It’s a clear and windless day here in Churchill, which is a rare thing. It’s stormed for the past three days. The dog-sledders have all returned after their race was called off midway. Officials judged the conditions too harsh which was a subject of controversy among locals, a sign of creeping softness.

Dave and I got back to town on Monday, and started looking for a way to get further north. We went out to the Calm Air office to get quote for a flight to Rankin Inlet, a town about 600km north of here. We told them what we’re doing, and the next day they offered to fly us up, for free. It’s this kind of generosity that’s marked our visit here. Locals seem to like it that we’re heading out into the wilderness and trying something new. It still feels very much like a frontier here, and that frontier mentality survives. The wilderness is given a respect that borders on fear, but it’s also a subject of immense pride.

The towns on Hudson Bay, like in Greenland, have no roads going in or out. In Churchill, the edge of the waterfront park has a sign saying don’t go any further without a gun, for risk of being eaten by a Polar Bear. You can fly to other towns, or you can take a dangerous and unpredictable journey overland across the sea ice, which it seems here is largely done only by Inuit. So life in town is quite isolated and quite confined. Two Australians heading out onto the ice with their home-made machine seems to please people.

Dave is pacing around our hotel, frustrated. The hardware store is shut for lunch. He’s modifying the steering system on our sled, hopefully to prevent the kind of accident we had last Friday. A steering linkage popped out in the rough ice causing us to veer off into an even bigger bit of ice, ripping off one of the runners. That’s our official Air Safety Investigation finding. We think we can prevent the linkage popping off but we can’t prevent the rough sea ice.

We are taking other measures, lightening our sleds by leaving behind a few luxury items, including our second sleeping bags for super-cold nights. The idea is that less weight means less need to power up our kites so much and risk smashing our way through rough ground. But our best hope is to avoid bad ice all together. Starting further north where we can travel on land should help.

But even then we’re working on nothing more than an informed guess. No-one’s ever kited this coast before. There’s no-one to ring in Rankin Inlet to ask if the terrain suits a Mark 6 Kitesled. The only way to find out is to go there and find out. It involves inherent risk, but it also opens up the possibility of travelling new ground in a new way which is the prize of an adventure like this.

News from the team: Challenges!

Ben: Dave and I are sitting in a hut outside Churchill. Dave is munching on a biscuit and reading a book called “In the Land of White Death” which is about some Russians having a terrible time on polar sea ice a hundred years ago.

We sailed our sled out into thick pressure ice today, where the tides and currents pile the ice up into waves and blocks. Churchill is surrounded by pressure ice and we were trying to get through it in the hope of better conditions on the other side. We travelled about a kilometre before we got the sled sideways at speed and damaged a runner. (The sled is built really tough, but the ice conditions are just atrocious here) We tried skiing though it and it was even worse than on the sled. We were not keen to make any damage worse so it was “game over” for the day and now we’re back in camp.

The problem we’ve got is that the area surrounding Churchill is too rough for kiting, this part of the bay gets 5 metre tides, which means the ice gets lifted up and down nearly the height of a two story building every day and that just wrecks it. We’re the only people to ever come kiting here as far as we know, so we may be paying the price for being the first.

We’d be able to get off the ice and travel on land if we can get a hundred kilometres north, where the boreal forest runs out and the tundra begins. (Kites and trees are a terrible combination, ask Charlie Brown)

Our current plan is to work on heading north above the tree line. Hopefully there the land is smooth and we can make some distance.

Dave: Yes, a steep learning curve today, and I got some new perspectives on the 2008 trip. It now seems that the sea-ice that Pat and I got last year on James Bay was extremely good, when compared to the rest of Hudson Bay. Smaller tides, and a smaller mass of ice, means that the ice down there is subject to much less movement and therefore stays much flatter.  The irony of it is that if we hadn’t had the car crash, then we may not have even made it to James Bay, because we would have flown another thousand kilometres north and perhaps been bogged down in the same ugly pack ice we’ve got up here. Antarctica would be a cinch compared to this!

