Wrangling Wrangel by Roderick Eime

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wrangling wrangel

Main: Wrangel Island. Sun tries to set behind mist enshrouded mountains and a sea of ice Right: Mother polar bear and first season cub on the sea ice near Wrangel Island

Story and photography by Rod Eime

An enigmatic landmass trapped in the fringes of the permanent Arctic ice pack, its apparently austere appearance hides a World Heritage-listed, self-contained island ecosystem.

Giant, snow-capped mountains rose magnificently into the crisp polar air, perhaps hundreds of metres high, while shimmering lakes bordered by lush forests dotted the land. Despite this idyllic vista, all before him was frozen solid, an impenetrable carpet of sea ice. The year was 1821 and Baron Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangel had been with his dogs on the ice for many months in search of the fabled lands hundreds of kilometres north of Siberia. Thwarted from setting foot on this mysterious nirvana by the permanent ice that so effectively isolates the Arctic island, the Russian baron was, in fact, witnessing a fata morgana: a complex mirage created by light passing through the cold air. It wasn’t until 1849 that British Naval Captain Henry Kellett named it for himself and the Crown, only to have it renamed by American whaler Thomas Long in 1867. Long thought

the Russian was more deserving. From that moment, Wrangel Island has been a point of contention between Russia, Britain, Canada and the United States. Despite a series of multinational flag-raisings over a period of 50 years, it is only now that the international community seems to have acquiesced to Russian sovereignty. Perhaps Wrangel Island’s ridiculously remote location in the perpetually ice-choked Chukchi Sea north of Siberia makes it something of an unattractive proposition. So, in July last year, I set out aboard the giant Russian icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov to see what all the fuss was about. Also on board, as a guest lecturer, was American author Jennifer Niven, whose two books, The Ice Master and Ada Blackjack, zero in on Wrangel Island as an epicentre of hopelessly misplaced optimism and tragedy. Her superbly written and

researched books trace in detail the vain efforts of British and American explorers and ‘scientific colonists’ to extract some profit from the land – monetary, political or intellectual. Standing on the deck, I watch the mighty Kapitan slice through irregular slabs of sea ice with relative ease. Even with a fearsome ‘ice knife’ in the bow and 25,000bhp (break horsepower) available to drive it home, we are occasionally forestalled by a particularly stubborn sheet. One, perhaps a metre thick and about the size of a city block, brings us to a noisy, shuddering halt. The Kapitan, unfazed, backs up and body-slams the floating mass, opening a fissure that gradually widens to admit our 15,000 tonnes of dieselelectric power. The waters through the notorious Bering Strait had been relatively icefree for most of the voyage, but then dense ice, interspersed with leads –

“Our first landing is to see a herd of musk oxen, gathered on the windy tundra ...”

channels of open water created by breaks in the ice – kilometres wide, shields Wrangel Island from the mainland – and from lesser-equipped vessels trying to make landfall there. It was precisely this phenomenon that thwarted seafarers for well over a century and prevented the rescue and resupply of the hapless souls marooned there. These ice floes are also the domain of the mother polar bears occasionally seen leading their firstseason offspring across the pack ice in search of seals. The denser the ice, the more the bears like it. They can’t catch seals in the thinning floes because the seals can easily escape into the water. I take my turn on bear watch, camera primed for the elusive shot. During her lectures, Jennifer passionately recounts the tale of Inuit woman Ada Blackjack, the sole survivor of Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s crazy attempt at colonising the island in 1921. After the failure of the resupply ship, she watched the three fit men set off to Siberia for help,

while she nursed the other suffering from scurvy. The trio disappeared into a snowstorm and were never seen again. Her patient, quickly failing, died some weeks later. It is five days from the port of Anadyr in Chukotka Province before we have our first glimpse of Wrangel Island, dull and foreboding through thick, wet Arctic mist. Far from welcoming, this island was one of the ‘jewels’ described by the imaginative Stefansson as a paradise teeming with game and resources. Sure, Wrangel Island can boast the largest population of denning polar bears – that is, females looking after young in the den – a few reintroduced reindeer and musk oxen, Arctic foxes, walruses and seals. Birds are abundant, too, especially the lesser snow geese (Anser caerulescens caerulescens) which, our Russian hosts assure us, flock in large numbers in the west of the island. Regrettably, we are not permitted to visit them. I’m beginning to think the baron would have been a bit disappointed

