FLYING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN
“This is a crevasse minefield!” yelled Louise. In flat light I was skiing in front, trying to pick the safest way forward. Bumps of blue glacier ice were all around me. My ski tails would settle, leaving behind holes of blackness. Louise moved left to avoid one of my holes. Dave also stepped left into untracked snow. A yell from Dave warned us that he was falling into a crevasse. Louise and I threw ourselves to the snow, bracing for the jerk on the rope. I looked over my shoulder to see Dave windmilling his ski poles but still visible—then he was out of sight, with just the baskets poking out of the crevasse. Then, in horror, I saw the baskets disappear and the 150-pound sled slowly get sucked into the crevasse on top of him. I called back to Dave. No answer. Now the weight, equivalent to two bodies, was pulling on Louise.
Six days earlier, in late May, our three-person team of Dave Critchley (Chair of Biological Sciences, School of Applied Sciences, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology), Louise Jarry and I had been heading by chartered Twin Otter ski plane from Resolute Bay at Cornwallis Island in Nunavut, Canada to the Prince of Wales Icefield on Canada’s Ellesmere Island’s southeast coast. Winter cold had broken about a week before, giving us weather that was 20 degrees Fahrenheit,
