Winter 2012 Winter 2012 Explore 53 It’S February 25,It’S 2012
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Welcome to Resolute, home (for a few frigid days each year) to some of the most ambitious (read: hard-core) adventurers on the planet // Story and photos by Margo Pfeiff Polar practice: An Indian army team works out near Resolute, Nunavut. 52 EXPLORE WINTER 2012 WINTER 2012 EXPLORE 53 sit at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island. After a bumpy landing on the ungroomed It’s February 25, 2012, ice at 83°N, the expeditoners slip into har- nesses attached to their polar sleds—called and I’m on a 40-passenger pulks—which are loaded with up to 130 kilograms of supplies. They will then drag First Air turbo-prop these pulks over some of the planet’s most heading as far north as brutal terrain for 50 to 60 days. WE’RE MET IN ReSOLUTE by a stuffed polar commercial aircraft will bear poised to pounce across the airport’s a— small lobby. We’re also greeted by Aziz take you in Canad “Ozzie” Kheraj, the owner of the South to Resolute, on Nunavut’s Cornwallis Island, Japan, who has spent much of his adult life Camp Inn, who is decked out in a scruffy near the southern tip of Ellesmere Island. criss-crossing vast stretches of Arctic terrain, red Canada Goose parka bearing the scars of Travelling with me are several members of often alone. He’s kicked off from Resolute countless Arctic miles. Ozzie leads us out- a very small but select group—those driven many times in the past on trips to a vari- side to his awaiting pick-up, and as head- souls who make the northward pilgrim- ety of far-flung destinations in Nunavut, lights pierce the blackness and footsteps age with the aim of skiing 780 kilometres including twice to the Magnetic North Pole. squeak on Styrofoam-crisp snow, the truck across the hopefully frozen Arctic Ocean He has also dogsledded 2,000 kilometres bed is swiftly stacked with monster duffle in a quest to reach the North Pole. One of north to south across the Greenland ice bags. After a 20-minute drive across icy these is Dr. Clare O’Leary, 40, a gastro- cap. Quiet and intense, Ogita’s plan is to roads, it’s almost midnight when Ozzie enterologist from Ireland’s County Cork, ski to the North Pole by what is turns into his hotel’s the only female this season. Shy, tiny and considered the purest method— parking lot and suddenly deceptively frail-looking, O’Leary has just solo, unsupported and unsupplied, brakes. The entrance is the North Pole to tick off on her adven- a first for Japan. In the Indians’ partially blocked by ture to-do list to join the elite Grand Slam area, rows of a poorly parked Inuit alumni, having already conquered the seven EVERY YEAR in late February, the blue barrels sled. “Oh,” he murmurs. continents’ tallest summits and reached tiny hamlet of Resolute—latitude filled with “Guess the wife’s been the South Pole. 74.51°N, population 230—becomes dried fruit, nuts, out hunting.” O’Leary will be making her attempt with the unofficial base camp for inter- oatmeal and For North Pole expedi- the hefty and bearded Mike O’Shea, a jovial national adventurers hell-bent on chocolate stand tioners, the South Camp 42-year-old mountaineer who is chatting “conquering” the North Pole. The amid tables Inn is Base Camp Cen- enthusiastically with everyone on the plane Pole may just be a bleak dot in the stacked with tral. The hotel is a ram- in his lilting Irish accent. Together they middle of the Arctic Ocean cov- a wall of Dad’s bling warren that has hope to be the first team from Ireland to ered most of the year by shifting had several wings added reach the Pole. O’Shea has some serious ice sheets, but over the centuries brand cookies over the years. Some of peaks on his resumé—including K2, con- it’s been a magnet for a circus of and freeze- the rooms house work- sidered by many to be the hardest climb in adventures, claiming limbs and dried meals out machines or gear left the world. His day job is designing safety lives. There have been attempts by including behind by previous expe- logistics for dangerous jobs ranging from hydrogen balloon (Swedes), motor- Cheesy Palak ditions—Ozzie leads us skyscraper window cleaning to bridge cycle (Japanese), helicopter (Aus- Paneer through a wide passage- repairs to movie stunts. tralians), ultra-light (French), air- way where a Norwegian On the other side of the aisle is 34-year- ship (Italians), and various amphibious folding kayak and canoe are stashed amid old Yasunaga “Yasu” Ogita from Hokkaido, vehicles, submarines, snowmobiles, boats