Conquering the Impossible (42 page)

After setting a new distance record—eighty-seven miles in one day!—I returned to the snowy tundra, and a thorny underbrush began to poke up through the snow. There was twenty-four-hour daylight now, and the relatively mild temperatures around five degrees meant that frostbite wouldn't be a problem anymore unless I fell in the water. All around me, the Arctic wildlife was performing its spectacular springtime show, which reminded me that mother bears and their cubs ought to be emerging from hibernation just about now as well.

With the help of my kite, I was making terrific distance, but the danger of falling or hitting an obstacle meant that I couldn't let my concentration slip for a second. Likewise, I couldn't let up the constant strain of bracing knees and arms to hold the kite. I got tired faster than I did when skiing normally, and at the end of each day there was no feeling left in my legs. They were exposed to the racing wind, and my legs wound up going numb and stiff as two wooden sticks.

The horizon clouded over once again, visibility dropped as well, but the wind kept blowing. Pulled by my kite, I covered more than seventy-five miles one day, and I ached all over; it was just about time to stop for the night. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a sort of rim, and on the far side of it was … nothing. I wasn't completely positive that I had really even seen it. All the same, an alarm bell went off in my brain: I was very close to the Popigay River, and streams of water tend to dig out deep grooves into the tundra soil, creating steep drops along either bank. The ledges alongside these steep river valleys rise as much as thirty to fifty feet straight up, and they easily crumble beneath the weight of the unwary passerby, carrying him down and burying him beneath tons of snow.

When a huge gap suddenly opened up in front of me, I swerved on my skis and stopped short. But my sled, carried forward by the momentum of its 330 pounds, went sailing past me and tipped over into the void. An instant later it was dangling over the void, and I was struggling fiercely to keep from being dragged down after it. At last I managed to get a bit of slack into the harness straps, just enough to release the carabiner and unhook myself. The sled dropped like a boulder and hit the ground about fifteen yards below, hitting a deep layer of snow that broke its fall.

Everything had been going so well—and then suddenly
this.
This accident—which could have ended so much worse—was a warning.

In any case, I could afford to slow down a little bit at this point. I had covered five hundred miles in seven days and, unless I had another accident, I would cover on a single set of supplies the 1,250 miles between Tiksi and Dudinka! That's longer than the distance from Canada to Russia via the North Pole. If everything went well, in less than five months I would be catching sight of the cliffs of North Cape.

*   *   *

But I came very close to never seeing anything again. The next day I hit another ledge at full speed in a thick white fog, and this time went sailing over it without even a chance to slow down, like a ski jumper lofting into the air. My flight was snapped short by the weight of my sled, and I dropped like a brick; the fall, fortunately, was relatively short. But my sled, which came plunging down after me, landed on the side of my thigh. A classic blooper, yes, but an especially painful and dangerous one.

Lying in the snow next to my sled, I felt certain that my leg had been broken. And the physical pain was nothing compared to my horror at the idea that this marked the end of my expedition. Gradually, however, the pain subsided and I regained the use of my leg. Apparently it was nothing serious. When the sled hit me, the depth of the snow had absorbed the impact.

That was my second—and perhaps final—warning to slow down.

*   *   *

I arrived in Khatanga sixteen days after leaving Tiksi. Without counting the three days I was confined to my tent by the storm, that made 750 miles in thirteen days, or slightly over fifty-five miles a day, which was not too shabby!

The little town of Khatanga, set in the middle of the northern Siberian Plain, is closed to visitors except those who have a special permit. At this point in the spring, it was transformed into a sea of mud because of home-heating and car exhaust. I found the relative heat that reigned here very unpleasant. Luckily, shortly after I moved into a sort of family bed-and-breakfast where I was the lone guest, a heavy snowfall freshened up the atmosphere a bit.

Because I had canceled the resupply in Khatanga, I was deprived of the Russian Army maps that I needed to make my way to Norilsk and Dudinka. Cathy faxed me copies and I managed to piece them together into an overall area map.

