The Ice Master (26 page)

In a typical day, they would build the houses, feed the dogs, brush every bit of snow from their clothes, and then crawl inside the igloo through a small door, which was just big enough for them to squeeze through on their hands and knees. They covered this hole with a blanket, packing snow around it to keep out the wind and the cold.

And then they would make tea. Bartlett had written an ode to tea once: “Tea! Thou soft,
²⁵
thou sober, safe and venerable liquid.. . . I owe the happiest moments of my life, let me fall prostrate.” His literary effort was perhaps a bit overzealous, but it was nonetheless a fair summation of how vital a resource tea was to men on the Arctic ice. Its value was inestimable, and after a long day on the trail, in the frigid winter climate, there was nothing that warmed the men better or faster.

They were always keenly conscious of the ice, and the constant danger they faced. Nights were the most harrowing, when they lay in their snow houses, listening to the ominous creaking and grating of the ice. There were no bear jokes then as they rushed out of the igloos now and again, searching for the source of each ear-splitting boom or crash they had heard. They paced up and down in darkness, searching the ice around their camp, on the lookout for dangerous leads. One night, the ice snapped right across the floor of one of the snow houses. Tumbling out into the darkness, the men found they were surrounded by open lanes of water. They walked about gingerly for the rest of the night, trying to keep warm, careful to keep a foothold on the capricious ice.

On February 25, Munro's two parties broke camp and not long afterward were halted by the most enormous pressure ridge they had ever seen. They estimated it was at least fifty to seventy-five feet in height, and possibly more. The great monster sprawled eastward and westward, seemingly endless in all directions.

They absolutely did not think they would get across it. They split up into different parties, setting out in all different directions to find a way through or around the great ridge. They spent the entire day clambering about the ice, scaling the massive frozen mountain, following its eastward or westward progress for as long as they could. But when they reunited, no one had found a way through.

Discouraged, anxious, and utterly daunted, they returned to the previous night's camp, crawled into their snow houses, and talked things over. They decided to travel east until they came to the end of the pressure ridge—surely, it had an end—or until they found some way across it.

A
T
S
HIPWRECK
C
AMP,
they sewed until they couldn't stand it anymore and enjoyed themselves now that the rest of the company was gone. Truth be told, it was wonderful to be on their own. Of those who remained at camp—Bartlett, McKinlay, Mamen, Kataktovik, and the Eskimo family—only Templeman wasn't particularly easy to get along with, but at least he earned his keep by cooking for them.

Blistering winds forced them to stay indoors. McKinlay dreaded the actual pitching and breaking of camp because the snowdrift had buried everything, including the supply tent, which now lay beneath eight feet of snow. The men didn't go outside if they could help it, but each time they were forced to—as when they needed to feed the dogs in the other igloo—they had to dig their way out of the box house. This meant that they had to delay their departure, not only because the weather was unrelenting, but because the whole object of their staying in camp while Munro's teams went on was to make an inventory of everything they were leaving behind.

The temperature dipped to minus fifty degrees Fahrenheit now, and the windstorm raged. As they huddled in their snow house, McKinlay and the others were worried about Munro's first-division parties. The blustering wind and drifting snow would certainly cause them trouble, and they wouldn't have been surprised to see their comrades return to camp.

At last, on February 23, the snowdrift moderated and the wind died down. The temperature warmed to minus forty degrees Fahrenheit, and they hastened to finish preparations so they could leave camp the next day. They would take three sleds instead of two, Bartlett decided, with Bartlett driving one, and Kuraluk and Kataktovik driving the others. Each would be loaded with pemmican, biscuits, milk, tea, and oil.

Kuraluk and his family led the way with Templeman, with Auntie carrying the toddler Mugpi on her back. Eight-year-old Helen would walk the entire way on foot, sometimes helping her father with the sled. An hour later, Bartlett set out with Mamen, McKinlay, and Kataktovik. They took one last survey of camp, making sure they hadn't forgotten anything, and then Bartlett wrote out a memorandum. “Canadian Arctic Expedition
²⁶
, Shipwreck Camp, Feb. 24th, 1914,” it read. “Left Camp 10 a.m. Wrangell [
sic
] Island bearing SSW. . . We go with 3 sledges, 12 dogs and supplies for sixty days.”

