- 24 minutes ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:02:53Expedition 7 was a project that Greg and I started talking about in 2011.
00:02:59And the intention was to take the same vehicle to all seven continents, which is something
00:03:05that had never been accomplished before.
00:03:07It wound up taking two and a half years.
00:03:09I was in the field 218 days.
00:03:13It was a journey of 56,000 miles.
00:03:15And we had about 53 people play a role in the expedition.
00:03:20It was one of the coolest things I've ever done.
00:03:26In the wake of E7, I guess the natural question was, what next?
00:03:33So I got a call from Greg.
00:03:34He said, hey, come down to Salt Lake.
00:03:36I'd like to talk about a little project that I have in mind.
00:03:39I wanted something else that was challenging.
00:03:41I wanted something else that was challenging, something that had never been done before, something
00:03:44that was, let's say, unprecedented.
00:03:51Greenland brought together all of the pieces that make it the most extreme.
00:03:55Even when you compare driving across Antarctica, going to the South Pole and doing a landmass
00:04:01crossing, Greenland was far more difficult.
00:04:04And for a lot of reasons.
00:04:05In Antarctica, there's already existing infrastructure.
00:04:08People have already done it before many times.
00:04:11And with Greenland, that had never been done before.
00:04:14Those glaciers had not been climbed by a vehicle before.
00:04:18And we were in literally uncharted territory.
00:04:22There has been one notable expedition that crossed Greenland from the west coast to the east coast
00:04:29that was done by Arctic trucks in the late 90s, but no one had even considered trying to do it
00:04:35from south to north
00:04:36because the distances were an order of magnitude more.
00:04:39And the difficulties were an order of magnitude more, including fuel drops and other logistics
00:04:45that would be impossible to consider really beforehand.
00:04:48For us to attempt it, for us to leave from the south and start heading north, it had never been
00:04:53done before.
00:04:57My roles in the beginning were basically planning the vehicles, the route, logistic around the fuel.
00:05:07For me, the goal is simple, and that is to reach Wolfland.
00:05:12If we can do that, the trip will be a success.
00:05:17The route up north was unknown, so we're going into quite an unhospitaled area which cannot sustain any life.
00:05:27So the route across Greenland starts in Isotork at the Reindeer Farm.
00:05:31And then we need to get up onto the glacier, and then onto the ice sheet.
00:05:35And then from there, we need to get to all of our fuel drops along the eastern coastline.
00:05:41And then from there, we're up into Wolfland in the north, and we're going to actually touch ground
00:05:47before turning around and heading back to those fuel stops, and then to the summit station,
00:05:53and ultimately exiting the glacier at King Glusowak, and getting to our shipping container.
00:05:59And we've got to do all of this in three weeks.
00:06:04Having the right team supporting this project was absolutely critical.
00:06:10Dr. John Solberg was our medical doctor.
00:06:13Kurt Williams headed of refueling and camp logistics.
00:06:18Torvi Johansson was a lead mechanic.
00:06:22Clay was a driver and a pill maker for the expedition.
00:06:25We had this amazing team of people that had finally come together, and we were moving towards the reindeer farm.
00:06:33And I remember reflecting on that.
00:06:35It was really this sense of family, this sense of familiarity that I think is the best way to start
00:06:40a trip like this.
00:06:41There wasn't any anxiety around the people that I was traveling with.
00:06:45Now, there was certainly anxiety about the unknowns to come, but it wasn't about the people that I was there
00:06:50with.
00:06:53There are a few adventures in one's lifetime that he must not say no to.
00:06:58He must go to no matter what.
00:07:00And this place of Greenland, this great unknown, it was that for me.
00:07:06I had to go. I had to make sure that I was there to experience this.
00:07:16Doing an expedition in Greenland is, like this, in Greenland is very, what was the word?
00:07:26I'm busy.
00:07:32How do you feel, Greg?
00:07:34Well, at the moment, I have a small bit of encouragement that we're actually in contact with the barge that
00:07:44transported our trucks up.
00:07:46But for the last couple of hours, I've been really nervous.
00:08:00I think it was interesting to see how the group was just coming together and gelling as a team.
00:08:04And we kind of kept adding one or two more elements.
00:08:06And everybody wondered, you know, are we going to click?
00:08:08And are we going to get along?
00:08:09And are the trucks going to be ready?
00:08:13There was a lot of anxiety even before we got on the ice sheet.
00:08:26Oh, baby, there's the trucks!
00:08:36When I first saw the trucks on the flow ice in Icer Talk, it was a wave of emotion.
00:08:48The team was together for the first time.
00:08:52Josh!
00:08:53What's up, guys?
00:08:55How you doing, buddy?
00:08:56You made it!
00:09:00We had been waiting for quite some time and we weren't sure, you know, if people even could get there
00:09:06because of the ice conditions.
00:09:07Everything was very difficult.
00:09:09So seeing the guys riding, that was the first time I met Clay.
00:09:12Hi, Emil.
00:09:13Hi, Emil.
00:09:14Hi, Clay.
00:09:14Nice to meet you.
00:09:16How are you doing?
00:09:17Nice to meet you.
00:09:19Yeah, seeing the guys was really nice.
00:09:28This is like another planet.
00:09:30Getting all the gear loaded up right now.
00:09:33Pulling everything off the barge.
00:09:35The trucks are a lot bigger than I anticipated.
00:09:38They're huge and awesome.
00:09:40The confidence that I have has just, for some reason, just seeing the trucks has skyrocketed my confidence.
00:09:53So we had three vehicles.
00:09:55It was built on a Toyota Hilux.
00:09:57The name of the trucks was Emma, the truck I was driving.
00:10:02We had E7, which was Greg on the older generation.
00:10:07And then we had Drekki.
00:10:13Gentlemen, welcome to Eicher Talk.
00:10:20All right, let's get set up to go get Emil's truck.
00:10:23We are here in the workshop, Stefan's workshop, fixing this tire.
00:10:27We had a little ice incident the other day as we were ferrying gear from the barge over to the
00:10:32station here.
00:10:33Emil's truck went into the lake, cracked through the ice, and it dented a wheel pretty bad.
00:10:38We lost two tires.
00:10:39We were all set when the other guys came.
00:10:42Other than fixing my truck, which had fallen into a river through a broken ice.
00:10:52It was not, that was not a good news for us, because I knew we just had one spare tire
00:10:58of this type.
00:11:00And if we had to use that, we had no spare tire for the whole expedition.
00:11:04And that was, in my mind, not doable.
00:11:08You don't want to head into any adventure with a vehicle that's, you know, got something wrong with it.
00:11:13We knew that truck, the AT44, we call that one Emma, the one that went through the ice.
00:11:17We knew it had sustained damage.
00:11:18It had a bent wheel, which means it took a really hard hit.
00:11:21I knew something had broken or really bent it.