with his discovery had he actually made it through the pack ice. Stefansson, too, may have privately moderated his enthusiasm if he had actually seen the land. But there’s no mistaking the fact that the journey was one of the most difficult and unpredictable of the era. There’s a palpable sense of satisfaction among the passengers and crew, especially Jennifer, who almost appears to be channelling Ada at some points. We explore what appears to be a featureless landscape by both motorised zodiac and the Kapitan’s mighty MI-2 jet helicopters. Our first landing is to see a herd of musk oxen, gathered on the windy tundra and enjoying a family picnic among the bright pastel sprays of wildflowers. Wrangel Island actually has more vascular plants than any other Arctic island – more than 400. (Containing vessels that carry or circulate fluids throughout the plant, vascular plants are less common in the Arctic than elsewhere.) This display has the plant people quite excited, and well-insulated posteriors point skyward as they arrange their cameras for precision macro photos. Instead, my mind is imagining the forlorn souls trapped here and forced to eke out a living by hunting anything and everything. They ate polar bears, foxes and even grass to survive. Jennifer, too, normally

ebullient and vivacious, is strangely silent as she pensively kicks pebbles on the beach in her trademark leopard-skin gumboots. Apart from our intrepid baron, who made three trips out on to the ice, each involving many hundreds of kilometres, three other journeys deserve recounting. In 1881, the 33 shipwrecked survivors of the USS Jeanette dragged seven tonnes of stores and three heavy boats across the ice until they could finally launch them in an attempt to reach the mainland. A storm separated them, one boat was lost and the other two struggled ashore in the Lena River delta on the Siberian mainland. In the inhospitable cold, only 13 men were eventually rescued. In 1914, in one of the Arctic’s most enduring tales of survival, Captain Bob Bartlett and an Inuit hunter made for Siberia from Wrangel Island on foot to get help for the 15 men left on the island. Nine months later, a schooner he sent from Alaska picked up 12 survivors and for a few fleeting days, the heart-warming tale displaced the horrors of World War I from the front pages of newspapers. On a beautiful clear January day in 1923, three brave young men set out from Wrangel Island for Nome, Alaska, via Siberia, to get help. Ada Blackjack bade them farewell and wished them,

travelfacts silently, good luck. Allan Crawford, Milton Galle and Fred Maurer were never seen again. In a strange irony, Fred Maurer had been one of Bartlett’s men rescued in 1914. Such is the lure of the Arctic. Ada, alone and scared after the death of her only, sickly, companion, had to learn to hunt ducks with an unfamiliar rifle, trap foxes and overcome her phobia about polar bears. We all try to imagine being alone on this treeless land for months on end, foraging, hunting and just surviving. Two days are all we have to synthesise this isolation, and by the time we set a course south again, our attention has been diverted to the parties of men who made the crossing of Long Strait (to Siberia) on foot. With the smooth, flat landscape of Wrangel Island slowly disappearing in a lingering polar sunset, we leave behind this renowned nature reserve, repository of legend and lore, natural wonderland and kingdom of sadness and despair. Clearly, despite earlier valiant efforts, Wrangel Island will never be inhabited, left instead to the occasional scientific observer and the caprices of nature. A good thing, too. •

gettingthere

Adventure Associates operates the icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov on a program of northern summer cruises that include Wrangel Island, the Northwest Passage, the Russian Far East and the Canadian High Arctic. Phone (02) 8916 3000 or 1800 222 141, or visit www.adventureassociates.com/Arctic Australians need to transfer to Anadyr in Siberia via Anchorage, Alaska. Hawaiian Airlines flies Sydney-Honolulu four times a week, www.hawaiianairlines.com.au Fire and Ice Charters flies direct from Honolulu to Anchorage, www.hawaiianvacations.com

furtherinformation UNESCO, whc.unesco.org/en/list/1023

Main: Icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov crashes through arctic ice en route to Wrangel Island Top left: Chukchi family in the Russian Far East. Above:The Kapitan Khlebnikov in the arctic ice pack. Chukchi Sea Top right: Mum and cub have had enough of being stared at and photographed.