JERRY BORUCKI
When snow fell, the time came to leave.
Frigid winds ruffled the top of Mount St. Elias.
I
set sail from Half Moon Bay on July 11 firmly believing that 2010 was my year to make it to the North Pole. I'd spent the last two years strengthening my Freya 39, Arctic Alpha Wülf Wülf, to Lloyd’s Ice Class 1 standards for my assault. It was my fifth time in six years to the Aleutians, and my third try for the pole. I sailed 2,000 miles west to 155°W, and then I turned north for another 800 miles. I put into Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island in the Aleutians after a 28-day voyage. I noticed that the northern sky was full of the angry signs of winter, and it was only August. Streamers of long cirrus clouds spanned the sky and they were hard-driven by a cyclonic wind coming from the pole. In Dutch Harbor, I was tied up to Henk de Velde’s 55-ft trimaran Juniper. Henk is a tall wiry man with a patch of unruly hair. He'd spent the winter of '02-'03 in Russian Siberia in the 52-ft steel hull boat Campina. I asked Henk what to expect if I wintered over in polar ice. His face turned hard and he stared off into the middle distance: “It will crush you.” I waited 11 days in Dutch Harbor for a weather window to sail to the Arctic but it was one gale after another in the Bering Sea. Arriving three weeks early, winter was shutting down the Arctic. Though I'd sailed to 76°N in '07, I'd never been in polar ice. Now I needed to push through heavy ice. I wondered if Arctic Alpha Wülf Wülf's fiberglass hull would survive the onslaught. I wondered if I had the mettle for such an adventure. I wondered if I would be crushed.
O
n August 8, my latest weatherfax
was showing a high pressure system building in the Gulf of Alaska, and it was giving favorable winds to Icy Bay in Southeast Alaska. Since the Arctic wasn't an option this year, I sailed 1,400 nautical miles in 12 days with light winds from the north to northwest and one easy-to-sail light gale. While I waited for morning light to enter Icy Bay, a southwesterly began to moan and cold dank clouds came scudding across the sky. It was a long sleepless night. At dawn, I was surprised to find a sparkling clear azure sky above giant mountains standing tall with icecovered peaks. From the entrance of Icy Bay, I sailed five miles northeast in waters speckled with icebergs. After a two-mile channel, the bay splits into two fjords forming a 'Y' — to port is Tsaa Fjord with two major glaciers, Guyot and Yahtse, and no known anchorages; to the northeast lies Taan, a deep-water fjord with precipitous bluffs rising to 800 feet on each side. The bluffs are profoundly scoured with many long grooves etched from the waterfalls. I got the impression that it rained very hard up here. Coming to an uncharted cove five miles up Taan, I anchored in 30 feet of water. The shoreline was dotted with stranded icebergs, and Mount St. Elias was about 10 miles distant. Rising out of the water like some giant ice-covered dragon’s tooth, St. Elias’ ramparts rise to 18,008 feet, its summit piercing the stratosphere. It cast a baleful eye on this interloper, and there was a disapproving rumbling of ice in its glaciers. The days seemed boundless with
sunshine and warmth, and the air filled with the promise of high adventure. I ventured out each day to explore the fjord that leads to the ice wall of Tyndall Glacier. Tyndall comes pouring out of high caldrons from Mount St. Elias like a white ribbon of ice cream speckled with chocolate chips. With an ear splitting rifle crack, huge sections of the ice wall came crashing down. Massive blue ice chunks would hurtle to the water followed by a comet tail of debris. My heart would skip a beat as I watched in awe. The sound reverberated off the fjord walls sending birds and seals scurrying for cover. That was followed by a slow, ponderous wave that jarred and scraped the boat against the surrounding brash ice filled with big ice floes. This is nature in its wildest, most spectacular, rawest form; taking back what it gave to the mountain 10,000 years ago. The rain fell when the western civilization was at its earliest beginnings, before the pyramids, before the written word. Three to four hundred inches of rain fall annually on the mountain, forming dense blue ice that is pulled inexorably downward by gravitational forces, crushing, grinding, and scouring the gullies into U-shaped valleys. After 10 millennia on the mountain, the ice returns to the sea. Seals lay on the icebergs sun bathing in large colonies, and they watched me as if I were an alien space ship invading their territory. One brave seal ventured near the boat, and after a furtive glance, silently descended to safer depths. I spent days and days of shortening daylight staring at the glacier wall with the magnificent mountains towering high
