Ellesmere: Two Men Alone in a World of Ice
An unlikely duo tackle one of the last great undone expeditions in the high Arctic.
Boomer and I were trapped.
An ocean current was driving the North Pole ice pack into the Robeson Channel, a 12-mile-wide constriction between Ellesmere Island and the northern coast of Greenland. Behind this floe, a seemingly infinite reservoir of polar ice was moving southward under compression of tectonic magnitude. Our path was blocked.
An ice floe the size of a football field drifted slowly toward the cliff, rotated, and buckled. The air filled with a human-like groan, followed by a sharp crack that echoed off the nearby mountain. Ice crystals exploded and danced rainbows in the sunshine, while 10-foot-thick chunks rose 30 feet out of the sea and smeared against solid rock.
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