, “Papa, we know you can make it. You're going to make it, and you'll come back home to us.” I could hear their voices coming from far away.

All at once it became clear. I couldn't die that way. I had no right. It would have been too easy. A mysterious force seemed to come and lift me up, tear me off the ground, stand me up, and my feet began to count out the paces again, one after the other. I continued without stopping until the next day.

Once the storm became a little less intense, I decided to try to pitch my tent. Exhausted by forty-eight hours of continuous effort, I desperately needed to sleep. It was fifty-three degrees below zero, and the wind was still blowing at thirty-seven miles per hour. I drove a first stake into the ice, as usual, while holding the fabric flat so that the wind wouldn't get a grip on it. The tent opened up like an umbrella, and at that same moment, the squall ripped out the stake and the tent flew up into the air. I hung onto the tent poles, but the tent picked me up and threw me over my sled. I held on with all the strength I had left in me. If I lost my tent, I was a dead man.

I finally managed to pin the tent to the ground by lying on top of it, and I then fastened it to my sled. After that, I succeeded in pitching it. Minutes later I was inside the tent with the stove burning, and the feeling that I was safe at last. By tossing snow into the red-hot pan atop the stove, I managed to create a sort of Turkish bath in the tent, which allowed me to heat my lungs as well as the rest of me. That did nothing to dull the intolerable pain of my frozen face, which felt as if it were being stabbed with daggers.

*   *   *

For a moment I had thrown in the towel. I had been beaten, and I had teetered over the abyss. I panicked at remembering how easy it had been and how tempting. The first time I nearly succumbed to the elements, near Committee Bay, I had demanded too much of myself due to a lack of experience. This time, however, there was no excuse for having pushed myself to that point of risk. On the other hand, I had seen once again that the determination to survive is stronger in human beings than any other force.

When I woke up, I gobbled down a double ration in an attempt to throw a little more coal into the boiler, and I recovered my strength. That storm, by forcing me to move forward without stopping, had made me cover forty-five miles all at once! I wasn't far from the mouth of the Indigirka. And another carrot dangled in front of me: on the satellite phone Cathy confirmed that fresh supplies were awaiting me in Chokurdakh.

*   *   *

On the tundra of the Indigirka River delta, the wind blew constantly at over thirty-five miles per hour. One evening the guy line of my tent broke; once again I came close to losing the tent. The squalls dramatically reduced visibility and—even though it was late March—kept the temperature under forty degrees below zero. Each step forward was a Herculean effort to pull my sled through the thick snow. Once again my average distance dropped sharply, even though I was out hauling my sled for the same number of hours every day. When I had the wind at my back and snow underfoot, I tried the kite. But the snow was too soft, and I bogged down in it. I started to snowplow and wound up facedown in the snow, being dragged by a crazed kite that spun madly in all directions. I held on desperately to keep from losing it.

Once I had regained control of the situation, I folded up my kite until things were a little calmer. I didn't want to run the risk of a broken leg at this point.

*   *   *

I did my best to follow the path of the Indigirka River, but its curves and meanderings were only lengthening the distance I had to cover. And its icy surface, covered with windblown snow, wasn't much better to travel over than the tundra.

Sixty miles from Chokurdakh, I spotted a tiny cabin on the vast plain. Smoke was pluming upward. As I got closer, the inevitable dog began barking, but no one appeared. Since night had already fallen, I pitched my tent outside the front door. I had just finished when headlights pierced the darkness, accompanied by the distinctive “beep-beep-beep” of a snowmobile.

The master of the house was back. He got off his vehicle and shook his head. He wasn't going to let me sleep outdoors.

It must have been at least eighty-five degrees in the cabin, where a peat fire was burning. Even in my undergarments, I was sweating as if I were in a sauna. There were two real beds and a table with a loaf of fresh bread on it, baked by my host. Pavel was a Yakut, which is to say that he was a native of the region. He was the master of this hundred-square-foot palace built in the middle of hundreds of thousands of square miles of absolutely nothing. Amazingly enough, this evening he had a guest.