They all signed their names to the document, and then Bartlett placed it in a copper tank and buried it in the snow. It was a way of leaving their mark, and proof that they had been there in this drifting camp, which refused to be claimed for very long. They also left the British ensign flying over the ice.

The camp had been their home for over a month now, giving them refuge—such as it was—after the loss of the
Karluk,
and they would all feel a certain degree of attachment to the place, long after they'd left it. With the
Karluk
gone, Shipwreck Camp was the only home they had in the Arctic, and it made that vast, cold world seem less daunting. It had given them familiarity and, as minute as it was, a sense of place. But they had to leave it. As soon as the spring thaw arrived and the ice began to break apart, their temporary home would cease to exist.

T
HEIR SLEDS WERE
heavily loaded and the dogs were almost useless, even though Bartlett had given them all they could eat before they left camp to strengthen them for the trek to the island. Bartlett finally had McKinlay harness up and help pull his sled while he guided and drove the dogs. It was a miserable job—not even time to catch one's breath—but McKinlay was determined to endure.

Mamen's dislocated knee made him too fragile to do much of anything right now, except limp alongside Kataktovik's sledge, doing the best he could to keep up. The knee bothered him constantly and popped out of place again at least once on the trail. He was suffering silently, but everyone knew the pain he was in. He bristled at what he viewed as his own weakness, and there was nothing any of them could do to bring him out of it. Bartlett kept reminding him how indispensable he had already been to them, and what invaluable work he had already accomplished, but it did not help his spirits.

Captain Bartlett was eager to reconnect with the rest of the party, and in a hurry to reach land. Too much had happened already, with the loss of Dr. Mackay's party, and the uncertainty about the fate of Sandy, Barker, Brady, and Golightly. The captain wanted to get his people on any kind of land, and then move on to Siberia as quickly as possible.

Because of his hurry, Bartlett had made the mistake of not building a snow igloo that first night on the trail, and they suffered for it in the tent, which dripped steadily, all night long. It was the coldest night of McKinlay's life. As he lay there, huddled closely between the captain and Mamen, he remembered some advice he had gotten before leaving Scotland: “Wriggle your fingers
²⁷
and toes and wrinkle your face. Give your ears an occasional rub.” So he did.

It wasn't long before he heard the captain's sleepy voice. “If you can't
²⁸
lie still, boy, get out.”

McKinlay immediately lay still, but it was so cold, he couldn't sleep. Instead, he stared up into the darkness, feeling the cold penetrating skin, muscle, and bones. Unable to stand it anymore, he slipped out of the tent and tramped around in the snow, trying to get the blood back into his limbs.

It was still dark the next day when they broke camp and continued on their way. Sometime in the afternoon, the captain let McKinlay take a turn driving the sled while he walked ahead with his pickaxe, carving the trail. McKinlay had never driven a sled before, but he had watched Bartlett do it and felt fairly sure of himself. He was doing fine until the bow of the Peary sledge struck the edge of an ice hummock and the whole outfit turned over, including the dogs, who ended up in a horrible, snarling tangle. The blood rushed to McKinlay's face as he stood there, cursing them. He went on, each oath worse than the last, until he felt his head might explode with rage. He had never been so angry. He let those dogs have it and, of course, they paid no attention to him. They stood in a crazy, mixed-up pile howling at each other. McKinlay roared at them and the dogs roared back.

Suddenly he looked away and noticed the captain, rolling on the ice, helpless with laughter.

“Oh boy,”
²⁹
Bartlett said, “I thought I knew all the swear words, but you have sure taught me some new ones.”

McKinlay had to laugh, too, in spite of himself. In his previous life as a schoolmaster, he'd never even uttered a mild “damn,” much less the barrage of foul language he'd just unleashed.