00:11:24So my first thinking is the expedition over.
00:11:27How will we do it with two cars? We can't carry what we need.
00:11:30I think Emil carried a lot more of that stress than I did, because that was the truck he was
00:11:35going to be driving,
00:11:36but also he knew the implications of what would happen if, you know, we'd be completely inoperable
00:11:41and what that would mean for later on in the trip.
00:11:45And I don't know that everyone even knew this, but he called and placed an order in Iceland,
00:11:49had them get a spare part, which is, you know, kind of proprietary to that Arctic truck,
00:11:53and had that shipped hopefully in a box that we would see later on with one of the fuel deliveries.
00:11:57Thank you, Ben.
00:12:13Again?
00:12:22We drove across that on the way in.
00:12:25But going back, it broke through.
00:12:30So...
00:12:32It's not good.
00:12:33Already on a pretty tortured front end.
00:12:37It just always happens at the worst time.
00:12:39We're just trying to leave, but...
00:12:41Stuff keeps happening.
00:12:42Yeah.
00:12:51We've got the tools.
00:12:58Yeah.
00:12:59And this one.
00:13:01So our loose arrangement is tools, recovery, spares on this side, food, and then your personal bins.
00:13:07just put wherever you need them because you're going to probably run those down
00:13:10have them inside the house to be able to start moving into your boxes
00:13:15every single piece of equipment is crucial
00:13:20it's as close as i think i'll ever get to a nasa mission or something
00:13:24even in antarctica there is some infrastructure that's designed to allow
00:13:31either scientific expeditions or just adventurers to travel across the ice sheet
00:13:37in greenland i'm told there's one twin otter that services the entire island and there's
00:13:45a lot of demand on that so if we get in trouble in greenland we could be in for a
00:13:49long wait
00:13:53everybody's super excited and stoked i haven't seen anybody take a drink of water yet today either
00:13:57so at some point maybe just grab a candy bar and drink something you know
00:14:03i don't think anybody will ever be able to fully comprehend how much i worried about everybody's
00:14:09safety i mean every single person on the expedition was a hundred percent integral to the success and
00:14:17you just had to trust every single person so i mean nobody ever inspected my med kit or you know
00:14:23asked for my credentials i think everybody just trusted that i had had the right training and would
00:14:27be able to lend assistance in the event of an emergency just like i trusted that
00:14:33the trucks would operate and there would be enough fuel at the next stop and there was enough
00:14:36food it was just it was collaborative survival for the entire expedition
00:14:44when we first left the reindeer farm the one thing that was top of mind for me is don't fall
00:14:51through the ice don't fall through the ice and i don't tend to feel that level of anxiety but it
00:15:00was this it was this immediacy of we need to get through these freshwater lakes we need to get across
00:15:06the ice before it melts we were it was getting warmer the the snow was melting at the reindeer farm
00:15:13we were in danger of being able to not even make it to the glacier and there was no backup
00:15:18plan
00:15:23i remember the reindeer farmer and his son getting out with these
00:15:26giant poles and testing the ice and then it would break through the ice and we'd have to find a
00:15:31new way
00:15:34around i already knew this would be a big challenge i did a lot of research on on the glacier
00:15:42and i got
00:15:43a help from from a specialist glacier team to analyze satellite imagery but you still never know
00:15:53it's always this big unknown with the glacier that is moving constantly
00:16:03one of the things that i have learned about challenges in expeditions and even in life i suppose
00:16:14is that there's no no point in speculating about how bad it could be
00:16:19i was really nervous going towards that that glacier once it came into the windshield
00:16:27it was as daunting and as scary as i had imagined it
00:16:38but we had these two guys stefan and his son at the reindeer farm they had gone out found this
00:16:45spot
00:16:49it just went up beautifully you could tell there was crevasse lines in there but it was all filled in
00:16:58okay i'm going to take mine down to three and see if that helps
00:17:05it will help later on but right now uh we need to get you you can get to my right
00:17:10emel
00:17:12or to the left whatever's easier
00:17:17either way that's a good
00:17:18okay
00:17:27once we stepped on it the truck started to cross it we weren't falling in
00:17:44and pretty soon we were past you know steepest topography terrain and the confidence was like
00:17:51hey we're on top of this thing
00:17:55i had to pinch myself because the first you know the last three weeks i've been
00:18:00afraid of this and it turned out to be nothing
00:18:05so
00:18:09it's
00:18:10it's
00:18:24it's
00:18:33this is day one and we've moved like this far on the map out of this far I think it
00:18:39would be
00:18:39probably a good time to stop driving for the day let's take advantage of the remaining light
00:18:46make camp for the first time try to get some heat generated inside the tent while some are
00:18:51doing that others can be refueling and hopefully we can have a successful first night without kind
00:18:59of fumble through the dark and get some rest be ready to hit it early in the morning I remember
00:19:15the first time we were behind schedule it was the first day
00:19:22we were either gonna have to get a lot better at performing each one of the functions and condense
00:19:29the time it took to pitch and break camp or we weren't gonna have time to set up camp at
00:19:36all
00:19:36so from the time we parked the trucks set up camp made a mill did any repairs we need on
00:19:42the vehicle
00:19:42and got a full night's sleep was about a 24-hour period so we wound up pitching camp I think
00:19:47seven
00:19:48times in the 20 days that we were on the ice another challenge that we faced was how to transport
00:19:56the fuel the fuel delivered by helicopter and air came in a traditional 55 gallon drum well we would
00:20:03pump the fuel either into the bladder or right into the trucks part of our permission and the permit to
00:20:09do this trip was that we would leave nothing behind and that included those fuel drums so every time we
00:20:15emptied a drum that we weren't going to be reusing we would have to make several cuts we'd cut the
00:20:19top
00:20:20off of it the bottom off of it and one slice down the middle of it and we could roll
00:20:24that up just
00:20:25tight enough to fit it into another drum and we could get five or six drums into each one it's
00:20:31noon and we
00:20:33still haven't left camp grinding the barrels has become a big chore we had to get the generators out the
00:20:41generators hadn't been fueled they're brand new out of the box it's 1239 and we just left our first camp
00:20:56so obviously we're a little late getting started which is discouraging especially since I'd like to
00:21:02try to cover 150 miles today all right so team Drekky back here has discussed it we're totally on board
00:21:08with
00:21:09a little marathon it is we're looking at 497 kilometers to the die to station on our current
00:21:16pace of anywhere our speeds changing so we're anywhere between 15 and 20 hours to get there at this pace
00:21:22so we'd love to set that as a goal if we fall a little short that's all right but let's
00:21:27just motor towards
00:21:27that to me it was really simple we just had to cover 150 miles a day and if we could
00:21:36do 150 miles a day
00:21:37for 20 days we would cover all the ground we needed sounds easy enough but I learned in the first
00:21:45couple of days that trying to stick to that schedule was really difficult
00:21:52so Emil and I were out in the lead and we're we're trying to work through these really difficult conditions
