© Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace
Eric Philips is an Australian polar explorer and adventurer, who brings his expertise on the ice to the Arctic Sunrise for our expedition to bear witness to the Arctic meltdown. Here he's having a look back at an adventure from a couple of weeks ago, and the resourcefulness needed to pull it off: kayaking down the melt stream of a glacier!- Dave
It's not often that I balk at an adventure, particularly if it involves ice or a kayak or both, but the suggestion that we paddle a river flowing on the surface of the Petermann Glacier brought my heart rate up a notch or two. "The surface is too rough to ski over so why don't we paddle the river with the radar?" suggested our resident glaciologist, Alun Hubbard. A lecturer in glaciology at Aberystwyth University, this swashbuckling Welshman was no stranger to adventure, with Antarctic sailing and mountaineering as two of his many outdoor pursuits. "A stretch of about 25km ends just upstream of The Whirlpool and should get us a really good fix on Petermann's basal topography."
Crikey, this guy's nuts
In 1995 I traversed Greenland using skis and kites and spent too much time pondering the consequences of falling into one of the many melt channels that drained via moulins into the ice. I'd also paddled an iceberg-laden Grade 3 river that spilled from the Greenland icesheet down to sea level and knew the numbing cold of ice-borne water. The water in Petermann River was just short of freezing and its volume could fill an Olympic swimming pool every sixty seconds. But after an aerial recce of the section in mind, I was in like Flynn.
This was a mission that required some innovation and justified a healthy amount of fine scrutiny. Not only because we would be ferrying some expensive ice-penetrating radar kit but also because we didn't embark on this Greenland campaign with such a specialist adventure in mind. We had two double open sea kayaks and two single white-water boats on board, but all, including paddles and buoyancy vests, were of a recreational ilk. Fortunately the experience of our paddle team, and the resourcefulness of the Sunrise's crew, made up for any shortfall in equipment. And I could rely on Alun to prepare the expensive radar rig for river travel, including 80 metres of receiving and transmitting antennas, a couple of batteries, solar panel and laptop computer. The antennas, buoyed by small floats, would be tethered between the boats, the transmitter, large battery and solar panel housed in an unmanned kayak and Alun's laptop and kinematic GPS and radar receiving apparatus would perch at his feet where he could monitor the data. Perfect! What could go wrong?
Paddling a small blue white-water boat I took up the pace-setting front position, and, having completed multiple helicopter scouts, I would navigate referencing a picture of the river scored into my brain. Twenty metres behind me, accompanying Alun in the command centre, was Scottish Oceans Institute geomorphologist Richard Bates. A sea kayaker, skier and climber, I reckoned he'd have a cool head in a crisis and he looked as fit as a fiddle. Sixty metres behind their red boat tracked the green transmitter kayak and taking up the rear twenty metres hence was Sunrise radio operator and long-time Greenpeace campaigner, Texas Constantine. Another all-round adventurer he'd be in a red double by himself, providing tension in the system and keeping the transmitter kayak out of trouble. Texas also outfitted each boat with a submersible two-way radio. Each paddler was similarly waterproofed in a dry-suit.
Moments before our 9.30am launch, Alun added another dimension to our folly. ‘I should let you know that the battery gives off over 4000 volt pulses', he mentioned with a defiant grin. "Electricity doesn't bode well with water, but aah well!" Righto Alun. Any relation to Jack Sparrow?
Under a still, blue sky we slid the 120m-long kayak train into the first of a string of small inter-connected lakes filled with the clearest waters on Earth. The surrounding hills, the shoreline and the lakebed were ice, all ice. Chosen as a proving ground, the lake system gave us opportunity to iron out our strategy and any questions about overheating, power supply, tension on the lines or data logging were quickly answered. It was time for fun and we traversed the last lake before spilling into a creek that ushered us into the main river. Once in the flow the familiar honeymoon cocktail of trepidation and thrill gave way to unadulterated rapture. The surreality of what we were doing is still unexplainable. The only analogy I can concoct is equally arcane yet supported by Nick Cobbing's otherworldly aerial photos of us on the river - that of riding a magic carpet through space. Our bliss would not last long.
Beneath us a couple of yawning caverns sped by eliciting a feeling akin to swimming over the edge of a submarine cliff. My 1995 Greenland ponderings returned. Moments later we were almost wrapped around a grounded iceberg in mid-stream. My flat-bottomed boat was made for moving water but the double sea kayaks lacked the maneuverability in the current and Alun and Richard only just managed to coax their boat into the port-side channel. Texas behind could see the impending trap and hugged the left bank to keep both himself and the transmitter boat out of trouble. In future we would allow some slack in the lines before effecting ferry-glides or break-outs.
The icescape changed with every bend – babbling creeks, idyllic eddies, ice canyons, distant cliffs – and the hours swept by like the crystal water below. A leisurely lunch on shore gave opportunity to stretch limbs, scoff sandwiches and coffee and bolster our team with ice-sheet climatologist Jason Box joining Texas' boat. An associate professor with Byrd Polar Research Center, Jason earned recognition from the scientific community for calculating the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet. The mass balance is the difference between the input of snow that falls on Greenland's ice sheet, compared to the loss of ice from melting and calving from glaciers. At the moment, this balance is in deficit; more snow may be falling on the ice sheet, but yet more is melting.
The signature coming through on Alun's computer was really crisp and it seemed as though today's sortie would only add to scientists' understanding of glacial reaction to air and ocean warming.
With the peak melt on the glacier at around 4pm, a couple of hours after the sun's 2pm zenith, the water was noticeably faster and higher as we re-entered the flow. Visions of The Whirlpool in flood just one kilometer below our exit put some urgency into my paddle strokes and we picked up the pace to a zippy 9km/h. As if on cue, the riverbanks steepened and we entered a dramatic frozen canyonland. I likened it to the spout of a funnel. Soon enough I saw the marker flag we'd pre-positioned on a bend before our exit and I talked the team through the break-out procedure via radio. A small ice-island and eddy on the inside of a tight right-hand bend made for a bomber exit, so long as we positioned ourselves well – slack in the lines, nose into the up-stream margin of the eddy, paddle hard, break out. As backup I had previously sunk a steel rod into the ice bank and placed a couple of helpers with ropes on stand-by. As backup to the backup another rod lay in wait at a drop-dead exit 200m upstream of the Whirlpool, but we weren't going there.
Eight hours after sliding into that lake we gathered on an icy bank overlooking the exit, our mood as buoyant as the bergy bits that peppered the channel. We'd completed a pretty audacious paddle, driven by a scientific premise that would add a piece to Alun's glaciological puzzle. "This novel adventure revealed a 27km longitudinal snapshot of Petermann's floating ice tongue which when compared with previous data, indicates that its base is melting away at incredible rates by warm fjord currents, accelerating the shelf's demise and inevitable breakup."
