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I love it. Only in the North could this happen. The last five days have been quite the experience, and I couldn't help myself from sharing them with you. "It's not over 'till it's over" - A truer phrase has never been uttered - and so the adventure continues from where we presumed it had ended: perched smugly on the western most tip of Victoria Island, glowing with satisfaction and Grand Marnier...
The following day brought with it equally unappealing weather, and we spent much of the day in the tent or huddled underneath the tarp shelter, enjoying forbidden extra rations left right and center, grinning as we tried to shake the feeling of guilt at not having to haul anywhere. But for the weather it would have been perfect. I kept calling our friend Pat in Holman with the boat, and each time I hung up bearing the news that, no, the waves were still too rough for a pickup.
We passed the time building a little stone cairn supporting a driftwood log vertically into which we carved "1000 Hour Day Expedition - 1000km E->W - Chris + Clark - 2008" (yes, it took forever), marveling at a small iceberg that drifted past, and generally redoubling our eating and sleeping efforts. We did also explore a good few km north and south along the coastline to look for a suitable place for a dingy to land, and to our delight about 3km south of us stretched a long pebbly beach, right opposite that large wedge shaped lake you can see on the tracker map.
It looked perfect, and to our delight, on the following morning (Day 70+3) when I called Pat he was already loading his boat with extra fuel for the 12-hour return trip! We passed on the location of our proposed landing site, packed up our mobile coffee cart (now totally devoid of coffee), shouldered our harnesses for the last time and headed south. After two full days rest, we basically ran all the way, covering the 3km in well under an hour. As we did, the sun burst through the cloud that had been smothering it for days, and we were blessed with a PERFECT Summer's day. The blue ocean sparkled, terns and seagulls wheeled and cried in the increasingly cloudless sky above, and as we rolled the PAC down onto the sandy pebbles just meters from the lapping water, we unbuckled our harnessed and ceremoniously cast them aside and enjoyed the blissful sunny 'ending moment' that Victoria Island had denied us originally.
We spent the rest of the afternoon dismantling our PAC, reducing everything we had to a long line of yellow Ortlieb drybags, a few lengths of aluminium extrusion, and our carbon rims - stacked neatly inside each other. That was it. We were done. Nothing to do now but kick back and twiddle our thumbs.
About an hour after Pat's estimated arrival time, we grew bored of thumb twiddling and I called his home to see if he'd radio'd back any news. He had. In fact, he'd done more than radio it back, he brought it back in person: "No, the weather out there was too rough... I had to turn back..." Bummer. We were protected by Banks Island (which was visible on the horizon to the west of us), where as the first part of his boat trip from Holman would have been open sea. Having built ourselves up to it all day, this news came as a bit of a let down, but there's no arguing with the weather when it comes to small boats, so we laughed it off as another Victoria Island attempt at humor. "No worries," I replied, grinned at Clark's comic eye-rolling, "tomorrow?". "Oh, the weather is supposed to be better in the morning, yes... call me in the morning..." Agh well. We started rummaging through our 16 near-identical yellow bags wondering which one we'd stuffed the tent in, before I cast an out-there idea to the wind, "I give up. It's not going to rain, and our sleeping bags are waterproof anyway... How about it...?" Clark paused in his searching, "Just tundra-nap it tonight instead? For sure!" We set up our bear alarm and lofted our sleeping bags in our newly formed paddock, rigged up a bit of a wind-break using the tarp and paddles, collected a mound of age-old driftwood along the shore and lit our first fire of the expedition. The sun skimmed lower and lower over the water, highlighting the clouds first pink, then orange, before painting the entire sky a spectacular mixture of reds, pinks and purples. It was just beautiful, and combined with the radiating warmth of our fire, and the odd curious arctic fox bouncing curiously past, was the perfect evening. "I'm glad Pat didn't pick us up after all..."
