Traversing Baffin Island

A 1800 mile journey, seeking renewal of our restless spirits in the Canadian Arctic
 To travel the length of earth’s fifth largest island we ski for the first 1,045 miles,
kayak the next 605 miles, and hike the final 230 miles
 Bob checks the sleds and reports that an arctic fox has been chewing on the runaway
straps of his ski’s
 Mike peers out of the tent. “That’s not a fox,” he says “That’s a polar bear cub”
 Facing temperatures as low as –42degrees F which turn Mike’s beard a frosty white,
we spend most of the first few weeks on Baffin just trying to keep warm. The arduous
work requires 5,500 calories a day, including lots of cheese and margarine
 Shallow ribbons of meltwater braid the surface of the thick ice before draining dawn
cracks or seal holes into the ocean below
 We step off the Penny Ice cap directly into summer. For the next 2 months we paddle
and portage through a maze of lakes and rivers, disassembling the kayaks when
necessary to carry them over rough ground
 To make up for lost time, we hoist spinmakers and sail across Mingo lake, helping us
to cover 22 miles in a day. Though the weather in late August is mild, the water is
frigid
 We wear dry suits, since capcizing in the lake would put our lives in instant jeopardy.
We then start the final backpacking part of the journey. Within hours it begins to snow
 Tradging up a hill above Jackman sound, we surprise a polar bear sow as she lumbers
out from behind a boulder with her cub. Fortunately she turns and drops down the
other side of the hill, cub at her heels. For the rest of our journey we announce out
presence, banging on our presence, banging on our cooking pot and singing out
warnings like devotees of some ad sect
 What a privilege it was to have travelled for 192 days on what sandy called our quest
for wonder, watching glaocious gulls swoop past cliffs painted rust red with lichens,
listening to the surreal tinkling of rafts of candle ice shoved by storm waves against
the rocky shores
 Months of intense but exhilarating physical exertion and cold. A small price to pay for
a lifetime of memories

Aerial Voyage from England to Australia on the

VIMY
 Winging over 4 continents at 75 miles an hour. It was the longest, riskiest flight in
history.
 “Columbus did not take one tenth the risk these bold air pioneers are facing,”
declared the New York Times of the Great London-to-Australia Air Derby of 1919.
“There are throwing dice with Death” Open only to Aussie airmen, the Australian-
sponsored race offered a 10,000 pound prize to the first pilot to link the heart of the
British Empire with its far-flung commonwealth. The catch: the 11,000 mile journey
had to be completed in 30 days or less. Besides the usual dangers of storms and
mechanical failure, the American-Australian team dodged a more modern obstacle:
red tape
 “Playing hopscotch with clouds, the Vimy probes a wall of rain in Southern France,
searching for blue sky. Even light winds tossed the fabric craft like a feather.”
 Our route would follow that of the original 1919 flight Southeast across France, Italy
and Greece to Egypt. Then we’d go east across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the
UAE, Oman, Pakistan to India, before turning South through Bangladesh, Myanmar,
Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore to Indonesia and finally, eastward again to
Australia
 In the first part of the 1919 flight made by Ross and Keith, they ran into a miserable
mix of sleet and snow, which “clotted up our goggles and the wind screen and
covered our face with a mushy, semi-frozen mask.”
 “This sort of flying is a rotten game.” Ross grumbled to his diary. “The cold is hell
and I am a silly ass for having ever embarked on the flight.” The big plane’s nose
began to dip and rise like a sailboat in high seas, and “bam, bam, bam” our wings
were slapped down by the wind, first to the left, then to the right. The sky darkened to
an evil brown, lightening flashed all around and the rain slashed down.
 The 200-mile crossing of the Mediterranean to Crete gave me a spectacular view of
the Greek archipelago, with its azure waters, sculptured bays and cliffs speckled with
white stucco houses and blue roofs
 As we made our descent into Cairo the next day, I was struck by the sour, dusty smell
of animals, mixed with automobile exhaust. Flying as low as we did, we could not
help noticing all the smells along our route. The French countryside had seemed
almost floral compared with the smog of Athens, which reminded me of burning
asphalt. Pungent woodsmoke would later fill the air as we pushed into Asia.
 Sunset raises a reddening flag over the Malasian coastline, tinting smoke from
burning jungles
 Our wheels touched down on Australian soil at 3:09pm on October 22. Because of the
storms in Europe, fog in Cairo, Plague in India and forced landing on Sumatra, we
had taken 2 weeks longer to finish the flight than Ross Smith and his crew had in
1919. But we didn’t really care. I was overwhelmed with relief and pride that our time
machine had succeeded. I would like to think that our flight, in a more modest way,
revived a pioneering spirit of Ross and Keith by showing that great adventures are
still possible for those willing to pursue a dream and to trust in the skill and courage
of their friends.
 As we stood in the long shadow of our flying machine, I saw names and greetings in
Arabic, Hindi, Malay and other languages traced in the dust that still clung to the
lower wings, and I recalled a thousand faces from our 11,000 mile flight.
 I understood then what Ross Smith had written about his moment of glory: “The
hardships and perils of the past month were forgotten in the excitement of the present.
We shook hands with one another, our hearts swelling with emotions invoked by
achievement and the glamour of the moment. It was, and will be, perhaps the supreme
hour of our lives.”
Icy Seas of South Goergia
Dawn is still an hour away. The darkest moments of the brief Antarctic summer nights
linger on, abetted by great clouds racing in from the west. Accomplices to a short violent
squall, they stream past, engulfing the schooner in a deluge of wind and snow, whipping
at the mainsail and freezing my fingers.

