odyssey bering strait

In 1998 Russian Father and son team Dimitri and Matvey Shparo had succeeded on their third attempt. Spending 27 days and having moved 300kms on the ice. During these attempts the Shparo teams had survived Polar bear attacks, frostbite and exposure. Dimitri Shparo, himself a veteran of Polar expeditions, was quoted as saying he would rather walk to the north Pole 100 times than across the Bering Strait
http://www.shparo.com/Bering/bering_main.htm

But this confirmed the crossing was possible and was very reassuring. The only problem now was no one had made the crossing from the Alaskan side. Once on the move in South America the Bering Strait was not on my mind until five years later. Once in Canada, it was time to start thinking about the crossing once again.

In Fairbanks Alaska we start to look closely at the specific details of the problem. I am still 900 miles from the Bering Strait and I face crossing Alaska in the winter, a challenge in its own right, but the big day is looming. In Fairbanks I have the time, while waiting for winter, to focus on the logistics plans and equipment needed to make history.

I was willing to attempt the crossing by myself if needs be, but it was clear this really needed to be a team effort. A partner would increase the chance of staying alive. But it will be months later, while crossing Alaska, that I find a partner willing and capable to try the crossing with me. The challenge was massive and resources available very limited. I had to cut corners at every turn. I had very little money, considering the task at hand, and time was ticking and costing me what money we had.

The environment is one of the most testing on the planet. It’s the perfect combination of the worst. Freezing ice water a treturous moving surface, high winds and bad weather. The Bering Strait does not freeze. Instead you get a semi frozen mixture of fast moving crushed sea ice and water driven by high winds and strong ocean currents. Temperatures can range from above freezing to -35C in Spring. Spring is the optimum time for any attempt. Between the months of March and April the ice is at its thickest and maximum extent, the daylight hours have significantly increased and you find optimum weather conditions. However, the Bering Strait is the most unpredictable environment we know, and being ready for anything is key to coming back alive.

People don’t make equipment for these environments. Everything had to me improvised. If you want to climb mountains, there are shops for mountaineers. If you want to hike, there are shops for hikers. If you want to swim there are shops for swimmers. But when you need to become a fast moving heavy lifting Arctic Marine mammal, you're faced with a unique problem. We needed to be able to regulate our body temperature but at the same time, very quickly, be able to swim and haul heavy sleds over distance and high walls of broken ice. We need to be amphibious. What equipment we needed to do the job was one problem. Then there was the politics and logistics in one of the harshest and remote environments in the world involving one of the most politically sensitive countries in the world. To say I felt a little over whelmed is an understatement. The right equipment was critical. We tested different specialised suits and mixtures of equipment and techniques to over come problems identified after talking with experts and experienced like Troy Henkel (see below). We carried lightweight firearms in case we were attacked by Polar bears during the day or night. We had high-tech helmet mounted night vision equipment allowing us to deal with night travel and bear threats. We tested kite born remote cameras designed to give us an elevated birds eye view for route finding, and so on. Some of these ideas were used, some canned, in a constant process of invent, test and break.

While crossing Alaska I met up with Dimitri Kieffer in a most unlikely setting. In a small cabin in the middle of nowhere on the Iditarod trail called ‘old woman cabin’. Used by dog mushers on the 1000mile Iditarod dog race. A race Dimitri Kieffer was racing on foot. Having reached the coast after a difficult winter I would have to wait until the following winter to make the crossing. This following year saw me focus almost exclusively on the crossing while waiting for winter.

That spring Dixie Dansercoer of Denmark and Troy Henkels from Alaska attempted to cross the Bering Strait on the ‘Bering Strait Odyssey 2005’. The attempt was a real eye opener. The well equipped, well funded and well experienced two man team where forced to abandon the attempt after 8 days. Not only, but within that time they had hardly moved west at all, if at all. Later that year Dimitri, I and a team of friends from Fairbanks got to meet Troy Henkel in Anchorage Alaska for a face to face on the details of the 2005 attempt. This was a huge help in shaping our thinking. Our Russian visas were in the works, but there was great skepticism as to whether we would receive them, having applied for the visas based on our Bering Strait crossing plan. We were not able to answer any of the most important questions, like when or where we would enter Russia. Shortly before 'H' hour I was pleasantly surprised to receive our visas. Unbeknown to us, the company that we had paid to organise and obtain them had not taken our Bering Strait plan seriously, and simply did not believe us. As such, they had applied for our visas on a fictitious entry plan. We now believe the Russians at least knew, at the time, of our intent. The other permit needed was much more confusing and we believed not securing this permit meant we would have to return to Alaska and not continue through Russia should we reach the shore, until that special permit for the region of Chukotka, on the Russian side of the Bering, could be properly organised. With so many balls in the air, I was stretched to thin to cover so much detail and just kept pushing the plan forward aggressively.

I still had a few hundred miles to travel to reach the launch site. For the later half, from Nome to the village of Wales, Dimitri would join me so we could get use to working together. Which, for someone who had worked alone for so long, had challenges. The winter was laden with its own adventures and mishaps until finally reaching Wales and the shore of the Bering Strait on 21st February 2006.

We now had until March to finalise preparation. Before we leave we are joined by our friends from the BBC days before ‘H’ hour. Up until this day we had seen almost ambiguous skepticism. No-one had any real faith in Dimitri and myself reaching Russia. After years of this negative feedback it was hard to maintain the confidence oneself and I must confess I had little hope of a first time victory. I was indeed in a fighting spirit but also ‘keeping it real’. The major concerns where A. getting off the ice alive should it all go wrong, and B, how the hell am I going to maintain this odyssey after a number of failed, or even one failed attempt? The stakes where high. It had taken so much and cost so much, to get to this point, not to mention the last seven years, my son Adam and Catalina from Colombia.