We were enjoying a 'no-really-this-has-to-be-the-last-piece' of chocolate, when I absent mindedly pulled out my Canon EOS Digital SLR, fitted the epic, stabilised super-telephoto zoom lens onto it, and then peered through this Hubble-like telescope at a white dot on the far, far coastline, just where it curled around the horizon. I took a photo, and digitally zoomed right in on the 12 megapixel image. As I thought. Just four white pixels. A rock. The chocolate tasted so good. I found myself again concentrating on this microscopic dot on the coastline. Surely it was further left before? I took another pic, more carefully, and zoomed in. The group of white pixels was now somewhat bulkier, and had for stocky white legs. "Better get our act together..." I passed the camera to Clark, "Looks to me like there's a polar bear headed our way!" The next photo confirmed it, and we swung into action. The bear was downwind of us (and our fire) and was pacing towards us along the shoreline, getting bigger and bigger. We surrounded ourselves with shotguns, extra ammo, bear bangers, bear spray and flares and stood back nodding our heads impressively at our anti-bear weapon stockpile. It was total overkill, and we knew it. We made a few jokes about wrapping ourselves in what was left of our bullet-proof kevlar fabric wheel covers, and then got down to business: Film and photos. We set one video camera rolling on a tripod down on the beach where we predicted he'd pass, Clark manned the other beside me back at camp, while I started cranking up the ISO on my camera trying to get a stable shot in the rapidly failing light. Still the bear lumbered closer, and closer. We were both shaking with adrenalin. It was a huge bear, and having him walking directly towards us without any kind of zoo fence in between was 'one of those moments'. Then the bear made eye contact. Although he had been sniffing the air repeatedly as he ambled along the shore, it was as though he suddenly realised we were there. Looking directly at us he kept advancing, although more cautiously. "Look at that..." I breathed, pulling myself away from my cameras viewfinder. "He's just there.. " We both stared in awe across at him, absorbing the experience without a lens in the way for once. It was very...humbling. About 250m away, he reared up, towering on his hind legs. We've no idea how tall he was, but a large one can stand 14-feet tall. The bear was displaying classic 'curious' behavior, trying to work out exactly what we were. More huge exaggerated sniffing the air with it's huge long neck arcing this way and that trying to catch our scent. Considering neither of us had showered in 73 days - when he finally did cop a nose-full of our stink-waves, the effect was electric. In an instant he flung himself around, and with one horrified, mortified stare back over his shoulder he began bounding away back along the shore, giving it his all, back legs flinging out sideways in what looked a rather awkward (yet alarmingly efficient) gait. He was terrified. After another glance back over his shoulder he promptly changed tactic and plunged into the icy water and began swimming powerfully away. Hiding as low as he could in the water, only the tip of his nose and eyes protruded above the surface. Occasionally he'd lift his head around well clear to look back at us before resuming his panicked retreat. It was a little sad actually - not merely because he'd fled before we'd had a chance to get the great shots we'd been hoping for - but because we felt a little offended and even slightly embarrassed by the depth of his terror. We would certainly never have wished any harm on such an animal, and we'd have only used our non-lethal deterrents reluctantly - let alone the shotgun as a total last-resort if he first tried to kill us... But that moment of recognition in his eyes, and his blatant correlation between us being human, and us therefore likely about to open fire on him, made me feel ashamed. We watched him swim a few hundred meters away before he then hauled himself out and shook, and then slowly, began to walk back towards us. Perhaps he was curious as to why we hadn't given pursuit, why we were still standing there instead of hunting him down. Very cautiously he again wandered closer, but upon getting a fresh slap of Chris & Clark stench waves up the nostrils he again bid a hasty retreat, opting about an hour later to walk well and truly around us, on the far side of the wedge-shaped lake over 400m away, to continue on his merry way south along the coastline. Perhaps thinking back on it, it was just our smell that we should have felt offended about?
It was hard to get to sleep that night. Every noise sounded exactly like a bear sneaking up on us. But in the end, sleep must have found me because we woke to another lovely day. I called Pat on our Iridium sat phone and he said he was about to head out to try again to reach us. We spent another lovely day (Day 70+4) exploring the area, and trying not to drink too much of the only local supply of 'fresh' water - from the lake beside us. Every saucepan full of the water looked like an illustration from a textbook on water-borne biological pathogens and toxic larvae, beetles and other critters. Once or twice we inadvertently scooped up a little character that looked like it belonged in the film 'Aliens' - a creepy little bug that, I am pretty sure, if I was to place it on my hand, would bury itself under my skin and scuttle, as a little twitching lump, all the way up to my neck, or stomach, or wherever those little 'alien' things did in that film. Enough. Anyway, despite tasting a bit salty, the water was OK and we survived until 3:00 when I caught sight of a small dingy zooming towards us! We were saved! It was Pat and his wife Jean! Woooo! I leapt into my drysuit and stood out there in water, ready to help guide the boat into the shore, but they wouldn't come any closer than about 25m from shore. Perplexed, in the end I had to walk back ashore as I was shivering too much, and from there, it was eventually communicated that the waves were too rough on the beach, and they didn't want to come in. Fair enough. All our gear was in Ortlieb drybags, and so I proposed I just walked each bag out to them, in good chest-deep water. It was impossible to hold a conversation at that distance, but it became clear that they were going to go 25km south to Berkley Pt and wait for better weather - they pointed to a patch of approaching blue sky (it's true the weather had degraded during the day) - and they turned around and sped off.