Kuraluk had been traveling so far ahead of them that they hadn't even caught a sign of him yet. Now they ran into his party near Camp Five. Just two hundred yards away was the second cache left by Chafe, which had originally contained fifteen gallons of coal oil. Now there were only six, and the others were nowhere to be found, no doubt buried by the snow or swept away by the ice. The loss of oil was such a serious one that Bartlett sent McKinlay and Kataktovik back to Shipwreck Camp the next morning to bring back as much oil as possible. They were also asked to fetch some skins, tea, candles, seal meat, ammunition, leaves from the
Pilot Book,
and chocolate.

For supper that night, Bartlett, Mamen, Templeman, the Eskimos, and McKinlay polished off three mugs of tea each and some pemmican. The Hudson's Bay brand was too fatty, and the Underwood pemmican too sweet, they had decided. Neither tasted good, especially to a novice like McKinlay, but he was glad to have it anyway.

The ice crashed and growled all night long, and cracks opened everywhere, one twenty feet wide, another just behind the igloo where Bartlett, Mamen, McKinlay, and Kataktovik were resting. As the ice churned and crushed, the snow house shook violently, finally forcing the men out onto the ice. There they found, as McKinlay described it, a “world in torment
³⁰
.”

With lightning speed, they rescued their supplies and moved them to a safer floe of ice some distance away. “The ice was
³¹
breaking up into small cakes,” McKinlay wrote, “if one did not take care to step on just the right spot on a cake, it would sway & tilt & one had to jump for it. And the darkness made matters worse.”

In the midst of it all, Kuraluk's igloo cracked from corner to corner with a great roar, and there was now a lead of water where he and Auntie and the little girls had been sleeping. They nearly lost Mugpi to the water and the ice, but she was rescued and they escaped just in time. For the rest of the night, Bartlett, Kuraluk, Mamen, McKinlay, Kataktovik, and Templeman paced up and down while Auntie and the girls moved into the captain's igloo and tried to sleep.

The racket in the ice continued all day, until the men expected the ice to open up beneath them or to split their igloo in two. Fortunately, neither happened, and finally the ice quieted. McKinlay and Kataktovik then set out on the trip to Shipwreck Camp, making good time in spite of the breaking ice and open water, bringing back fifteen gallons of coal oil, as well as the other items Bartlett had requested.

They started out early the next morning, heavily loaded, both men and dogs harnessed up and pulling the sleds.

A few hours later, Bartlett and his men were surprised to see Munro's two teams traveling toward them. “No way of
³²
going through,” they told the captain when they reached him, and then Munro described the monstrous pressure ridge. They were going back to Shipwreck Camp, he said. There was no way of getting to the island.

Mamen was characteristically disgusted: “Certainly a fine
³³
party . . .. some fine specimens, indeed.” McKinlay and Bartlett were equally unhappy with the chief engineer's decision to turn back.

Bartlett asked the men what they planned to do when they got back to camp, and it was obvious they hadn't thought it through. He was furious and made it clear in the strongest of terms that they were going forward, not back, and the pressure ridge be damned.

The captain then took the lead, followed by Mamen, McKinlay, Kuraluk, and Kataktovik, and they picked their way through three hundred yards of rough ice. Then they made camp on a small floe of smooth ice, the only smooth patch in the midst of miles of the roughest ice they had ever seen. Bartlett ventured ahead, clambering up any peak he could to study the conditions of the trail that lay before them.

All he could see were the immense ridges; the vibrating, tumbling, voracious ice; the sprawling leads of water. The icescape was alive and uneven. They were lucky to have made it this far. But what of Sandy's party? And what of Mackay's? There would be no hope for them if they were caught in this chaos.

And there it was—the imposing ice ridge, or rather a series of immense ridges run together, stretching east and west toward land for miles and miles, like a great, sprawling mountain range, blending into the horizon without end.

Bartlett had never seen anything like it. Neither had Hadley, in all of his twenty-five years' experience living in the Arctic.

There was no end to it. No way of going through. No way of going around.

