The Other Side of the Ice: One Family's Treacherous Journey Negotiating the Northwest Passage by Sprague Theobald & Allan Kreda

Author:Sprague Theobald & Allan Kreda [Theobald, Sprague]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616086237
Publisher: Antenna Books
Published: 2012-07-27T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

STUCK

I was stunned.

Peter’s email had literally knocked the wind out of me. It felt as though I was watching a 1950s B-movie with terrible special effects, but as I read and reread Peter’s sobering words, my ears were filled with the rush and roar of time.

“Danger of Peel Sound getting capped over with ice to the north, keep an eye on it. Bellot Straight is iced in.” In that short handful of words, he let me know that if the central ice in The Passage south of us did not open in time for us to get through, and with one escape route now blocked and the other perhaps soon to be blocked, we were sitting on the edge of a very bad situation—failure or worse. The familiar, cold granite feeling in my stomach was back with a vengeance.

The duality of my role, trip leader as well as parent, was starting to split and head in two distinctly separate and inexorably diverging paths. If I had a crew of seasoned pros, it would be easy. I could simply announce we were facing a predicament that held serious repercussions. But these were my children, and I didn’t want to raise any more alarm than necessary. I needed to protect my children.

I’ve always been a great believer in having Plans B, C, and D. If the original plan goes awry, which it usually does, I’ve always taken great comfort in following the alphabet all the way down to Z if necessary. Reading Peter’s email, I realized that my Plans B and C had just been snatched off the table, seemingly before they ever got there.

Somewhere in the back of my mind lurked a Plan D.

For a few days, we had been slowly moving south into Peel Sound, crisscrossing the twenty miles of its width, moving from one anchorage to another, all the while waiting to see some indication of a lead opening up in the ice charts. Peter’s emails continued to be straight and to the point: the seasonal opening was running late and if it were going to happen this year, it may be brief. We were now facing the point of no return. The crew and I had all had conversations about the potential of not being able to get through and at one point Clinton and I actually projected dates when we’d need to turn around. If we weren’t to reach Cambridge Bay by September 2, there would be no point at all in trying to punch on through to Barrow then. By then, the Bering Sea would be in full voice and even the 100-foot commercial fishing vessels would have their hands full.

That date we all agreed on. What Clinton and I discussed privately was the scenario of Peel Sound being iced over to the north, trapping us for at least the winter. Neither of us had any answers for such a scenario and tried to keep focused on what we knew, not what we were guessing. Over the next ten days, we moved from small anchorage to small anchorage.

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