Hours passed, and the weather got steadily worse, and then it started to rain. We found and erected our tent, and lay inside, feeling rather empty. How long were we to wait? While we had ample 'food' to last for over a week, much of our staples were running out, almost no milk powder, no peanut butter, sugar, hell - even toilet paper was thin on the ground. I kept checking the horizon every time I imagined I heard an outboard, but I checked less and less as the hours went on, and eventually past midnight we both fell asleep, a little dispirited.
The next morning (Day 70 +5), after a bowl of oats without milk, as much as I dreaded that they might answer, I called Pat's home number. "Hello Chris" They had indeed gone home - the full 12 hour boat ride, getting within 25m of us... so close! Ha ha. "The weather is bad again today..." It was such our luck. Ha ha. We knew what was coming next "Give me a call, maybe, tomorrow?" We felt bad that he'd already gone to such efforts, but we were starting to get a little bit desperate. He suggested we go to Berkley Pt, where it'd be easier to land, but as we'd totally demolished our PAC, we were now rather stranded where we were, with 300kgs of gear in 16 heavy bags, and various other things like rims etc. Pat mentioned it would be possible to land a twin otter plane with tundra tires beside us, and so I called Doug - a friendly contact I'd got through Diamonds North Resources, who was currently managing some cleanup work on Johnson’s Point on Banks Island. We knew he had twin otter planes scheduled, and our bush pilot friend Bob Heath had already told us he could likely get us out of there, but not for days. On the other end of the phone Doug poured over a map trying to work out where we were. "We saw a huge tugboat a few days ago towing the three enormous barges past on the horizon..." I added in conversation. "Oh yes, that was ours, collecting a heap of mining gear etc and bringing it back to the mainland... let me see now.. planes.. twin otters..." It turned out he was chartering a plane that would pass nearby tomorrow, but it wasn't a twin otter. "Let me see if I can change my booking to a twin, then maybe you could do a side-charter from us and we could land and grab you guys... Call me back at 3:00" A faint flicker of hope rekindled inside us, only to be extinguished at 3:00 on the dot when I called him back and Clark watched my eager expression fall. "He couldn't change the booking..." the very next possible twin otter in the area wouldn't be for another 3 days, and may or may not have enough room to squeeze us in. (Obviously we could just fork out the $10,000+ and charter our own plane all the way, but our budget for a boat pickup was $1,500 before that fell through when the chap went to prison, remember?) So, however we looked at it, we were going to run out of toilet paper. We stared glumly around for a while, and then Clark voiced what we were both wondering. "I wonder... the barge?" It was a ludicrous idea, but we didn't have much to loose. I called Doug back... "Sorry to pester you again.. but that barge... is there any possibility of maybe, well, you know... could they maybe.." "They cost $40,000 a day." He said as an answer. "We need it back as quickly as possible, a side trip just isn't possible." "But if it's coming past anyway...?" To cut a long story short(er), Doug said that if I called the company who owned the barge, and if they agreed, then.. OK. I called them right away. Try to imagine my intro to this conversation. Ha ha. Anyway, this chap gave me the satellite phone number of the captain of the barge, and said "well, it's up to the skipper I guess... If he wants to pick you up, I don't have a problem with that..."
And so I called 'Steve', the skipper of 'The Jock McNiven', and everything just fell into place. "Sure, that won't be a problem... We're leaving here tonight actually.. just one more barge to load up... give me a call about 9:00 tonight and I’ll give you an update... but that should be fine.." We couldn't believe our luck. "We're going to Tuktoyuktuk though, is that ok?" My contagious grins has spread to Clark beside me. "Tuktoyuktuk ? Sure. Wherever. Anywhere's better than the middle of nowhere." Steve laughed and agreed. We spent the afternoon re-packing all our gear with mounting excitement, filling in the time until 9:00 with chocolate. I called on the dot. "Oh Chris! Hi, I have some good news for you.." Steve said "We got her all loaded up early, we're already on our way. We should be near you guys about 3:30am... we'll start slowing down a bit about 3:00, as slow as we can, but it's hard with the tow... we'll come in as close as we can, maybe a mile off, lower a zodiac inflatable over the side and nip in and grab you guys and keep going..." TOO GOOD!!! How's that for pure luck and timing, and good ol' Northern friendliness hey! Can you imagine standing on a beach near Sydney Harbor, calling the captain of a big ship heading out, and saying "Hi, I... erm... was wondering if you could take me to Melbourne? I'm standing on a beach..."