00:21:57and that we just really can't see and all of a sudden it felt like we were in really deep
00:22:03snow
00:22:03like the vehicle was fighting and I said I think it's something with his steering and he says like
00:22:09he says I don't know if it's the snow or the steering and then Greg cracked through the radio he
00:22:14says I think there's something wrong with your steering and we hopped out and the front tires were like
00:22:24bad it's really hard to see yeah nothing to see Torvi hops out all spirits and said oh well we'll
00:22:32get
00:22:32this fixed you know and crawls under there gets a board out gets his yellow jumpsuit on and you know
00:22:38waves his little mechanic hands and all of a sudden that thing's driving straight and we're up and running
00:22:43again yeah when I was a kid I I was very curious how things work are many things that took
00:22:50apart and
00:22:51sometimes they were able to put them back together and even modified a little bit but yeah sometimes it
00:22:57would just went into the trash so yeah that's kind of how it started and it's just ongoing it's still
00:23:04there
00:23:11for the first three or four days I remember just living with a constant sense of frustration that
00:23:17no matter how hard we tried to overcome the challenges early on they were mostly mechanical
00:23:25challenges we couldn't get caught up yeah we're feeling good about doing some marathons I think
00:23:33you know probably two or three marathons during the duration of the drive this this expedition
00:23:39has us covering about 3,000 miles as I said in the driver's meeting all of a sudden I felt
00:23:44the truck
00:23:45starting to slow down like there was some drag on the truck and I looked in the mirrors and I
00:23:50could
00:23:50see that the the trailer was listing like this hey guys we got a problem we just lost a wheel
00:24:00um we're stuck it rolled about 100 yards ahead of the truck and literally came to a rest between the
00:24:12two tracks as if to say this trip will be one challenge after another one obstacle in the road after
00:24:19another
00:24:38we're gonna make this the time to eat since we're down and get some water going while that's getting fixed
00:24:47it's all part of the adventure
00:24:56you see a lot of mechanics they kind of repair by road so they just they go that this is
00:25:02the way that
00:25:02it's always done this is the problem this is how I fix it whereas Torvi he looks at it more
00:25:07like a scientist and
00:25:08dissects the issue and he very quickly determines the best way to fix it so some of the things that
00:25:13we think maybe you would take an hour to repair he'll have fixed in 20 minutes
00:25:29it's super cold we're all tired we're making our miles and kind of just chugging along and someone pops
00:25:35on the radio the bladder just fell off of one of the sleds um okay
00:25:47it's over something towing a bag of fuel behind a big old arctic truck contained in a blubbery
00:25:57bladder is just seemingly impossible and it nearly was it was just so much work because it just it
00:26:05doesn't want to stay anywhere where you put it
00:26:19those sleds should be burned and then their ashes should be burned again
00:26:25man we keep making it like 20 kilometers at a time before another problem hits that actually took us
00:26:32longer to fix than a tire falling off the trailer
00:26:43one of the most unusual things that i have ever experienced in all of my travels was the die-2
00:26:49station
00:26:50this is part of the dew line that was used to early detect russian bombers coming over to the united
00:26:56states to drop nuclear bombs so this was a very significant piece of military history and we were
00:27:02driving right towards it as we got closer and closer we actually started to get a sense of just how
00:27:09how massive this building was it's quite special for you know after coffee having
00:27:17and the only cars being had before that's right 19 years ago that's right now it's the only cars again
00:27:23yeah nearly two decades later yes i guess it's coming like running at the space station or something
00:27:30the way the snow is all drifted up on the west side of that thing yeah let's get uh wind
00:27:36from that side
00:27:37a lot deep from the other side i think die-2 does the best job of explaining how inhospitable the
00:27:48ice
00:27:48sheet is one day it was an operating radar station and a few days later everyone was gone
00:28:03so the die-2 station they were monitoring it in the 50s 60s 70s this was an early attack warning
00:28:09system
00:28:09they were keeping an eye on the air movement and air traffic in that area so it was a strategic
00:28:14position to have it located there and i cannot think of a more inhospitable place to be stationed
00:28:20hidden behind these icy ramparts lies one of the great military secrets of
00:28:25our time december 1950 when communist aggression was in full flood president truman had proclaimed
00:28:31a national emergency built with the permission of the danish government the base would push our
00:28:37defense line 2 000 miles to the north industry developed new designs that would stand up to the
00:28:43severe strain imposed by the arctic winter your corps of army engineers
00:28:50the air movement and the air movement and the air movement and the air movement and the air movement
00:29:08okay camera all right coming in
00:29:23i think the biggest thing is making sure you don't get lost in the place
00:29:28you know light fixtures and i mean imagine the amount of time it would have taken to assemble this
00:29:34thing and the amount of expense and effort to fly in uh what looks like to be a five-story
00:29:42building
00:29:42and in the middle of the greenland ice sheet and then imagine being that new recruit that lands in an
00:29:50airplane and they get off and the plane takes away and this is what they're left with pretty remote
00:30:01even wood trimmings on some of the walls they tried to make it like home the best they could
00:30:11do it oh wow there were lots of things in die too that were exciting i was especially interested in
00:30:22looking around the infirmary and there were still some medical supplies there step into my office
00:30:33uh there was a prescription for methylcarbomal which is a muscle relaxer that the physician had written
00:30:40for somebody who works there who must have been having some back pain or something and uh i don't
00:30:45know if their back is still hurting or not they never did get their prescription so the building
00:30:52was built so that it had stilts on all the call the corners like columns quite a few of them
00:30:56and they
00:30:56could raise and lower the building so you see here instructions on how to level the building raise the
00:31:02building raise all the jack support so using these these are all the different columns around the
00:31:06corners of the building they could level this place out and this may even tell this is like ground
00:31:12pressure on each of the columns so it tells you how much force they're exerting i imagine as this
00:31:17thing was used in different times of the year and heat that building would sink into the ice and
00:31:21and move around so they had to constantly adjust it to keep it level and i don't know there's
00:31:26beds in this room so it may have been happening enough that they were worried about uh having
00:31:32guys on call and move the building in the middle of the night ussr that's right
00:31:56this thing has it's been frozen in time
00:32:06people walked out without straightening up their desk or they just they literally stood up
00:32:15walked out to their airplane and got on it and no one ever came back
00:32:45it's like a picture in time that you can walk around in
00:32:48and you can tangibly touch the items of october 1988 in the last moment of die two's life before
00:32:57the life that was in it left and it makes an impression on you to to see something like that
00:33:36so
00:33:37so
00:33:46Probably by the fourth or fifth day, it did start to get a little monotonous.