I prepared to set out along the frozen surface of the Khatanga River. My destination was Volochanka, midway to Dudinka. But locals warned me that the microclimate that prevails on the Putorana Plateau would push warmer waters into the icy waters of the Khatanga and begin to thaw its surface. In other words, I wouldn't be able to reach Dudinka, on the Yenisei River, unless I changed course.

Should I head straight west across the plain? That would be impossible because of the vast and dense pine forests that cover the taiga, the dense woodlands that abut the tundra. There was only one solution: to follow the Kheta River south by southwest until I reached the village of Volochanka, which risked that the whole region might be flooded by the spring thaw before I could reach it.

I left Khatanga after just forty-eight hours there. My race against the spring thaw resumed.

*   *   *

The bed of the Kheta River cut a furrow across a landscape that was entirely new to me: the taiga, which was just like the tundra but with trees. The trees—armies of short, scrubby pine trees stretching out to the horizon—were the first ones I had seen since setting out on my expedition.

I dragged my sled along the frozen river, trudging through a mixture of mud, sand, dog excrement, and garbage of all sorts.

The next day I tried using my kite, but my skis got caught on an invisible sandy surface concealed beneath a thin layer of snow, and I went sprawling onto the ice. My nose was bloodier than a crushed tomato, but I covered seventy-one miles that day in spite of it.

The following day however I couldn't make more than twenty-six miles. I was caught in a heavy snowstorm, and the strong westerly wind kept me from using my kite.

The thermometer was climbing, and the snow grew soft, clumping up beneath my skis in heavy packets. Between the oatmeal underfoot and a solid white fog through which I was traveling blind, I was making only minimal progress. To top off my problems, I discovered that there was pack ice on rivers as well. Luckily the fractured pack ice that the currents and eddies of the Kheta River created only forced me to make a few minor detours. To compensate for the delay that the pack ice caused me, I decided to indulge in a twenty-four-hour makeup day.

*   *   *

The wolves, which had remained out of the picture until now, began to follow me again. From time to time I would glimpse one or several. They followed the same tactics as their Canadian cousins, who had stalked me from a cautious distance on Saputing Lake: trap their victim on a frozen lake or river where there was no escape.

Clearly they were hesitant about attacking me—I looked so different from their usual prey—but I knew they never lost sight of me. I could sense their presence, even when I couldn't see them.

There was also a dog that had been following me for a number of days, and from a much closer distance. It was a Siberian husky that must have lost its mother, and it was probably hoping that I would feed it. Unfortunately, I had no food to spare for the dog. But when I thought it over, I couldn't stand the idea of letting it die of hunger. After all, at the speed I was traveling, I would likely have plenty of provisions to make it as far as Dudinka. The backup supply of stale bread that I had packed away somewhere would make a very respectable bag of crunchy treats.

The dog kept on following me and slept outside of my tent every night. I decided to call him Arktos. He became my best friend.

*   *   *

Day after day I kept in a corner of my mind the image of that cliff at North Cape, which constituted both my starting line and my finish line. I had etched it into my memory so that I could visualize it whenever I needed and tell myself, “That's where I'm going.”

*   *   *

With just a few dilapidated huts and a handful of isolated but friendly inhabitants—once they got over their surprised fright at the sight of their first foreigner, who was, no doubt, a spy—Volochanka was a ghost town. In four or five years it would probably no longer exist.

The first person I met there was the real owner of Arktos. He was delighted to get his dog back and thanked me effusively for having brought him back. I was going to miss his company, but it was certainly better for everyone this way.

From here I was planning to follow the Kheta River until it joined the Piasina River, which I would then follow to the Yenisei River. But the locals told me that 125 miles from here the Kheta had already thawed. I would only be able to walk on the ice for about four more days.

After careful consideration, I decided not to head north to reach the Piassina River. Instead, I would walk along the Putorana Plateau and cross Lake Piasino, on a line with Norilsk, which would then take me on to Dudinka.