That decided it. They would have to build a road across.

March 1914

It really does
¹
begin to look as if we have all the seeds of disaster for the future.

—W
ILLIAM
M
C
K
INLAY, MAGNETICIAN

V
ilhjalmur Stefansson told the
New York Times
that he was certain the missing
Karluk
was fine, as were her men. He could not imagine that they had come to any harm and he conjectured that, most likely, the ship was probably still wandering across the Arctic Ocean, held fast by ice.

In reality, no one knew where the men of the
Karluk
were, or what had happened to them. The Canadian government had nothing to say to the families of the missing men it had hired to staff and crew this expedition. They did not want to raise false hopes, nor did they want to dash any expectations. The
Karluk
might just as well be found as not found, her men alive rather than dead. The official stance was that they had every confidence that the
Karluk
would withstand the elements and her passengers would survive.

Thus, Bartlett's mother, McKinlay's parents and siblings, Mamen's brothers and fiancée, Murray's wife, and all of the relatives of the other men could do nothing but pray and hope for the best and wait for word of their loved ones.

There had been sightings over the past few months—the masts of distant ships, a “white man's” tracks crossing the sea ice, heading toward land. Not much to go on, but there was hope.

Stefansson, however, did not see any reason to act. He was at Collinson Point with the Southern Party, busy outfitting himself to head once more into the Arctic. When he heard news of the sightings, he gave Dr. Anderson instructions “that no ‘relief
²
expedition' be sent out on the ground that the search for a ship placed like the
Karluk
has only infinitesimal chances of success and a vessel so sent out would be likely to be no better situated herself.. . .”

No search party would be sent then. There was, Stefansson said, nothing they could do for her.

T
HE MEN SURVEYED
the road ahead and felt their hearts sinking. It was going to take them a week to break a trail through the ice barrier if it could be managed at all. Bartlett and the Eskimos led the way, marking out the road while everyone else followed with picks, axes, and shovels, cutting their way through the huge walls and boulders of ice. In some parts the ice was pressed into great, soaring ridges eighty feet high, with sheer, vertical faces that would have to be scaled and made passable for men, dogs, and sleds loaded with provisions. “The front of
³
it appeared to us like a great prison wall,” said Chafe. “It was as smooth and perpendicular as if built by a stonemason.” Some still preferred taking their chances at Shipwreck Camp. Better to live on the fickle ice, they felt, than to have to face this devil.

But Bartlett was determined. The captain sent periodic relay parties back to various camps where stores were cached, to pick up extra supplies, and luckily the weather, although horrendously cold, was calm enough to work in.

If they could just make it over the other side of the massive ridges, they would be safe from shifting ice. These hills stood as the division between the drifting land-fast ice and the floating sea ice. The hills had been formed by the drifting variety, driven by onshore winds blowing against the grounded ice.

It was the slowest, most grueling work imaginable, toiling to make a narrow path, three or four feet wide at most, through three and a half miles of ice mountains. After chipping away at the pass, they then had to make it as smooth as possible so they could drag their sleds over it.

“To look at
⁴
the ice, one would think it impossible ever to get through it,” McKinlay wrote in his diary. “In some parts there are ridges of 60 or 70 ft. in height, some even higher, with a sheer vertical face on one side as smooth as if they had been built by human hands. And we must get over & through & we must camp here until we have made that possible, which will take some days.”

The chasms between the ice ridges were as wide as the ridges were tall. All able men climbed up one steep side of the mountain, where they posed precariously, cutting chunks of ice from the top, which they then rolled down into the chasm below until it grew to half the height of the ridge itself. This was harrowing work, and Bartlett was having to train the men as they went.

Afterward, the men “would grade a
⁵
road down to it, go across and grade up the side of the next ridge; then fill up the next chasm in the same way, and so on till the whole thing was finished,” wrote Chafe.