As we excitedly frittered away the time until 3:00 am, a particularly cute Arctic Fox inadvertently wandered out onto a long thin spit of land poking out into the lake. In a flash I had my camera and was sprinting over to cut of his exit so when he tried to wander past he'd HAVE to walk past close enough for a great photo. However, at the last minute he saw me running at him, and did the most peculiar thing. He ran at me. I stopped. He stopped. He did a silly playful side-ways pounce. At a loss for what else to do, I did the same, and for over a minute we actually played with each other! He'd dart up to me and bounce nimbly away or roll over or crouch or wiggle his tail mischievously in the air, hold his ground while I ran at him, and so on. Of course I never expected to get so close (like 3m or less) so my super-amazing-telescope-lens left me with nothing more than close ups of different parts of the fox. Eventually he tired and wandered away. Later another fox came along, and Clark tried the same approach with his video camera, and ran wildly towards it, veering and jumping like a madman. I've never seen a fox run away so fast. Just as things started to die down again, another Polar Bear lumbered past, this time heading the other way. Very likely the same bear, this one gave us a wide berth from the start, going around the other side of the lake to pass us, but again when he caught our scent, he turned and ran for his life back the way he'd come, this time for good.
At about 3:00am (Day 70+6) our campsite was lit up by an enormous floodlight streaming from a spec on the horizon. The Jock McNiven had seen our campfire. It was quite dark, and it wasn't for some time until we could make out the looming outline of the enormous twin-smoke-stack tugboat (44m long, weighing 777 tons, with 4 engines totaling 4,500 horsepower, and a crew of 13), towing the three epic, heavily loaded barges (each one 75m long and 17m wide and loaded up to 1,500 tons). Standing there on the beach watching as Steve then orchestrated the entire thing into a 360 degree circle to slow it down, pull it closer and lower a little black dot into the water that then came rocketing in towards us... it was one of those moments in life when you feel very small, and totally in awe of the enormity of something that is going on around you, let alone because of you. The weather was pretty foul by now, raining (typical), and the waves were really dumping on the beach a bit which made it quite interesting, but before we knew it we were shaking hands with an enthusiastic man in a red drysuit, "I'm Jeff, Good to see you!" He said. After only a few semi swampings of the dingy in the breaking waves, and a total of three trips out to the formidable tug which meanwhile reenacted another giant circle so as not to pass us right past, eventually, Clark and I climbed up a steel ladder and onto the vibrating deck of The Jock McNiven. It was done. We had escaped the clutches of Victoria Island, at last. =)
From the bridge-deck, Steve ushered us up and we stepped inside and closed the door. The wind stopped. There was warmth all around us. The ground was dry. It smelt like coffee. There was no rain. Nothing was flapping and flailing around. It was strangely quiet and still and calm... "It's like... a house... I remember them...." We both couldn't stop smiling. It really hit us both right then. "Well Jeff'll show you guys around, you've got a twin cabin to yourselves, fresh sheets on the bed, there's a washing machine, two hot showers - guess you'll be wanting to use these, grab a coffee, some food, sleep, ... 48hrs before we get to Tuktoyuktuk ... Make yourself at home boys!"
Need I say anything more than the first person we met when we went down below was the ship's cook - an extremely gifted cook - Christina, who promptly started mothering us and pushed a mug of steaming coffee into our hands. Since that moment on, we have been eating and sleeping, in no particular order. Sleeping on a real bed with a pillow, and eating breakfast (French toast, egg, hash browns, bacon, sausages, toast, cereal, yoghurt etc), lunch (chicken curry, rice, salad etc), dinner (steak, Sheppard’s pie, roasted potatoes, asparagus, gravy etc), dessert (I forget all we ate in this category), all interspersed with fresh fruit, and ceaseless tray after tray of freshly baked treats (bran muffins, brownies, biscuits, scones, cup cakes, chocolate cakes, cherry tarts...). Our poor bored taste buds are going into overdrive! As Clark said "It's just one new sensation after another!"
I think, at last, it's safe to say that the iiNet 1000 Hour Day Expedition is 'over', and has turned out far better in every respect than either of us could ever have hoped for. We can't believe it.
Ok, I'm going to try and stop writing updates now.
Two very happy little vegemites signing off, with another huge thank you to Steve - the skipper of The Jock McNiven, and everyone else onboard. If it wasn’t for them, and ‘Northern Transportation Company Limited’ - the natively owned (Inuit and Inuvaluit) company that run this luxury cruise liner tug of the North - we’d still be sitting back there enjoying ‘oats and coffee’ for breakfast, but without any coffee, milk, or sugar, and with alien-water couscous instead of oats.
Gotta run, that smells suspiciously like chocolate brownies.
Cheers!
  
Our live expedition updates are written on our tiny ASUS Eee PC 900 laptops, and sent via Iridium 9505A satellite phones from Landwide Satellite Solutions, using email compression software xGate from Global mareine Networks! Thanks guys - it's the perfect set up!
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