The Goliath Expedition

5 February 2006.
The storm continues all night and we take a pounding. This morning it finally eases off and we determine to make a move. Forcing ourselves out of our bags I peek outside and am shocked when I don’t recognise anything. The pressure ridges have gone!
” Dimitri, look outside, can you see the coast?”
” Yep, it’s just a little ways off.”
” Thank God for that, somehow we seem to have moved. We’d better get a move on and get out of here.”

We cook a meal then boil up some water, pack the kit away and finally I get out of the tent. I’m certainly not prepared for what I see. Way off, over by the horizon I can see the tops of mountain’s in the distance. That is the main land!! Checking my GPS I find we are 28 miles out to sea, south-east of King Island!! We must have been drifting for many hours. No wonder the wind felt so strong in our ’sheltered’ spot. Talk about stunned. Attracted by my gasps Dimitri gets out of the tent. We actually can’t resist a laugh, but soon sober up as the implications begin to hit home. We are surrounded by ice but not particularly good ice. Directly to our east (between us and the mainland) are patches of open water. The full dilemma has now sunk in and I have to say I’m well pissed off. We are in some sort of trouble. How long would it take us to drift back to more solid ice, if at all? We were running short on food before this but now we are screwed. We begin pushing east and straightaway run into wet snow and ice, then extremely dodgy ice which stops us.

I am left with but one option as we will never really make it back to the shore anyhow. I had seen and heard of this kind of thing before. There would be miles of open water offshore and storms will clear the coast of sea ice. We will have to be airlifted out of here. For crying out loud! I briefly consider drowning myself as the easier option but then make yet another call to the State Troopers. We move back to the position where we had woken this morning as it looks the safest place. In the meantime the troopers dispatch a helicopter. At first it was going to be a Black hawk but they can’t muster a crew as it’s Superbowl Sunday and everyone has been drinking. So they send a chopper from Evergreen Helicopters (again). It’s with us in about an hour and puts down right next to us. It’s a tight squeeze but by folding the seats up we manage to get ourselves and both sleds aboard. A close thing mind you, we were close to leaving one of the sleds behind. It’s decided that Dimitri will fly back to Nome with the helicopter to have the frostbite looked at then catch up with me in Teller or Wales. This will also take the pressure off me to an extent as I can carry on with all the food and fuel.

I’m dropped off 2 miles from Cape Douglas and the chopper leaves for Nome. On the ground the wind still howls but now distinctly warmer. I hit the coast and find a different world, no sign of sea ice at all, just clear open ocean for as far as the eye can see. I push on back up to the Cape and I’m surprised to find that where we had camped had been a dividing line. From 5ft north of our tent site all the ice remains. Every thing south of that point is now out at sea. Had we put the tent up just a few yards along the cliffs, literally yards, we could have saved ourselves all that drama. Not to mention expense, as the Expedition is going to have to pay for this recovery and that will be far from cheap. Then of course there’s going to be the local press, they must love me by now. I can almost see the headlines now and shudder.
‘Read all about it, that Brits gone and done it again!’

North of Cape Douglas I can see ice out to about four miles with water beyond that. Meanwhile, moving inland I can’t see at all as I’m in a ‘white-out’ storm. I stumble into a herd of caribou sheltering in an inlet. As they stampede and kick up the snow it’s as though someone’s pulled a white sheet over my head. It continues to get worse as well, to the point where I’m virtually blind and can’t see a thing. The neutral grey light hides any details in the snow so I cannot see the ground in front of me, even at my feet. You really don’t know whether you’re staring at a white wall or into infinity. There’s neither depth nor detail, simply nothing. I repeatedly fall and stumble on the uneven ground that is criss-crossed with invisible piles of wind driven snow. Nor can you see the cliffs along the coastline. Someone suddenly removes the ground from beneath me and there’s a brief moments freefall before I slam in and roll. I manage but one gasp before the sled crashes into me from above, leaving me stunned on the snow. Slowly I come to my senses and sit up. I brush the snow from my face and test my limbs. Everything seems to be still there and working. I look up but can’t even see what I’ve fallen over which completely freaks me out. Where the hell am I? The cliffs along this stretch of coast are not that high but it feels as though I had just fallen from the moon back to earth. There’s so much adrenalin running through me now that I probably couldn’t feel any pain anyway, but this has scared the crap out of me. I soon work out that it’s not the cliffs I have fallen off but a wall of snow extending out from the cliffs. I had walked up on one side and then off the shear drop of about 10ft. From this point on I begin walking as though in a minefield, while at the same time thinking about finding a place to tent up and hide. I find myself on the sea ice but then begin to climb? After taking only a couple of more steps one leg suddenly goes through the snow and into a small crevasse. Somewhat surprised I pull myself out, take two more steps and then go in up to my waist. What the hell is going on? I pull myself out then crawl back to peer into a huge hole, deeper than I am tall, with water in the bottom. Jesus Christ! I’ve fallen onto a different planet. I don’t know this place, nor do I like it. I find some driftwood sticking up through the snow and decide to tie the tent to this. The wind is still howling and it’s a real fight to get the tent in place, maybe taking an hour to pin it all down as best I can. I had made about three miles north of the Cape but I’m thoroughly done with this crap.