Then they had to maneuver the sledges over the tops of the ridges, which meant fastening a rope to the nose of each sled and hauling it up the incline. Once at the top, they untied the rope, fastened it to the rear of the sled, and lowered it down the other side. Sometimes, they held the sled at the top and ran a rope from it to another sled below. Then as the first one slid down the incline, it would pull the second sled up. At the bottom, they simply moved to the next ridge and repeated the same process all over again until they eventually crossed the entire range.

Bartlett sent Kuraluk and Kataktovik ahead through the rafters to scout out the ice conditions. They reported that the ridges ahead resembled a small mountain range. As Bartlett said, “Building a road
⁶
across them was like making the Overland Trail through the Rockies.”

M
ALLOCH HAD SOMEHOW
gotten his feet frozen again—two toes and the heel of each foot this time. Malloch, being Malloch, didn't tell anyone about it and just laughed it off and tried to ignore it in the hopes that it would go away. The result was that he had gotten himself into a real mess. The heel of the right foot was now a mass of raw flesh, and Mamen clipped off the skin and bandaged it. Malloch was increasingly careless with himself and his clothing, and no matter how many hard lessons he was taught, he never seemed to remember or pay them any mind.

Maurer, too, had a frozen heel, and he and Malloch stayed inside, worthless invalids. Frozen feet were a serious handicap in the Arctic, not only to the victims, but to the progress of the entire party. Mamen couldn't help being annoyed by Malloch's lack of concern for himself. His thoughtlessness was starting to affect everyone now, making him unable to work and do his share. But Mamen took care of Maurer and Malloch as best he could. With Dr. Mackay gone, everyone took a turn at doctoring, particularly Mamen, McKinlay, and second engineer Williamson, who seemed to have a special knack for it and didn't appear to be bothered by the more squeamish aspects of the job.

Bartlett ordered Mamen to stay in camp to rest his leg while everyone else toiled over breaking the trail. According to Mamen, the captain told him, “You will have
⁷
use for it before you and I get through.” Mamen's job was to rest. Impatient, he tried to remind himself that this was just as vital to the expedition as carving the trail or moving provisions across the ridges. Bartlett needed Mamen's leg to strengthen and heal so that Mamen could go with him to Siberia. He hadn't told the topographer this in so many words, but Mamen knew it just the same.

Little by little, as the pass across the ridges was being carved out, Bartlett and his men moved camp to the other side. The distance over the ridge was three and three-quarter miles, which seemed much longer given the tremendous trouble they had getting the stuff across. Bartlett himself made three round trips over the bad ice, and fireman Breddy was on his fourth of the day. He was a typically indolent young man, always eager to hand responsibility over to someone else, but now he worked with uncharacteristic energy and enthusiasm.

Mamen had gone over with the second load and there he had stayed. Kataktovik built an igloo, so Mamen had shelter, and nothing to do but watch the men toil and struggle.

While everyone else worked on cutting the trail, McKinlay, Hadley, and Chafe were sent back to Shipwreck Camp to bring back more supplies. After much trouble in the morning picking up the trail to camp, they arrived there later that same afternoon. They loaded eight hundred pounds of provisions onto the sleds the next day, so that when they were finished, the only items remaining in camp were cases of pemmican and various smaller items.

On the return trip, they perspired so much from the exertion that Chafe peeled off all the clothing on his upper body except for a sweater. Finally, they decided to cache part of the load at Camp One so they could make better time. At this rate, it would take them about six days to reach the main party, and they needed to move faster than that. Bartlett would need the dogs, and the manpower.

The next day they lost the trail and searched for an hour before finding it again. When they did, the trail was smashed up and too rough to drive the sleds over, so they had to cut a new one. Hadley was an imposing, irritable figure. He was also, next to Bartlett, the one who knew the most about cutting trails and maneuvering over ice, so McKinlay and Chafe followed his lead.

McKinlay was chopping his way through the towering, raftered ice, when the barking of the dogs made him turn around. He saw Chafe heading for the ice hummock, carrying his axe. Then he saw an impressive young polar bear—ten feet from head to toe—standing behind him. Before McKinlay could say anything, Chafe called out to Hadley, who hastily cut his rifle off the sled. The old man pulled the trigger but the grease on the cartridge was frozen. Their hearts raced as the bear lunged after the dogs. In an instant, Hadley tossed out the useless cartridge, loaded another, and fired a shot, which sank the bear to his knees. A second shot finished him off.