the hooves of a mini-museum of taxiderm- and parasails. Canine charters were once ied musk ox, polar bear and wolf. In a din- common but are now prohibitively expen- ing room cluttered with Inuit carvings and Svalbard sive; the last traditional dog teams mushed a 2010 Olympic torch, Ozzie points out a pot North Pole their way north in 2005, beating by a few of hearty soup that simmers 24 hours a day hours the supposed time of American Rob- and a display case brimming with cakes, ert Peary’s controversial 1909 journey. brownies and cookies—calorie heaven for Cape Discovery These days, hard-core expeditioners soon-to-be-starving adventurers. Every- Eureka such as the ones I’m sitting with start in one tucks into platefuls of leftover roast mid-winter to ski the mother-of-all adven- beef dinner as Ozzie heads to his “office,” Resolute tures—from the top of Canada to the top a nearby couch and coffee table awash in of the globe—before the route melts in the stacks of paper. spring sun. From “Res,” the next step is a Ozzie arrived in Canada from Tanzania Iqaluit 1,000-kilometre bush-plane charter to either in 1974 as a 20-year-old with $50 in his Cape Discovery or Ward Hunt Island— pocket. After a few years, the talk of high- depending on ice conditions—both of which paying jobs in the Arctic sent him north MAP: GARY DAVIDSON 54 EXPLORE WINTER 2012 Clockwise from above: Aziz “Ozzie” Kheraj; Japan’s Yasunaga Ogita; Ireland’s Mike O’Shea and Clare O’Leary; the Indian team. as a mechanic. He met his wife, Aleeasuk Idlout, in the 1980s, when she was Resolute’s mayor, a position he soon occupied while she took clients hunting as the North’s only hovers just above the horizon from late from now, on March 1. The Indian army team female commercial polar bear guide. Ozzie morning to late afternoon, sending low, is scheduled to leave four days after them, went on to own half the town, including two buttery rays across the landscape. We drive on March 5. While Ogita intends to ski to hotels and a construction company, and has through the cluster of no-frills homes, which the Pole carrying everything he needs, both the contracts for everything from airplane might look like other communities further the Irish and Indian teams plan on having refuelling to sewer pick-up. But perhaps south if it weren’t for the polar bear pelts resupplies dropped onto the ice twice along his most valuable asset is what percolates tossed over balconies, the seal skins stretched the route. The first resupply—400 kilos of beneath his scant fuzz of black hair, where on frames in front yards, and the icy streets essentials stored in sturdy blue barrels— this logistical wizard squirrels away sched- buzzing with snowmobiles. Closer to Siberia will be tossed out the plane in mid-March. ules, names and obscure morsels of infor- than to New York City, Resolute—average The second will happen two weeks later at mation, routinely making magic happen annual temperature –16°C—is a predomi- 86°N. This location is so remote that a sec- within the often untidy business world of nantly Inuit community; many of the resi- ond plane crammed with fuel drums will Canada’s remote frontier. “If Ozzie were to dents are descendants of two small groups tag along to refill the resupply plane so it disappear tomorrow,” says Canadian polar from Northern Quebec and Baffin Island can return to Eureka. legend Richard Weber, “they’d have to call that the Canadian government transplanted Should they succeed in stabbing their in the army to run Resolute.” as human sovereignty flags to this desolate international banners into the Pole, most The next morning we all hop into Ozzie’s location in the 1950s. adventurers opt for the “budget” exit strat- idling van. In addition to the Irish team We head to the airport, where the different egy, a short $17,000 helicopter flight to Bar- of O’Leary and O’Shea and Japan’s Ogita, teams talk logistics with the staff at char- neo, a scientific research station set up on Ozzie is also transporting another one of ter airline Kenn Borek. Flying north from the drift ice every spring at about 89°N on his hotel guests, Norwegian Svante Strand. here is incredibly expensive—$35,000 for the Russian side of the Pole. From there Strand, formerly with the Norwegian mili- the six-hour jaunt from Resolute to Cape they head to Europe via Svalbard, the small tary special operations force, has come north Discovery (including a refuelling stop at group of islands that is Norway’s most north- this year to help with the preparations of the Eureka weather station).