The island of South Goergia, South Atlantic. Unhindered by deadlines, answerable only
to ourselves.

Albatross – with wingspans often exceeding 10 feet, the wandering albatross and cousin
royal albatross are the world’s largest seabirds.

The worst of the squall blows over – a wind’s clamour is hushed to a dull murmur, the
gentle rocking movement belies the steepness of waves outside. South Georgias coastline
shines luminescent green in the darkness of the cabin. I prepare hot tea, sipped with an
eye on the radar and an ear alert for the first signs of the next squall.

“The wild rocks raised their lofty summits till they were lost in the clouds.” Wrote
Captain James Cook, who claimed South Goergia for Britain in 1775. Soon after Cook’s
discovery of this rugged, 106-mile-long finger of land, his reports of massive seal
populations lead to commercial hunting so extensive that their survival in the area was in
jeopardy.
The demand for oil led to the creation of whaling stations in 1904. The whalers aletered
the environment through the introduction of reindeer for sport hunting and food. Sealing
and whaling ships inadvertently introduced brown rats, whose descendents thrive on the
tussock grass and prey on the island’s burrowing bird population.

Permanent snow covers most of treeless South Goergia; much of the rest of the island is
bare rock. The cold southern waters hold vast amounts of nutrient-rich phytoplankton,
base of the marine food chain.

“Darkness again; cold disorientating chaos. I can sense the proximity of land, an invisible
mass of sheer 500-feet-high cliffs just a few hundred yards away. The impacts of small
humps of brash ice rattle against the hull as we transverse a field of debris to leeward of a
large berg.
Ahead, a somber mass creeps from the shadows: Bird island materializes in the gray
dawn, white breakers rising from the darkness as water meets rock at the foot of the sea
cliffs, upper heights obscured by leaden mist.”

South Goergia in all her moods – miniature coves in azure, white and green, wild surf-
beaten bights where only penguins and seals dare venture; sheer blue cliffs of glacier ice
spilling into a milky sea, as sedimentladen fresh water meets the crustal-clear waters of
the South Atlantic.
There are windless afternoons when the elephant seals shimmer in the heat haze, and the
beach spurts fountains of black sand, flippered up by the seals in an attempt to cool off.
From the deck of our boat, bobbing about on the waves in the cold light of dawn, we look
up to a sky of birds – giant petrels, albatrosses, prions, storm petrels. Cormorants, necks
outstretched, barely make headway against the stiff breeze.

The south coast’s narrow fringe of ice, rock and the occasional tussock knoll rises sharply
to 7000 foot peaks. The severity of the land awes as each time we pass: Nowhere else do
we feel as exposed as we do here, as removed from this world.
The weather, though unsettled, remained fair during our 3-day stay at Cape Rosa. The sea
too showed none of its usual agitation, so we rocked gently at anchor and had only to
choose the right spot and right wave when landing in the dinghy.
The voyage of that open boat is a superb epic of courage and seamanship. Here in 1912
Robert Murphy had noted: “a tiny-rimmed cove… kelp that helps protect its narrow
entrance… a tiny channel between the ledges of the cove.” South Georgia’s peaks tipped
in thick banks of white clouds; before me the bay, glittering now in the sun as a slight
breeze rippled the water. A wanderer soared past on motionless wings, elephant seals
snorted and puffed in the tussock nearby.

These are moments when we feel we belong as nowhere else – moments of peace amid
the forces of weather and sea, on an island that has yet to succumb to permanent human
settlement.