00:33:53And I remember feeling like we were a bowling ball on this huge white trampoline, these white sides that just
00:34:03went up to the horizon.
00:34:04And no matter how far we drove, we couldn't get to a point where we could see over it.
00:34:12I don't even know how many audio books we made it all the way through because you would press start
00:34:16on them and you wouldn't like stop for two, three days till you're done with the book.
00:34:20But it did. It was tiring and you wanted to get out and just stretch your legs.
00:34:24You wanted to get out and just, you know, hey, wouldn't it be so nice to lay down and sleep
00:34:27flat tonight?
00:34:28But there just wasn't the time. And so we just kind of endure and keep moving forward.
00:34:34Everybody was, had a lack of sleep, you know, basically from day one throughout the expedition.
00:34:41I remember I had been asleep. I'd been taking a nap in the passenger seat and Emil was driving and
00:34:47I, I kind of woke up and I look over and Emil was completely crashed out to the radio was
00:34:52going.
00:34:53And he was sitting, he was sitting in the seat, like with his hands like this and the wheels going
00:34:58back and forth in the rut.
00:34:59We were both completely out and I'm like, I'm not going to wake him up.
00:35:02He had his foot, he had his foot steady on the throttle and nothing bad was happening.
00:35:07So I just kind of like side seat drove for a while while he was sleeping.
00:35:10He finally kind of woke up and he looked over at me and I got this big grin on in
00:35:13my face and he's like, you know.
00:35:15Very soon he was asleep again and I guess I was too. We were just, we just kept heading and
00:35:21we continued.
00:35:23We decided that it technically wasn't falling asleep at the wheel unless your eyes were closed for more than 60
00:35:29seconds.
00:35:31We made, we made a rule that was a real rule that if you were going to stop, that you
00:35:36had to get on the radio and audibly announce your intent to stop because there was a good chance the
00:35:42truck in second position or third position.
00:35:44The driver may have been taking a short nap and might run into you.
00:35:48Alright guys, coming to a full stop, full stop.
00:35:55Hey guys, we lost the trailer. Come on back.
00:36:00Emel, Scott.
00:36:12We just happened to have a spare pencil hitch just laying around in the back of a truck.
00:36:17Actually, Greg shipped that from home.
00:36:19Good job, Greg.
00:36:22I'm pretty sure that came from Salt Lake.
00:36:32About 1.45 in the morning.
00:36:34We're halfway on our push between our last camp and the next fuel depot.
00:36:39So we're just running all night.
00:36:40It's too cold to set up camp anyway.
00:36:42It's like minus 22.
00:36:44So it's not even comfortable to start trying to get tents up.
00:36:47So we're just going to kind of take some little naps in the cars to recycle drivers.
00:36:51But we have to refuel because it's a long push, about 720 kilometers.
00:36:55So we're draining off the bladders here.
00:36:58Filling up Greg's truck.
00:36:59We'll drain off this front bladder, draining the rest.
00:37:02And get on to the checkpoint where we're meeting position one where the fuel's being flown in.
00:37:08There's already 10 barrels there and 11 more showing up tomorrow.
00:37:10So we'll be able to refill all these ladders once we get there.
00:37:14One of the most difficult considerations for this expedition was planning fuel.
00:37:19Not only how much fuel do we need, but where do we drop it?
00:37:24How much should we drop?
00:37:26And then what do we do if we have too much or too little?
00:37:28And there's something as simple as we're doing better on fuel economy where the conditions is approved.
00:37:34Let's increase the tire pressure in the tires.
00:37:36It's easy to just forget that and continue to operate at a lower pressure which increases resistance and then increases
00:37:43fuel consumption.
00:37:44So it's really finding that perfect balance and that comes from a combination of very in-depth calculations and a
00:37:51lot of experience.
00:37:53And then that is all filtered through what's happening right now on the ground.
00:37:58If you're wrong, we basically run out of fuel and it's probably going to cost $500,000 to get you
00:38:08off.
00:38:10And you're not going to finish the expedition.
00:38:16When we got to the first waypoint for the fuel drop on the East Coast and we're getting closer and
00:38:24closer and we're expecting to begin to see the influence of man on the horizon, like some barrels and drums
00:38:30or shapes that are not natural in the environment.
00:38:33And they didn't show up. We got right to the waypoint and there was nothing there.
00:38:38We are parked dead on the location based on Torvi's GPS and my GPS.
00:38:45But there's nothing here. My guess is they flew over this and said it's too rough for them to land
00:38:49so they found something nearby.
00:38:50So this was kind of a big issue.
00:38:55It triggered a calculated panic.
00:39:00They even launched the drone to go and look for the fuel.
00:39:05The disturbance that I can see does not look like Sestrugi but I don't see any barrels by it.
00:39:12We shut right down. We stopped. That was like satellite phone with the pilots. We're sending messages via the in
00:39:17-reach satellite system.
00:39:21Everybody had a question mark.
00:39:23Hello, Paul.
00:39:24Hi Paul. Emil here again.
00:39:27We provided the waypoint of our location.
00:39:30We had them confirm the waypoint that they were going to drop the fuel and then that's when we realized
00:39:35that the location that they dropped it was different from where we were at.
00:39:38They had a wrong location and they delivered it to a location that was in the first original plan that
00:39:47was a trust plan made quite early.
00:39:49Well, we got the info on where the fuel's at and the bad news is it's not here where it
00:39:53was supposed to be which is our scheduled rendezvous point.
00:39:56It's 50 miles north of here.
00:39:57Okay, that means going into a crevice area, which we have no satellite imagery for, we have no research for,
00:40:06what is the best route to take?
00:40:08How do we approach this? What's the most likely safe route?
00:40:12If we have another mistake like this, it's going to be a disaster. So will you please call him back
00:40:18and say, you know, we'll call you in two hours, three hours when we get there.
00:40:23But just to confirm that we've got it in the meantime, please keep your phone in your palm.
00:40:28We started to go back onto our route, which we had already planned. And we choose kind of a almost
00:40:3790 degree on our old route and go there in after the fuel.
00:40:42I think it was about 30, 40 kilometers to go in, in an unknown territory. And we could see the
00:40:48crevices on both sides.
00:41:09Big, big relief to find those fuel drums and know they're there. There's one point where we're like, is this
00:41:16kind of another wild goose chase?
00:41:18But we're here. It's frigid out here. Probably one of the coldest camps of my life, if not the coldest
00:41:27camp of my life.
00:41:33Making some repairs this morning. One of the hitch extensions cracked. It's a lot of work pulling those sleds.
00:41:39It's fatiguing it all through the day. Torby's getting all geared up to lay some oil down on it.
00:41:44We're going to add some reinforcing bracing to it so that it doesn't do it again, hopefully. Fingers crossed.
00:41:49Let me see you try and cross your fingers, Kurt. They're too frozen, actually.