The last we heard from the team, they were camped a few km west of the Churchill river mouth, awaiting daylight and a forecast SSE wind so they can head North to Arviat, to join in the traditional feast that happens at the end of this weekend’s Dogsled race. They could have easily headed in any other direction over the last few days but the wind has been “right on the nose” for the Arviat run!

Forecast gives only a day of favourable winds before the wind swings back onto the nose, they will really have to get their skates on if they are to make it to Arviat for the feast! Unfortunately the ice is quite rough here, so it may be a tall order!

Good luck and Fair winds Boys!

Update from Ben:

Training: Variety is the spice of life.

Usually this is where any website of a “modern day explorer”  has pictures of people hauling tyres along a beach, getting their core strength fit for the unique stresses of pulling a dastardly heavy load along in a sled or cart, all day, every day.

Well, we need to do a bit more than that! 

For while hauling is a necessary capability, (on those windless or unkiteable days), an expedition kitesledder has to be ready for grueling sessions driving the sled and keeping their senses sharp at the same time, (Think of the stresses facing round the world yacht racing).

Accordingly: we have their own mix of training activities, these focus on conditioning for:

1.) Specific fitness: hauling, kite-skiing (knee and core strength as well as flexibility)

2.) Aerobic ability: Getting enough oxygen to the muscles and, importantly, the brain - this is needed to “stay in control” and make big decisions (such as route finding and assessing risks while on the move in a dynamic environment)

3.) Mental endurance: Kite-sledding looks and usually is easy…but try piloting a sled over bumpy terrain for more than an hour and staying focussed, especially when the kite has to be “piloted” (that is - flown in a wave pattern) to generate sufficient power to pull the sled. Watch Ben overpower his unladen kitesled 3a and lose it in this video:

So how do we train?

For the physical side of things we usually balance tyre dragging with stretching, long bike rides plus middle distance running (on hard ground) and longer runs (on the sand).

While the best mental training we have come up with is also physical:

• Long non-stop bushwalks such as the three peaks challenge in the Blue mountains, and;
• Long coastal “downwinder” kitesurfing journeys that last for many hours and finish far from the starting point. These are as taxing as they are beautiful and require constant vigilance for a number of unique reasons.

Above all, we make sure to mix it up, the above activities are rarely boring, and can be fitted in around (or into) our jobs and family time. For we feel it would be a shame if we pursued this dream at odds with the other pleasures and realities of our lives…”Single-minded determination” and “giving it all you’ve got with no compromise” is all very well for some people, but a balanced life it does not make for!

We make every decision out of love, If it’s not part of real life then we think carefully about whether we should be doing it!

See you out there!

Pat

It’s been three months since our incredible expedition to Northern Canada, so much has happened in that time…. Dave is back in shape and has further tuned and adjusted the kitesled, he just got back from testing it in 40+ knot winds in the icy Australian snow;

Ben has made great progress in the organisation of our Antarctic goal;

While I have lately been distracted somewhat by the arrival of our first child.

Looking back on those cold, cold days on the ice of James Bay, I’m amazed that we accomplished anything at all, such was the ghastly nature of our shocking vehicle accident * on the third day in country. We should really have sustained much greater injuries, disablement, or worse… but amazingly, after almost three weeks of recovery time, we were able to gingerly take on almost 500km of frozen ocean and succeed.

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2007 was a tragic year for the kitesled team.

We lost team member Andrew McAuley to the Southern Ocean, a painful period of soul-searching followed, which was helped by a training expedition to the mountains of Norway.

A selection of our old website posts from this bittersweet year are below.

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2006 was a wild year for the team…

Amongst other things Ben and Pat took their kitesleds across the Greenland Icecap on a challenging expedition where they learnt the hard way about the effects of climate change and what it is like to camp out in -40 degrees.

The updates that follow are a selection of what we posted in 2006.

2005 was the third year of the Icebird program…

It was the year we tested the second generation kitesled, and our team welcomed new members.

The news items below are a selection of what we posted on our old website in 2005.

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