by Nathan Boddy
Jesse Crocker may have experienced mild flashbacks during the cold temperatures this week, recalling the 1200 mile ski trip he made across a vast section of Greenland last April. But while the temperatures here in Montana may have matched what he felt, that would be the only similarity to his time on the Greenland ice sheet.
Crocker, an avid kite skier, says that he’d been interested in arctic exploration for years. After having set his sites on the expedition, and two seasons of dedicated preparation, he made the trip from Kangerlussuaq to Qaanaaq in 18 days, completely under the power of the wind, essentially transversing the middle 1/3 of the massive island.
“I read a lot of books about the history of polar exploration,” he said. And after reading a compelling article about someone else who’d made the trip by kite skiing, he says that, “Greenland kind of got into my head as someplace I wanted to see.”
Although the expedition was guided, the group considered of only three individuals: the Norwegian guide, a Norwegian participant, and Crocker himself. The three were unknown to each other until coming together at the airport in Copenhagen. From that point, the trio traveled to Kangerlussuaq at 66.5° North latitude, just inside the Arctic Circle. Two days of walking across ice was required before they’d ascended to the snow-covered ice-sheet, and were able to settle into their kite-ski equipment.
However, their first direction was still not north. Instead, they chose to sojourn further to the south and east in order to visit a remote Cold War era relic known as ‘Dye-2,’ which was a part of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar line for detection of Soviet nuclear attack. The DEW system was comprised of over 60 stations stretching from Alaska clear though Iceland, roughly following the 69th parallel. Dye-2 was one of four stations in Greenland, and was abandoned in 1988, leaving it as a frozen landmark which Crocker described as, “the only thing to see out there.” The group’s visit to Dye-2 had not been in the original plans, but their progress was good enough in the first days of the expedition to merit them pushing against the wind and adding the milage in order to visit the site.
“There are not many places to go on the Greenland ice sheet,” said Crocker. “It’s big and flat and smooth.”
With their visit to Dye-2 complete, the skiers then took advantage of katabatibc winds to turn themselves northward. These winds, which Crocker says are, “as smooth and steady as you find anywhere on land,” are formed in places where high cold regions give birth to dense, downward moving air which can be counted on to flow with consistency and in a predictable direction. “It’s wind you would expect to find out in the middle of the ocean,” Crocker says, and it allows kite skiers to maintain a fairly predictable consistent speed of around 15-20 miles per hour. Only one day during Crocker’s journey did the winds fail to develop, leaving them tent-bound for the day.
Crocker had three different kites with him on the journey, but his primary was sized 15 meters square and able to get him moving in a 10 mph wind. The kite, coupled with downhill ski equipment and a sled behind for gear, and the skiers were able to navigate northward in a style that would have made early polar explorers blush. Speed and style aside, however, Crocker and his teammates still dealt with the brutal cold and the disorienting circulation of the sun at high latitudes.
“The third day of the trip we saw our last sunset,” said Crocker, after which the trio was moving through an endless flat horizon of white.
“After the second day, no mountains. Not a bird, not a bug, nothing.” And while they did have a rifle in case of a run-in with a polar bear, the only other sign of life that Crocker saw was a set of fox tracks.
The sheer expanse of terrain crossed by Crocker and his team mates is truly boggling to comprehend. For a closer look, and to see a presentation of his journey, plan to head to the Rocky Mountain Grange south of Hamilton on Thursday, January 25 at 7:00p.m. The evening will begin as a short meeting of the Bitterroot Cross-Country Ski Club (of which Crocker is president) but will be followed by Crocker’s presentation of his adventure. A $5 donation is requested for folks not already members of the Bitterroot Cross Country ski club in order to cover the costs of the facility rental.
The Bitterroot Cross-Country Ski Club manages two spectacular locations for free cross-country skiing in the Bitterroot Valley: the Lake Como trails and Chief Joseph, and can be read about by visiting: https://www.bitterrootxcskiclub.net.