00:41:54It's actually very important in every expedition, a successful expedition, that you can have the team spirit all the time.
00:42:03You have all the members with you. They're all working together, backing each other up, exactly like it was in
00:42:10this expedition.
00:42:11It was amazing.
00:42:22Another day in the ER. Always problems. Mostly the plumbing.
00:42:31We basically negotiated them to come back to the location where we were.
00:42:40Take the rest of this fuel because we already knew we didn't need all this fuel.
00:42:44We could use part of this fuel to bring part of what we had there further up west, more on
00:42:51the top of the glacier.
00:42:53This would save us time on the way back. This meant we could turn a bad thing into a good
00:43:01thing.
00:43:08It's all working out. We've got three drums that we're putting on, that we're leaving out to fuel the airplane
00:43:15so it has enough fuel to go and do the mission that we've asked it to do now.
00:43:18And then we're reloading, it looks like, four or five more drums that will be sent out further to the
00:43:24west so that we don't have to come this far towards the coast on our return trip.
00:43:30It puts our fuel in line with the straight line south.
00:43:33The pilots have agreed to take at least nine and as many as twelve of these empty drums out of
00:43:38here.
00:43:38So not only do we not have to spend hours cutting them up, we don't have to haul them with
00:43:43us all the way back and forth.
00:43:45So this is a big win for the team.
00:44:30We're calling this the last five fuel trucks. The airplane dropped these five drums off.
00:44:38Yesterday, we drove through the night to get here now.
00:44:41Now we're going to drop off a couple more drums and this is our cache for the way home.
00:44:48And it is wicked out right now.
00:44:51Woo!
00:44:57I think you're going to roll up at the gas station and fill up, but when you're talking about moving
00:45:01drums by hand and pumping them and pumps working in sub-zero temperatures,
00:45:05it's just nothing is easy.
00:45:07And then I got this one mustache hair that's frozen down and every time I smile the wrong way, it
00:45:12pulls right on the one that hurts the most.
00:45:16So I'm looking forward to getting in the trucks and getting thawed out a little bit.
00:45:25We started on a cadence of drive for two or three days, camp once. Drive for two or three days,
00:45:31camp once.
00:45:31After a week of that, everybody, you could see it was taking its toll on everybody.
00:45:35We were getting tired and really it almost felt zombie-ish during the day.
00:45:40I mean, it was really difficult to sleep even when you were the guy who was getting a break.
00:45:44The trucks would bounce and it was so bouncy that it was difficult to sleep even when it was your
00:45:50time to sleep.
00:45:50Figured out we had been driving for 75 hours, constant driving, except for one stop for about two or three
00:45:58hours to sleep in the cars.
00:46:01Other than that, we were just driving and changing, changing seats, just keeping on, keep on driving.
00:46:15I mean, you read any story about Arctic survival and the amount of abuse that the human body can be
00:46:25subjected to before it finally breaks down and dies, it is incredible.
00:46:29You know, we all discussed it as a team, yeah, let's keep doing this, let's take a two and three
00:46:34hour nap and call it and we're going to get back up in the morning and go another 700 miles.
00:46:47There's a few things that are of consideration with remoteness and we're always thinking about, are we closer to these
00:46:55points of inaccessibility or poor accessibility?
00:46:58The first thing that you lose is access by helicopter.
00:47:02But once you get outside of the helicopter range, then you have to have an aircraft land and that requires
00:47:06specific conditions on the ground.
00:47:08And then you can actually get far enough away where it's going to require an aircraft to bring in fuel,
00:47:14an aircraft to land and refuel to get to you, then to get you off of the ice sheet.
00:47:19And the further north that you get in Greenland, the more likely that is to occur.
00:47:23You're deeper into the expedition, people are more fatigued, decision making has suffered.
00:47:28The human body starts to break down because of those extremely long driving periods.
00:47:35We were still heading north and we were running into this storm.
00:47:41We got into a bad visibility.
00:47:44We are quite close to maybe about two, three hundred kilometers from Wolfswang.
00:47:50We get a quite strong winds.
00:47:54We were navigating only using GPS.
00:47:58This is a dangerous thing to do when you're approaching Crevas area.
00:48:05There was what they call white darkness.
00:48:07It's white.
00:48:08You look out the window and you see white, but the visibility is a matter of feet.
00:48:13It was bad enough that I told the guys on the radio, if you get out of the truck for
00:48:17any reason, make sure that you maintain contact with the truck.
00:48:21Because if you get disoriented and take two steps in the wrong direction, it could be fatal.
00:48:27There's no bearings whatsoever of what's going on around you.
00:48:30You will be lost like that.
00:48:32If you take a single step in any direction, it's a straight up guess.
00:48:40As we made our final push north to Wolfswang, we were really chasing the clock.
00:48:44At any point, we're going to have to make our decision to turn back.
00:48:48The weather wasn't cooperating.
00:48:50The time was slipping away.
00:48:54We were at the point where we didn't know if we were actually going to make any of our goals.
00:48:59Because progress had slowed down so much.
00:49:01And I remember the radio cracking to life and Torfi saying,
00:49:05there's an animal on the right.
00:49:08And we had trouble seeing it and we kind of pulled up next to it.
00:49:12And as we get closer and start to brush the snow off, we realized that it was a musk ox
00:49:18calf that had been separated from its mother,
00:49:21likely in a storm just like that, or maybe even earlier in that storm.
00:49:25And it was frozen solid from the cold.
00:49:29And I remember all of us being very aware of the fact that we were quite fragile.
00:49:49We had people on the team, we could tell in their voice that they were starting to get concerned and
00:49:56worried.
00:49:57And at that point, we have a spring break on the 6x6.
00:50:02I was riding with Greg at the time, and Torfi hopped on the radio and said,
00:50:07hold on, something's wrong.
00:50:09Drekke's got a broken coil spring.
00:50:11And I think all of us immediately, like, our hearts sank.
00:50:14Broken spring.
00:50:18For me, at least, what I've learned is to always, you know, no matter how bad the situation is,
00:50:25you just, you know, you love the circumstances, you know.
00:50:29This is fantastic, you know.
00:50:31It's so great to be with you guys, you know, in this fantastic place.
00:50:38Just look at this nature, you know.
00:50:40Always trying to, you know, see some positive things.
00:50:44You know, positive sides.
00:50:47What a spring break!
00:50:53You know, being negative, that doesn't get you anywhere.
00:50:58You know, you have to be positive, you know, and enjoying what you're doing.
00:51:06And in every person, actually, you know, if you have the time and space to do that,
00:51:11you know, to bring, you know, the best out of every person in the team.
00:51:16Fantastic!
00:51:18It's cold, it's windy.
00:51:20We're having fun.
00:51:29We made the decision that we can fix it right there on the spot.
00:51:31We've got the spare part to do it, but the weather's getting worse and worse.
