Arctic Explorers Expect No Easy Sledding on Trek to North Pole

As spring approached in the Arctic, eight adventurers with five dog sleds set off across the frozen sea in search of the elusive point where the view in every direction is south.

Where east and west disappear. The top of the world.

In the more than 75 years since Robert Peary planted the flag at the North Pole, the pole has been reached by plane, snowmobile, skis, dog sled, and even submarine.

But the Steger International Polar Expedition is attempting to reach the pole in much the same way Peary did in 1909. There will be no fresh dogs, no dry clothes, no extra food.

No Coffee or Sugar

Expedition leader Will Steger is a purist. His team carries only a 50-day supply of food, no coffee, no sugar, no salt.

The expedition took off March 8, a week after the sun appeared, ending the winter-long darkness. As spring turns into 24-hour daylight, the sun will circle the horizon in a wavy line, never setting. By the end of April, the sun-warmed ice will weaken and begin to break up, making travel treacherous. So they have to move fast.

In the unrelenting whiteness, the subzero air and biting wind freezes exposed skin, which blisters and peels. Eyes ache from snow blindness. Eyelids swell shut. Frostbite threatens fingers, toes and noses. Team members look out constantly for one another because a person suffering from hypothermia can be unaware of it.

“It’s more than a sledding adventure. It’s a challenge to the human spirit and intellect,” said Steger, a 41-year-old woodsman.

Steger is convinced that his team of five Americans--including one woman--two Canadians and a New Zealander, will make it. Not everyone shares that confidence.

“They’re crazy,” said Oolahanee Coman, an Inuit Indian who married a white trader in Frobisher Bay, where for two months the team practiced, constantly refining equipment and supplies, establishing routines that later would have to be repeated flawlessly.

“It hasn’t been freezing at all. It’s been warm, crazy weather,” she said. Outside the thermometer measured 20 degrees below zero. Normally in March it’s minus 40.

“I didn’t think I was going to be afraid,” said Nala Boddy, an Inuit and wife of expedition member Brent Boddy, clutching her 5-month-old daughter, Crystal. She has lived in the Canadian Arctic all her life.

A wiry, intense man with a twinkle in his eye, Steger has logged 20,000 miles of dog-sled travel in Arctic conditions.

A bachelor, he lives in a cabin seven miles from Ely, Minn., without electricity or plumbing, reachable only by canoe, foot, dog sled or skis. Steger has a bachelor’s degree in geology and a master’s degree in education, but supports himself by writing articles and teaching winter travel and survival skills. He is also a photographer and is under contract with National Geographic to document the trip.

5-Month Training Trek

In December, 1984, he and several team members took off from Duluth, Minn., on a 5,000-mile, five-month training expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost point in the United States.

It was there that he met Geoff Carroll, 35, a wildlife biologist from Juneau, Alaska. Carroll was working on a census of the bowhead whales off Point Barrow when he got word that Steger’s group had pulled into town.

“I figured if I wanted to make it all the way to the pole, this was the group to sign on with,” Carroll said.

It was Steger who rounded up about 30 corporate sponsors, including Du Pont and the National Geographic Society, to help underwrite the expected $500,000 cost.

Then, after announcing their plans to the world at a news conference at the Explorers Club in New York City, where Peary was a member and one of his sleds is on display, they headed for Frobisher Bay, in the Northwest Territories.

It being Boddy’s hometown, they got a warm reception from government officials and set up headquarters in the old Baffin Island jail.

“Baffin Island is the perfect place for training--perfect weather, lots of wind, extremely rough ice and 40-below temperatures,” Steger said.

Boddy, 31, who runs Nuna-Kuuk Outfitters, is a guide to hunters and tourists from “the south.” He owns one of only three dog teams in this Arctic outpost.

The 49 dogs are the heart and soul of the expedition. If they fail, the mission fails. They incorporate the best features of the Greenland and Alaskan huskies and the Canadian Eskimo dog. In addition to Boddy’s team, two teams were borrowed from Inuit hunters. The rest, bred by Steger at his own kennels, are one-eighth wolf.

They weigh about 70 pounds, have thick coats, large, tough, paws, and unflagging spirits.

1,000-Pound Sleds

The dogs pull five 16-foot sleds made of spruce, each weighing 1,000 pounds loaded. Eighty percent of that cargo is dog food, frozen seal meat and dried mix.

After about half the food is gone, some of the sleds will be empty and half the dogs will be airlifted out.

The unneeded sleds will be burned to melt snow for drinking water and cooking, preserving the white gas fuel.

Despite Steger’s aversion to outside support, the party carries two radios and an emergency locater transmitter, whose signal is relayed by a Soviet satellite.

Having a radio is necessary to confirm their feat. When they reach what they believe is the pole, they will transmit a request for a flyover by Canadian military planes to verify their position. Then a private chartered plane will return them to the mainland.

Each week, Bob McKerrow, 38, of Anakiwa, New Zealand, radios their position and physical condition to a base camp in Resolute Bay, Northwest Territories, population 160. The message is recorded and relayed to a special telephone number in New York so that armchair explorers can follow the progress of the expedition.

