PADDLER
“ I saw my bright orange kayak 10 metres or so up the hill behind me – the wind had picked it up , sent it through the tent , snapping the central pole and leaving a gash under my eye .”
PADDLER
46
HUNKERING DOWN
It felt wrong to camp inside the circle , though , so I always pitched on the periphery . I put the tent up in the now driving wind and spent 30 minutes hefting rocks and placing them around the tent ’ s base – the app had said the storm would be 36-48 hours so I prepared to hunker down for a while . That feeling when you ’ re dry , you duck inside the tent and zip the wind outside is a beautiful thing . The wind speed was increasing by the hour , and the snow that started falling was now a blizzard .
The tent was a teepee style with a single central pole and was now shaking alarmingly ; the noise was incredible , but it was tough , and I felt secure . My mind kept wandering to that circle of rocks a few meters away , and I got to imagine how people would ’ ve survived out here way back . To have to hunt seal to provide clothing and tent materials as well as food to
“ I saw my bright orange kayak 10 metres or so up the hill behind me – the wind had picked it up , sent it through the tent , snapping the central pole and leaving a gash under my eye .”
survive on was something my Western mind found hard to comprehend . It was almost impossible to stand up in the wind ( which made toilet breaks interesting ), and after rechecking the weather app , I saw with dismay that the forecast was now saying it would last for three days .
I had just enough walrus stew bagged up and a good backup stock of dried food to last me . Still , it got me thinking about that fine line again – imagining how a family would have survived this storm hundreds of years ago , and it made me appreciate why the Greenlanders have a prevalence of dried food in their diet – weather like this would make it impossible to hunt or fish and without a good stock of preserved food starvation would ’ ve been constantly looming .
TENT SUDDENLY COLLAPSED
I ’ d ventured out twice now to collect more rocks , and I ’ d dragged Scorp up to the tent and turned it upside down to act as a deflector for the wind – the guy ropes were starting to fray the fly sheet and that driving snow was still coming down . With the noise and worry that the tent would take off , I didn ’ t get much sleep , and every time I checked the time , it seemed my watch had stopped . And then , at 02:00 hours , the tent suddenly collapsed , dropping the wet fabric on me and the sleeping bag and turning everything instantly wet .
It was light outside as it had been for nearly the entire expedition to date , and I scrambled through the wet fabric , located the zip and struggled to see what had happened . Scorp wasn ’ t there . Panicking slightly , I squinted through the snow , doubled over against the wind and , walking around my now pancaked tent , saw Scorp 10 metres or so up the hill behind me – the wind had picked it up , sent it through the tent , snapping the central pole and leaving a gash under my eye .
Suddenly , I had crossed the line from being ok to not at all . I dragged Scorp back down and put a few rocks inside the cockpit . There was no chance of fixing the pole , so I duct taped my spare paddle into a makeshift one and wedged it up inside the tent so at least the cold and wet tent wasn ’ t laying directly on all my gear any more . Most of my dry clothes were as wet and cold as my sleeping bag , but I managed to get inside my dry suit and climb into the bag again , feet pressed up against the paddles to keep the tent upright .
WORRIED ABOUT HYPOTHERMIA
Rechecking the app , I saw that it was still about 24 hours until the wind was expected to die down , and I was cold and now a little worried about hypothermia . I did small exercises inside the bag to warm me up and , in between , fired up the satphone to monitor the weather and make contact with a hunter from the next settlement – about 50km away . I knew there was
a cabin about 20km north of me , which was initially my plan A as soon as the wind dropped – but the hunter offered to come and pick me up , which immediately turned into my new Plan A !
And so I waited out the remainder of the storm until the boat showed up on day three . I ’ d never been happier to see another person as when that boat rounded the headland and into the bay . I had managed to keep myself warm ( ish ) and had been able to pack up and get out of there , but at the time , that small boat felt like a lifesaver , and it brought home to me how fragile existence out in the wilds of Greenland can be .
My goal had been to average 30km each day , which was purely based on the one time I ’ d ever done than 15km , and I ’ d cracked out 34km on a 6-hour round trip to the hot springs a couple of years ago in the south of Greenland . I ’ d done a lot of gym work back in the UK , all aerobic stuff like rowing , ski machine and