00:51:35In fact, it was the worst weather we'd seen on the entire trip.
00:51:43I remember John Solberg holding the wood barriers and trying to block the wind with his own body
00:51:49to give these guys a chance at getting that repaired.
00:51:52And they did it in less time than it would take a mechanic in a warm garage in Salt Lake
00:51:57City to do the same thing.
00:51:59I mean, that's, that's when you see, that's when you see exceptional people do exceptional things.
00:52:08These are incredible men.
00:52:11And there is clearly no way this expedition would have succeeded without them and several others like them.
00:52:21It was sometime in this window of what to me felt like a barrage of adversity,
00:52:28uh, compounded by the fact that, that I was feeling sick and I was,
00:52:36I was not able to make the level of contribution I would have liked physically.
00:52:43And that compounded my frustration as well, that I, I decided, uh, that it would be a good time to
00:52:51try to connect with my wife Heidi.
00:52:54We're 135 kilometers from the northern edge of the glacier.
00:53:02And we're, we're having a lot of trouble.
00:53:10We've had an unbelievable number of setbacks.
00:53:15And these guys just keep going.
00:53:18It's eight degrees below zero.
00:53:21And the wind is blowing so hard.
00:53:23I can barely see the truck that's 10 feet in front of me.
00:53:26And these guys are out fixing the axle to support my expedition.
00:53:33Is everybody mentally okay?
00:53:35Yeah.
00:53:35Everybody wanted to quit?
00:53:36No, that's the thing that's so amazing.
00:53:38That's why I'm so emotional.
00:53:40It's because there, there's no sign of quitting.
00:53:44I told you a couple of times before I left that this would be the biggest adventure I ever did.
00:53:52And I underestimated it.
00:53:59Just hearing her voice brought me a lot of comfort.
00:54:11Um, I will say that we have today looks to be our best weather condition.
00:54:17Uh, Torvey can provide some additional clarification, but it looks like the wind actually doubles in speed tomorrow.
00:54:27The only thing we know at this point is it's worse than it was an hour ago, which was worse
00:54:31than it was an hour before.
00:54:33It doesn't seem to be letting up at all.
00:54:34And we're making the decision to push north.
00:54:37And it was really important for Greg.
00:54:38We were all getting a, a greater sense of that, how important it was for him to reach Wolf Lawn
00:54:43and call the mission successful.
00:54:44We do know that this next weather window, um, it's, it, the wind kicks up and it is scheduled out
00:54:51for several days.
00:54:52So, um, even moving a couple of days may not be enough.
00:54:57Yeah, I agree.
00:55:03Greg hit me up right immediately.
00:55:05What do you want to, what do you think we should do?
00:55:07You know, I'm asking everybody, do you feel comfortable moving forward in this weather,
00:55:11knowing what we know now about the weather and the time we have, how do you feel about it?
00:55:17We decided that we would drive until 6 a.m. and reassess.
00:55:22Uh, even though the repair was complete on Drekki, once we started moving, Drekki didn't move.
00:55:30And so I got on the radio and said, Drekki, are you with us?
00:55:34And I could tell from the delay in the response and the tone of the response that we didn't have
00:55:42complete alignment from the folks in Drekki.
00:55:44I remember it took a couple of minutes and Greg was, I don't think frustrated, but like seemingly, uh, anxious.
00:55:49Like, what's taking them so long? I want to know the answer. We, you know, they comfortable moving forward.
00:55:53In our vehicle, we were having a real hard time coming to a consensus and nobody wanted to disappoint Greg,
00:56:00but we had had some serious concerns about our safety.
00:56:04Um, if any of you guys have any concerns about this along the way, I'd like to hear them.
00:56:09Um, you all, your voice is welcome.
00:56:11At that moment, I always definitely think we are probably pushing beyond our capabilities here.
00:56:19In my mind, we were not able to drive off the glacier if we didn't have a visibility.
00:56:26It was just a no way situation.
00:56:29Any desire that I had to get there and, you know, take a picture at the farthest northern piece of
00:56:37dirt on the planet
00:56:38or do something that nobody else had ever done before was severely shadowed by my promise to my profession,
00:56:46which is to not ever put anybody in jeopardy.
00:56:49I guess I was just shell shocked by everything at this point.
00:56:51What was a risk? You know, I mean, we had, we'd done so many things at this point.
00:56:55I, I, I was comfortable pushing into the storm.
00:56:58One of the things that can happen on a trip like this, when you pull together so many competent individuals,
00:57:04they have a lot of tolerance for variability. They have a lot of tolerance for leadership.
00:57:09Um, and they allow for people with experience and with the right mindset to make decisions throughout an expedition.
00:57:17But what can happen is once the options start to come off the table, once you really only have one
00:57:24path left,
00:57:25then people will start to actively question and they have every right to.
00:57:28That's one of the things that make a great team is for people having the ability to speak up
00:57:33and the mindset and the desire to speak up when things start to get dangerous.
00:57:38I actually got out of the truck and went back and, uh, Scott is the one that I probably know
00:57:42best of all.
00:57:44John, he looked at me and he, and he shared this story about what happens right up to the point
00:57:51that an airplane runs into the side of a mountain.
00:57:55And he wasn't telling me the story because he wanted to say, I don't want to go or I don't
00:57:59feel comfortable going.
00:58:01He wanted to make sure that Emil and I were reminded of the fact that those cascade of events,
00:58:07we can be so focused on something that we want to achieve in our life that we can start to
00:58:11forget about all of the risks that come along the way.
00:58:15We get those blinders on and we get so focused on that goal that we run right into the side
00:58:20of the mountain.
00:58:20I am the expedition leader. The safety of every one of these team members is my responsibility
00:58:30and I must get every one of them back home to their families safely.
00:58:35I knew that he was deliberating between giving up on something that he had tried so hard to achieve
00:58:42and had given so much towards us and everyone else to try to get to this goal.
00:58:47I knew that he was potentially faced with that reality that we weren't going to make it.
00:58:51We weren't even going to make it to the end of the ice sheet.
00:58:54And I have such respect for him in that moment because what he did was he kind of gave that
00:59:00up.
00:59:00He kind of said, it's okay if we don't make it to our goal as long as we all make
00:59:05it home.
00:59:06And that says a lot about a leader right there.
00:59:09I felt like my concerns were heard and we decided as a group to push on.
00:59:21Good Lord. That was a good old North Dakota Blizzard right there, I'll tell you that much.
00:59:26My inclination is that we take it one objective at a time.
00:59:31Let's get to the edge of the ice sheet and then reassess.
00:59:35And then we can decide if we want to get to the touch of the terra firma.
00:59:42I think that's probably the best thing to do at this point in time.
00:59:45I think everybody's going to be excited about trying to get to the edge of the ice sheet.
00:59:49I just kind of couldn't agree with you more. Thank you.
