Arctic Eden Journeys Through the Changing High Arctic

by Kobalenko, Jerry

• ISBN13: 9781553654421
• ISBN10: 1553654420
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-12-01
• Publisher: Greystone Books

Summary

A stunning celebration of the most beautiful part of the Arctic by its most passionate explorerIn this intimate portrait, Jerry Kobalenko describes a series of journeys he has taken over the past twenty years around the Canadian High Arctic by foot, skis, kayak, and ship that provides a multifaceted view of this most beautiful and most vulnerable part of the Arctic.Combining natural history, exploration, and personal experiences gathered during twenty years of Arctic travel, the book explores the ice caps and glaciers of Ellesmere Island; introduces us to Axel Heiberg's magical fossil forest of cypress trees and its population of endangered Peary caribou; follows the author's seven-hundred-kilometre journey on skis from Devon Island to Alexandra Fiord, punctuated by near-fatal encounters with polar bears; and comments on changes in climate he has witnessed throughout the High Arctic.The book also showcases Kobalenko's magnificent photographs of the region, capturing wildlife such as walrus, muskoxen, and Arctic wolves and stunning geographical features from towering icebergs to virgin snowscapes under a sky of wild lenticular clouds.

Author Biography

Jerry Kobalenko’s words and images have been published in hundreds of publications around the world, including National Geographic, Outside, Conde Nast, BBC Wildlife, and Time. He is the author of The Horizontal Everest, a literary travel book. He lives in Banff, Alberta.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: Love at First Sight
Chapter 2: Everlasting Ices
Chapter 3: A Good Climate for Loafing
Chapter 4: Edge of the Polar Sea
Chapter 5: National Park Blues
Chapter 6: Travels on a Legless Donkey
Chapter 7: The Hardest Test
Epilogue

Excerpts

Chapter 1

“He who is indeed of the brotherhood does not voyage in quest of the picturesque, but of certain jolly humours.” —Robert Louis Stevenson

When I listened closely, I could hear a distant roar. Not the “roar which lies on the other side of silence,” but a real sound, on this side of the imagination. The roar floated 4,000 feet above the calm of Alexandra Fiord on Ellesmere Island. It took form in lengthening fingers of snow that streamed off the ice cap. Moments later, an avalanche of wind hit. Snow sandpapered my face. I could barely stand.

Yet the power of the wind comforted me. Feeling small and insignificant made the world that much larger and more wonderful. I had just finished a month of hard sledding. I set up my tent by a sheltered cliff and dove inside out of the wind. Using my sleeping bag as a backrest, I reclined against the tent wall. For half an hour, while the wind raged outside, I was in such a state of well-being that I didn’t dare twitch. Even shifting positions might shatter the mood.

The wind died, and a band of golden light lit the ice of Flagler Fiord to the north. The glow intensified and acquired height and depth. Filaments of ivory cloud hung over distant Cape Camperdown. The softest blue powdered the westerly mountains, while rose tinted the Twin Glaciers. It occurred to me – it sounds like a stoner’s banal vision now – that angels spoke in light. Tonight, the angels were talking to one another.

*

Years earlier, Alexandra Fiord had given me my first taste of the mystic Arctic. By then, I was a full-time magazine writer, and I had joined a kayak tour to do a story. We landed at midnight in early August. I had already completed two expeditions in the subarctic, but this was my first whiff of Ultima Thule. Exquisite light flooded the meadows. Terns hovered, chittering. Unseen walrus grunted in the fiord. A physician in our group recalled how his first-year biology professor waved a two-foot-long walrus penis bone to the class and declared, “Ladies and gentlemen, life in the Arctic is a stiff proposition.”
I was too stoked to sleep and ran around all night in a state of hyper-excitement. Maybe the midnight sun

captivated me. Maybe I was a victim of the same scenery that pried enthusiasm from the usually staid George Nares, a British explorer who wrote in 1875: “We soon found ourselves in a beautiful inlet enclosed by high land, but bounded on one side by one of the grandest sights it is possible to behold: two enormous glaciers coming down from different directions, but converging at their termination. They reminded us of two huge giants silently attempting to push and force each other away.”