*   *   *

In the taiga, the snow was melting in patches. Wild geese, ducks, swans, hares, and foxes reappeared in a world that could finally feed them again. Huge herds of caribou crossed the plain. My old buddies the bears were there, too, but only to be glimpsed at a distance. They were brown bears, though—not very aggressive and rather shy compared to their polar bear cousins.

This plain in northern Siberia is a veritable nature preserve where an incredibly rich fauna frolicked as it had thousands of years ago, no doubt because there were no human beings to disturb them.

*   *   *

The rushing torrents of meltwater that poured off the Putorana Plateau made the streams and rivers overflow their banks, sweeping along with them muddy ice floes and the occasional full-fledged iceberg. I crossed a succession of rivers, doing my best to keep my balance as I made my way across drifting slabs of ice.

Some rivers were covered with a crust of snow as fragile as paper. The instant my attention wavered, I would drop through into the icy water, and clambering would only assure that I would freeze all the sooner. At five to fifteen degrees, it was still plenty cold for that.

On other rivers the layer of ice was covered with water, which undermined its structural strength. One of these water-covered mirrors collapsed beneath me, and I found myself standing thigh-deep in water. All around me, the ice was shifting and cracking. I held my breath and did my best to spread my weight, to stress the ice as little as possible.

I was permanently soaked now, as was my gear.

What with the treacherous snow, the melting ice, and the overflowing rivers, springtime in the Arctic is no easier a season on the traveler than winter. In fact, it's worse in many ways. In the winter you are prepared for the rigors of extreme cold. In springtime, because the weather is not as harsh, you tend to be less cautious, to lower your guard, which only makes it more dangerous.

*   *   *

A sudden cold snap firmed up the snow and made it thicker, which allowed me to launch my kite for a few hours. But when the tundra began to turn into marshland, I was forced to ski along the bed of the Avam River, which was flooding its banks. I was walking knee-deep in water. I was beginning to understand why, in Khatanga, people had told me that I would never make it to Dudinka.

I needed to get there, though, and fast! Otherwise, I would be forced to swim.

I decided to begin marching at night—night being the dimmer part of the daylight—just as I had in Canada and Alaska because the few-degree drop in temperature made the ice more solid and firmed up the snow. I decided to venture for the first time off the icy surface of the river Avam to cut across its oxbow curves. As a result, I was forced to fight my way through a pine forest. My skis, my sled, and the straps of my harness continually snagged the resinous branches as I progressed. The snow was so deep that I regularly sank chest-deep into it; the horizon was so restricted that I had no landmarks to refer to. It felt as if I was walking in place.

When I made it back to the Avam, after ten hours of exhausting struggle, I realized that my shortcut had taken two hours longer than if I had stayed on the river. I continued to move forward, and finally I left the watershed of the Putorana Plateau. Soon thereafter, I arrived on the shores of Lake Piasino.

I expected that it would be impassable, but it turned out that it was still frozen solid. The ice was no doubt not very thick, but I was ready to take a chance rather than being forced to detour around it, which would have taken me closer to Norilsk. It had become a habit of mine to avoid towns and human settlements of all kinds, especially bigger ones like Norilsk. The smoke and clouds of pollution, visible from dozens of miles away, depressed and disheartened me.

Lake Piasino was so big that once I moved out onto its surface I couldn't see the far shore—it was forty miles long. At the lake's southern end a river flowed in, making the ice especially fragile. That was why I was crossing the northern half where the river water had not yet warmed the top layer of ice. Even so, the unsettling cracking sounds that followed me as I walked gave a clear idea of how thin the ice was. I was skiing over glass, which gave me a cold sweat, but I made it.

*   *   *

My last resupply was in Tiksi, 1,250 miles ago, and I was beginning to run short on food supplies. Cathy and my team took advantage of the press conference they were arranging, which would be held ten miles outside of Dudinka, to bring me new provisions. My sponsors would fly the journalists in by helicopter and land them in the heart of the tundra. They would stay in two large tents pitched very close to my tent. That way, the journalists would feel as if they were really a part of the expedition.