They were busy fixing up one of the igloos at Camp Five when a second bear appeared, much larger than the first and with a beautiful coat. The bear also went after the dogs, three of which had broken free from their harness, and now ran around the bear in circles, barking and snapping at him. The bear sat on his haunches and swung at them with his paws, nearly destroying one of them with a scrape to the back. Hadley, on tiptoe, crept over to the sled and again took down his rifle. At first, he tried to scare the bear off so that he wouldn't have to kill him. But the bear was already terrified of the dogs and paid no attention to Hadley. Finally, to protect the dogs, the old man took aim and fired, wounding the bear, which ran twenty yards before Hadley's second shot killed him instantly.

Later, as McKinlay was retrieving ice to make water for the tea, he heard the dogs barking as before. Standing beside the dead bear was another of the giant creatures. He was still and silent, eyeing the dogs warily as they raced around him. And then came Hadley again—boom—with another shot. The bear ran, dropping about a hundred yards away, but as McKinlay, Hadley, and Chafe started for him, he rose again and loped off, disappearing from view.

The next morning, Hadley found the injured bear three hundred yards or so away from camp. He was gasping for breath, and the old man shot him to put an end to his pain. Hadley cut open the bear to let the gas escape, and then they fed the dogs from the carcass and cut off a leg to take on the trail with them.

When they reached the ice mountains, they paused to take in the scenery. There was no smooth ice to be seen anywhere in that great, vast field before them. The enormous ice boulders, large as buildings, were piled on top of each other, scattered like mammoth rocks on a giant's playground. A parallel series of ridges mirrored these, their icy heads looming above and beyond. They were all you could see for miles and miles. It was through these that the trail had been forged, because there was no way around them.

Bartlett and his men had divided the loads and dragged them across as carefully as they could. The sleds were heavy and awkward, and it was slow going over the ice. To make matters worse, there were deep chasms in the ice at some points. They had to be especially vigilant: one wrong step and a man could plunge to his death. So they moved stealthily, cautiously, dragging the sleds over the ridges, all hands hanging on to them as they slid—as carefully as possible, so as not to get out of control—down the sheer incline on the other side.

At last, the ridge was completely subdued, six days after it was begun. Six days' labor over three miles. They had not yet reached the land-fast ice, but they were over the worst part. Bartlett was anticipating more pressure ridges before they reached land, but for now, the men were relieved. It was calmer on this side of the mountains. There was no wind, only a light breeze; just forty more miles or so, and they would reach the island.

Once they were on the other side of the ridges, the men could see more clearly how the mountains must have formed. Blizzards had pushed the moving ice against and across the stationary ice, which threw the ice into, as Bartlett put it, “fantastic, mountainous formations
⁸
that are as weird as that astounding picture of Chaos before the Creation that used to ornament the first volume of Ridpath's ‘History of the World.'”

They were thankful to be on the other side of them, and the men—particularly the polar novices—could not believe they had won their way through. “It was with
⁹
a sense of intense relief,” wrote Chafe, “that we looked back at this monster wall, and then gazed over the vast, almost level, stretch of ice before us.”

They moved in the teams Bartlett had designated when leaving Shipwreck Camp, which meant McKinlay worked with Mamen, Kataktovik, and the captain as they moved forward over the ice, on the last leg of the journey to land.

Land. They could scarcely believe they were so close. Just a couple more days' march, Bartlett said.

McKinlay and Mamen had set out before sunrise with a load for the next camping place, seven miles closer to Wrangel Island. They were working in relays again, carrying forward supplies, which they cached at the next camp, and then returning and bringing the rest. Some of the men remained in the new camp to build the snow houses for that night while the rest of the men went back for the remaining stores. It was a system that seemed to work well.