17th March 2006 we pulled out of Wales headed North West pulling two 200lb sleds. Physically and mentally ready for the fight head. The plan was fairly simple, if simple could be applied to the Straits. We would push and aim North West to remain North of the Diomede Islands, as being swept south, which happened to Troy and Dixie the year before, was a losing situation. But what was about to happen was an unknown, it was simply unpredictable. What happens largely depends on a number of factors: wind, tides, currents, temperatures, even bears are all beyond your control, and this was to become all to clear.

Father would keep an eye on the weather picture and each morning we start the day with voice communications using a satellite phone. Father would update us on what the ice looked like around us and in turn we update him on our location and situation. The weather was good from the word go. However the first few days quickly became everything the Bering Strait was expected to be. The going was extremely tough. Progress North West turned to rapid progress straight North as the ice dragged us North at over 2mph and we simply could not make any real progress west. In over 24hrs we had gone North for more than 52miles.

At this point things looked grim. That night I would watch the GPS ticking over as we drifted in our tent. Then it slowed, soon after it stopped. At this point we found ourselves on the East side of a huge teardrop feature of open water. So, with no real option, we waited and watched for the next 24hrs in our tent as we slowly started drifting South again. This was remarkable good luck, I had a terrible feeling we where going way to far North, but North was always better than South. The currents effectively brought us back, slowed again. By this time the temperature dropped considerably to around -35C. This was also remarkable as it is highly unusual for the time of year in this part of the world. The effect was decisive. The surface began to freeze solid unlike the soup effect of semi frozen crushed sea ice that was slowing us to a halt. Sea ice, unlike fresh water ice, is quite playable in the hand a bit like play doe, and freezes at much colder temperatures. By this point we had already lost a sled. We had two 200lb sleds from day one. The broken sled I had used to cross Alaska with, the other was the one I had in reserve for the crossing, it was designed specifically for Polar use and as such was reinforced with Kevlar as well has high sides for swimming. The small sled was not designed for this kind of punishment, being dragged over slabs of broken ice or 'pressure ridges', high walls of broken ice formed as pans of ice are forced into each other. The next few days saw better progress North West, as difficult as it was with one sled now weighing 400bls. The ice was still moving slowly North but, again, remarkably, the wind had virtually stopped. Very rare indeed for the Bering Strait. This combination of very low temperature, no wind and slow currents was akin to watching the Red sea part. Despite this, going was still labour intensive. But by this time we found ourselves exactly where we wanted to be, North of the Diomede Islands. We approached the Data line denoting the border with Russia, and as such, the stakes were being raised. The day before we crossed the border we decided to call on reserve supplies to be airdropped as it would be our last chance.

Beyond the border things got tense. We were growing tired, we could now see the coast of Russia but yet had a long way to go and seemed to be slowing down. Ice conditions were improving, less open water. The temperature was now climbing to above freezing, but that meant the weather was due to change, a real threat. It would be unthinkable to get so close then lose it to high winds that move the ice and us out to sea in Russian waters where rescue would be a bureaucratic nightmare. Father reports a storm front moving in from our South. At this point we are trying to turn South onto the Russian coast, we are about 27miles off shore and things are not looking good. We begin to lose the little ground we would make during the day during the night, drifting north. The few kilometres we make a day is not enough. We begin ditching equipment and supplies. In a last ditch attempt, with the weather changing and our pace slowing, I try a radical new approach. The sled is slowing us down as it gets snagged and stuck ever few feet on ragged jumbled ice. I decide to ditch most of our equipment and supplies, including the sled, keep only what we need and can carry on our backs, and go for broke. But we don’t have backpacks. We make a call and talk with father who suggests using the rugged US Naval special dry suits, cost $980 each, by cutting them up and making backpacks out of them. We go for it, once done we find ourselves very heavy and difficult to manoeuvre. It's not long before I end up face down after falling right next to open water unable to move, pinned by the weight of the equipment on my back. The danger is realised and a lessen learned. We back track for the abandoned sled. However, we had been forced to ditch so much weight that things are much easier going with the sled. Still faced with grim math telling us we would not be able to reach the coast with the supplies we have and the speed we are moving, it’s a low point. The next day all that changes: we have the break we need and manage an 11mile day. A vast contrast to the few kilometres a day prior.

This changes everything, and the following day, my birthday 30th of March, we end the day only about 500 meters from the coast. I call time because we are running out of light, the ice is bad, the weather is closing in and visibility is poor. To rush now could end up in disaster and broken bones. We pitch tent highly confident we had secured success. Earlier that day we had crossed a demarcation line denoting the fast ice, packed ice fastened to the shore, in this case about 5kms out. Now even if the weather closes in, I am confident we are good and will not be swept North. But still 500 meters from making history on your birthday is a bitter pill. Father is not willing to break the news until I have dirt in my hand, he informs me. The following day we very quickly come across images emerging from an overcast snow-filled sky, and unfortunately the first thing we find is a radar dish. The last thing we want to do is stumble into a sensitive military establishment on our first day in Russia. We approach nervously but are pleased to find an old abandoned cold war installation. Ashore, I make the sat phone call I could have hardly imagined making only a month earlier. I let father know I have Russian dirt in my hand with the words “Terra Firma…Terra Firma!”