10-Pound Sleeping Bags

The “Call of the Wild” hot line was set up by Du Pont, a major expedition sponsor and manufacturer of the insulating fibers found in almost all the garments worn by the team, as well as in the 10-pound sleeping bags. They have twice the loft of ordinary bags and are fitted with a cone-shaped breathing hole about four inches wide.

There are no wardrobe changes. A zippered fanny flap is immensely practical. The synthetic fibers are supplemented by traditional fur. Feet are covered with waterproof sealskin booties or mukluks, and the parkas or anoraks are trimmed with wolf. Windproof leggings of sealskin, called kamiks, also will be worn on days when the wind rips across the ice; over their gloves, beaver mitts that come up to the elbows.

From Frobisher Bay, the team and sleds were shuttled by small plane to Ward Hunt Island, the northern tip of the Canadian archipelago. From there, it is 500 air miles to the pole. But because of shifting ice and open water, the trip is expected to be more like 1,000 miles.

The first 50 miles is a shear zone, rife with extreme pressure ridges. Like the plates of the Earth’s crust, huge masses of ice, pushed together by tides, currents and wind, rise up, giving birth to hills of ice 40 to 70 feet high.

Chop a Track

Team members use ice axes, pry bars and picks to chop a track through the ridges, sometimes using ice screws and ropes as pulleys.

It is here on the rim of the continent where Earth’s largest carnivores, the polar bears, roam. Steger’s team is carrying two rifles, just in case.

The icecap is just 12 feet thick on average. It never completely melts, but great rifts open up, some up to a mile wide.

A rift could open up under a tent, or swallow the sleds or dog teams, but team members are counting on the eerie rumbling sound it makes to warn them.

If the rift is small, they can wait for it to freeze, then cross the thin ice. But if it does not refreeze, they’ll have to make pontoon bridges by lashing together slabs of floating ice.

If they are faced with a really long lead or a “pan” of open ocean, team members can scout a course around it using two inflatable rafts. But too many detours can dangerously delay the trip.

“Cold weather is our ally,” Steger said.

No Maps Used

The team uses no maps. On sunny days, expedition co-leader Paul Schurke, 30, of Ely, Minn., takes a sextant reading of the sun’s noon position. On cloudy days, they rely on sastrugi, long wavelike ridges of hard snow formed by the prevailing wind.

The only people with Peary for the final push to the pole were three Inuits and Matthew Henson, a self-educated black sailor whose knowledge of the Inuktitut, the Eskimo language, and of navigation, made him indispensable.

The push to the pole was the culmination of 20 years of work charting Greenland’s coast and searching for a land route to the pole. Finally, on April 6, 1909, Peary staked his claim to fame.

Dr. Frederick A. Cook, Peary’s chief rival, claimed he beat Peary to the pole by a year. Both men’s claims were investigated by scientists and, in 1911, Congress declared Peary the discoverer of the North Pole.

Peary’s Pace Questioned

But did either party really make it? Could Peary really have made the 30 miles a day he claimed? The Steger expedition hopes to shed light on the plausibility of the claims of early explorers.

“Personally, I think he came very close, within a degree,” Steger said. A degree equals 72 miles. But, he noted, “Peary had massive support,” nearly 150 dogs and 35 Inuit guides who “basically nursed Peary to the pole.” For the final dash, they took the best dogs, fresh because they had not been pulling.

Along the way, Steger’s team is recording data that could lead to a better understanding of the relationship of pack ice movements with polar weather systems. They also collect ice samples to study how airborne acid is deposited in the Arctic.

In addition, they collect urine samples to study hormonal changes caused by extreme stress and cold and blood samples to measure whether their fat-rich diet affects their cholesterol levels.

7,000-Calorie Diet

Their 7,000-calorie daily diet is the same menu polar explorers and Inuit hunters have been eating for centuries.

The one-pot dinner consists of 4 ounces of butter, 4 ounces of cheese, 6 ounces of egg noodles and a half pound of pemmican, a mixture of 60% dried meat and 40% fat pressed into a block that could pass for pate--until you taste it.

“It’s the best food you can imagine at 50 below,” Steger said. “In the summer, you couldn’t get it down.”

For breakfast, each gets nearly a pound of oatmeal. Each is allowed 100 ounces of treats. Steger also took along eight ounces of bourbon, 60 ounces of frozen lemons and 32 ounces of seal jerky.

Medical Technician

As a trained emergency medical technician, expedition member Ann Bancroft, 30, an elementary-school teacher and mountain climber from Sunfish Lake, Minn., is in charge of first aid and rations.

Richard Weber, 26, of Cantley, Quebec, is a former Canadian national cross-country ski champion and works as a white-water raft guide. Because of his skill on skis, he serves as scout.

Making camp is a ritual. Everyone has a specific job to do and do fast. Putting up the two, four-person dome tents, starting the stoves and staking the dogs takes five minutes.

Fears Vary

Each member of the team carries a different fear.

Steger fears “being paralyzed.”

Schurke, who runs a wilderness school for handicapped children, fears “going through the ice.”

Robert Mantell, 32, of Anchorage, said his biggest worry is maneuvering a half-ton sled. “It’s quite easy to fall and be crushed.”

McKerrow, who has sledded to the South Pole and is director of the New Zealand Outward Bound school, said jokingly: “My biggest fear is arriving in Norway.”