00:59:54You four guys are just awesome. Thank you.
01:00:06Sixty minutes later, sunshine, the bluest skies we'd seen in days.
01:00:12And the more time passes, the more I can hear angels singing in that moment in my memory.
01:00:36We were the first boots on the ground into this region.
01:00:40Now, there's certainly been people on the north of Greenland,
01:00:43but there had never been anybody that we were aware of that had traveled to this particular glacier.
01:00:50You'd have asked me on the first day or two if I thought we were going to get all the
01:00:53way to the north.
01:00:54There's no way. I mean, like, we're going to be lucky to take a left and go to King Luswack,
01:00:58you know?
01:01:00Yeah, I think we're all pretty honored to be here.
01:01:05I had a pretty good idea of what Wolfland would be like, but to be standing there looking at it
01:01:13and to see the magnitude of it and the grandeur and the remoteness, the stillness was overwhelming to me.
01:01:24It was beyond anything that I'd imagined.
01:01:31We got to the top of this extremely steep slope and Emil said, Greg, you must go down first to
01:01:37make sure we can get back up.
01:01:39We weren't going to commit all three vehicles to the bottom of this thing if we couldn't climb back up
01:01:44again.
01:02:07Greg got down to the bottom and he just started cruising back up and he didn't even spin a tire.
01:02:23It was at that moment that I knew we were going to meet our objective.
01:02:42There you go, guys. Tires have now touched Wolfland. We are on Wolfland.
01:03:03Seeing those brown rocks, those brown mountains 50, 80, 100 miles out into the distance was so rewarding for me.
01:03:19That's one of the most remote places I've ever been. It was very special to get to Wolfland. That was
01:03:28a great moment.
01:03:33It's hard to describe. You looked at the map so many times and it's just a location on a map
01:03:43and all of a sudden you're standing there and it's out of this world kind of.
01:03:54Welcome to Wolfland. Welcome to Wolfland. It looks like the moon with a glacier on it.
01:04:01When we came down to Wolfland, we were kind of surprised because there was almost no snow at all. It's
01:04:09just so our plans to drive further north, they just they were gone.
01:04:15It was not possible to drive any further.
01:04:19After evaluating this and thinking about the ice melt and how much time and the risk and everything like that,
01:04:25we decided to just to take a long good rest and then turn around.
01:04:30I regret not being able to keep driving north. I would have loved to have gotten all the way to
01:04:36the to the Arctic Ocean and found a place to break through the ice and actually get the tires wet.
01:04:42But I think we all just tried to drink it in and absorb as much as we could of that
01:04:48moment before we had to turn around and start making our way south.
01:04:53May this expedition inspire adventurers from around the globe to push beyond the notions of what is possible.
01:05:02Expedition 7, Greenland Crossing team members, Craig Miller, Expedition Leader USA, Scott Brady USA, Clay Croft USA, Emil Grimson, Iceland,
01:05:16Torbie Johansson, Iceland, Dr. John Solberg USA, Kirk Williams USA.
01:05:26Well, probably just as hard for you guys to pull out of this place as it is for me. After
01:05:31what we went through to get here, I just don't want to leave such a special place, especially after having
01:05:36seen so little of it.
01:05:39But we all need to give back home to our families and all of our other real world commitments. So
01:05:45make sure to capture one last image of that before we turn and burn and encounter all of that great
01:05:53white hostility on the way back to a hot shower.
01:05:57Yeah, very hot shower. And a shade.
01:05:59Me too.
01:06:01Me too.
01:06:01But that was worth every kilometer to get to that place. Very beautiful.
01:06:06Mm-hmm.
01:06:12There's always something hard about leaving a place you love.
01:06:18And seeing that in your rearview mirror.
01:06:22Especially knowing if you'll never come back.
01:06:45People oftentimes don't consider with expeditions or danger surrounding expeditions. It's just like scaling a mountain. You don't need to
01:06:53just get to the top.
01:06:54And succeed. You need to get back down safely to base camp and back to your families.
01:07:00Wolflin back.
01:07:03It had a few challenges. We had a broken CV joint on my truck.
01:07:08Clay broke it. We all knew Clay broke it. Clay finally accepted it. He broke it.
01:07:14The lunettes of both sleds had to be completely reworked and re-welded. We broke the hitch on the trailer.
01:07:20We broke the hitch on one of the sleds as well, the vehicle side.
01:07:24When I was in the army for seven years, I never saw a cast iron pintle hitch wear through anything
01:07:30and be stretched into an oval.
01:07:33Crack it.
01:07:36Crack it.
01:07:37Crack it.
01:07:38Crack it.
01:07:38Crack it.
01:07:39Crack it.
01:07:40Crack it.
01:07:42Crack it.
01:07:42Crack it.
01:07:42The runners on the sleds, they started to break off.
01:07:47Of course, the straps and always things on the sleds.
01:07:51They keep the bludders in place.
01:07:53Then we had a leaf spring on the trailer, broke.
01:07:57This one's… I don't see how you can fix this.
01:08:00It is.
01:08:06The water maker stopped running, so I had to take it in the car inside and warm it up.
01:08:22Our mine race is with a fuel pump.
01:08:24We are troubleshooting low fuel because this guy doesn't seem to be pumping.
01:08:49So, yeah, I guess we did have a lot of problems.
01:08:52We had a mini parade of terribles as we were southbound.
01:09:10We were on our way back from Wolfland and all of a sudden this display came across the sky like
01:09:17nothing I had ever seen in my life.
01:09:19I had certainly seen sun dogs before and I had seen rainbows before and I had seen concentric sun rings
01:09:25before, but I had never seen all of them together in one scene.
01:09:28I was completely awestruck by what I saw and it was so significant in its scale I could not capture
01:09:36it with the camera.
01:09:48Well, we're down to the final 160 kilometers, 150 kilometers, something like that and we're in the process of offloading
01:09:58all of the fuel from the bladders into the trucks.
01:10:01Anything that's left we can put in a couple of drums, but we want the sleds to be able to
01:10:06go away.
01:10:07Torbee right now is installing spikes into the 6x6 to get ready for that slick ice and this could be
01:10:15pretty adventurous as we get up into here.
01:10:18Yeah, but it's kind of a win because it's the last time allegedly that the fuel pumps are going to
01:10:24get out.
01:10:25It's been a big job of ours over the last few weeks pumping fuel.
01:10:36One of the most difficult things for us to do as the lead vehicle was to get a route through
01:10:43the glacier into Pangaloosawak.
01:10:48It was the most challenging route finding that I had ever done.
01:10:59Part of this section was incredibly dangerous.
01:11:07This is the most harsh, the most harsh condition for a vehicle I have ever been in, period.
01:11:16Even walking around here when I step through the top soil, top snow, I hit ice under it and it's
01:11:23super slick.