You don’t exactly get sleepy under the midnight sun, but you begin to wilt from fatigue. Around six a.m. I laid my foam pad on the tundra and napped for a couple of hours before the guides rose to prepare breakfast.

Ellesmere hooked me that first night. For the next eleven days, we paddled the sheltered coastline. Irrigated by three vigorous streams, the meadows of Alexandra Fiord basked in warmth. Ancient Inuit shelters, called qammaqs, half-igloos made from stacks of rocks and bowhead whale vertebrae, dotted nearby Skraeling Island. Bones took centuries to rot. Even a one-night campsite left a near-eternal circle of stones. “It’s a strange place,” mused one of my companions. “You build something, and a thousand years later, it’s still there.” It was no real surprise when we discovered a couple of empty crates from Otto Sverdrup’s 1898 expedition. By High Arctic standards, that happened yesterday.

At the time, I knew only one traveling speed: full bore. But to my surprise, I enjoyed the tour’s laid-back pace. It let me focus on photography for the first time. I shot too many photos, most of which were bad, rather than work a few good ideas enough to ensure that I nailed the image. But now photography became more than a professional commitment, done hastily while straining to ski or paddle hundreds of kilometers.

*

The following spring, I hurried back to Ellesmere, doing back-to-back sledding trips with different partners for two months. Since then, I’ve returned to Alexandra Fiord half a dozen times to enjoy its rare collusion of history, wildlife, and scenery.

A few summers ago, I led my own kayak tour to Alexandra Fiord. By then I’d traveled the High Arctic so much that even some of the Inuit in Grise Fiord called me Mr. Ellesmere. I enjoyed the company of tourists but I regretted that no new adventurers had bonded with the place as I had. No one had discovered sledding, either, as a lifelong sport. Most arctic expeditioners do one or two well-publicized treks and then retire.

It’s never easy to find partners for a long, hard endeavor. Ernest Shackleton reportedly advertised for volunteers to explore Antarctica and received eight thousand applications, despite warning “Safe return doubtful.” On one of my first expeditions, I tried the same strategy, taking out a notice in a local newspaper. The ad garnered a handful of such clueless replies that I longed for an era when only gentlefolk knew how to read. Where were the likes of Bowers, Wilson, and Oates -- the companions who might be “gold, pure, shining, unalloyed”?

In an 1876 essay, Robert Louis Stevenson opined that “a walking tour should be gone on alone, because freedom is of the essence…and because you must have your own pace.” Most northern journeys are no harder alone, except psychologically. Although British explorers such as Shackleton and Robert Scott, and Americans such as Leonidas Hubbard, left a romantic legacy of cameraderie, High Arctic figures were not as successful. Adolphus Greely’s men disliked his fussiness, with cause. Otto Sverdrup’s democratic style failed to patch the divide between his scientists and his sailors. Robert Peary preferred young, unthreatening apprentices – an approach that many veteran travelers mimic today. The apprentices coolly serve their time as able bodies, then begin organizing their own expeditions. Since ambition dooms many partnerships, the best long-term partner may be someone who enjoys the journey but isn’t driven to organize.

A cloud cap hung over ever-evil Cape Sabine as our group paddled nearby. Jutting east toward Greenland, Cape Sabine is a kind of anti-oasis, where storms prevail even when everywhere else is sweetness and light.

Small numbers of walrus submerged with hip flips as our kayaks glided past. “Walrus are ugly customers,” declared one early visitor to this region. Issues of pulchritude aside, these hippos of the sea have unpredictable tempers. A few years ago, in these very waters, one tried to crush the nose of a kayak in its flippers; another punctured a Zodiac with its tusks. The explorer David Haig-Thomas warned that a walrus could pluck a victim from a boat and suck the flesh from his face. Overdramatic, perhaps, but calamitous entanglements with solitary male walrus did happen. The Inuit used to carry bits of blubber to plug tusk holes in their kayaks. It was always a good idea not to squeeze walrus between you and the shore, but