01:11:24I've never seen anything like this before. I'm pretty nervous, to tell you the truth.
01:11:29We were seven smelly guys that were ten kilometers away from a hot shower and pizza.
01:11:38All we needed to do was get off the ice.
01:11:41Five years from now, you won't look back to the night. We just drove right off the glacier into King
01:11:45Blue Swack and it was no problem. It was easy.
01:11:47You'll remember the time you had to work for it, huh?
01:11:50Maybe all night. Maybe tomorrow.
01:11:53It's not a lot of work. It takes time to pay you.
01:11:55It takes time to pay you.
01:11:56It takes time to pay you, yeah.
01:12:00I kind of didn't know what to expect.
01:12:02I had had all these impressions of me about crevasses and giant crevasse fields and thinking I'm going to see
01:12:08them.
01:12:08You're going to see these giant deep wedges into the ground and we really didn't see any of those.
01:12:12And it wasn't because they weren't there, as we later found out, it was just because they were snowblown and
01:12:17covered over.
01:12:32It was getting dark.
01:12:35I was in second position.
01:12:37Scott and Emma were in the first truck and we were making our way through the crevasse field.
01:12:43We knew it was there.
01:12:44I saw my trailer just kind of lisp to the left side.
01:12:50Hey guys, I got a problem.
01:12:51And in my mind, that crevasse was just going to open up and swallow the whole truck and trailer into
01:12:56it.
01:12:57Instinctively, it just gave a little gas.
01:13:00It broke the outer bead and the tire got kind of mangled up under the wheel.
01:13:07We're not getting anywhere near that.
01:13:09And in the process, as that got, that popped down and Greg's truck lurched a little bit.
01:13:15It killed the tire off the bead.
01:13:16So, now we've got to put the tire back on the bead.
01:13:22We've also found that the truck frame has a crack in it.
01:13:33Yes sir.
01:13:33Kind of in a pinch.
01:13:40All right.
01:13:44Well, when E7 pulls in the crevasse, that's where everybody sees this is actual.
01:13:52And that made the whole team quite careful.
01:13:59That crevasse is like two house stories tall.
01:14:04It's got to be 30 or 40 feet deep and just a big V-shape all the way to the
01:14:08bottom of nothing but blue ice.
01:14:11I've never seen anything like that before.
01:14:14Clay and I were standing in the back with our crampons on thinking, oh my gosh, if somebody goes in,
01:14:20we're really going to have to figure out how to get them out.
01:14:24Whoa.
01:14:25It's right there.
01:14:26It's running this way.
01:14:27Yeah.
01:14:27It's pretty narrow.
01:14:28I'm standing on it.
01:14:29It's not, it's not big enough to swallow a crop.
01:14:34That was pretty scary.
01:14:39Greg is literally standing on the crevasse right now.
01:14:42It was incredible to watch these guys sitting on top of a crevasse repairing the vehicle.
01:14:51Scott and Emil have gone on to explore some more routes.
01:14:56It was our role, me and Scott, to try to find the route.
01:14:59It was not an optimal situation because we did not have a second car to tie us to tie it
01:15:06to.
01:15:06So if we would go down into our crevasse, we would have no one to hold us back from falling,
01:15:14free falling in.
01:15:16So we had to be very careful.
01:15:20Scott, Emil, do you copy?
01:15:26Yeah, go ahead.
01:15:28Listen, I'm just watching John in front of Torvey here.
01:15:32He's 20 feet in front of the truck and found multiple crevasses.
01:15:36I'm thinking that what we should do is abort and let's just reassess the whole thing in the morning.
01:15:43We could pitch camp.
01:15:45John just about fell into a crevasse right there.
01:15:47That was the dumbest thing I've ever done.
01:15:49I mean, we didn't have any business being out there.
01:15:52I mean, I think it was pretty obvious that at that pace we were not ever going to get where
01:15:57we needed to go.
01:15:58We decided to stop and get some rest.
01:16:02That was good.
01:16:03We needed that.
01:16:04We were all exhausted, for sure.
01:16:11This is our world.
01:16:15It's kind of a big problem right now.
01:16:16It's proving to be very difficult to navigate.
01:16:22Huge chunks of the glaciers are turning into clear water pools.
01:16:27And it's resulting in these high points and low points.
01:16:30And there's crevasses everywhere in between.
01:16:33There was no room for error.
01:16:41Can you believe this?
01:17:06I remember the moment that Amal said, those are tracks.
01:17:11The first indication of a route that we had found since we started trying to get off the glacier.
01:17:18So if we found ski tracks, there was a good chance that we could find one of the easier routes
01:17:22off of the glacier.
01:17:23It didn't mean that it was easy for the vehicles.
01:17:25It was very challenging.
01:17:26But at least we had a general direction to go.
01:17:29It was a small miracle that we saw those tracks, but it changed everything.
01:17:34The second tide would be very dangerous for us.
01:17:35The other creation of an earthquake that we saw.
01:18:03The other썹 said, thanks to the earthquake that was over the years.
01:18:03Oh, come on back, guys. We've got another one here.
01:18:18Careful, Kurt.
01:18:33Oh, come on.
01:19:31Oh, come on.
01:19:36Oh, come on.
01:19:41Nice.
01:19:42Okay, now you've got to turn into it.
01:19:52Nice.
01:19:53Yeah.
01:19:57Back's already on the slope.
01:19:58You're down.
01:19:59Good work, man.
01:20:00Crazy.
01:20:01Easy.
01:20:12I am standing on dirt.
01:20:16Check it out.
01:20:17Check it out.
01:20:18How cool is that?
01:20:21We just met our guide that's going to help us do what's called the Arctic Circle Trail.
01:20:25To get into our final landing spot, our guide said, welcome to Western Greenland.
01:20:32We've been all over.
01:20:33We've been on Southern and Northern.
01:20:35Pretty much on the Eastern now.
01:20:37Definitely on the Western.
01:20:38That'll be a tough one to beat.
01:20:40Yeah.
01:20:44Yeah.
01:20:51Yeah.
01:20:56Yeah.
01:20:59Yeah.
01:21:16I just wanted you to be aware that we are effectively there so that you can let the guys know.
01:21:28We made it.
01:21:31Team feels like a million bucks.
01:21:32You can just see everybody like this huge sense of relief and joy and kind of like this calm amongst
01:21:40the whole group.
01:21:43It feels so good to be like on a road and within a few hours of just some basic creature
01:21:51comforts.
01:21:52Like an indoor toilet.
01:21:54Yeah, like an indoor toilet.
01:21:56Really key right now.
01:21:59Okay, not to freak you guys out or anything, but those crevasses on the left.
01:22:04I have no idea how many of those we drove over today, but I think they could swallow trucks.
01:22:09Oh.
01:22:22It's quite exciting.
01:22:24You forget all your tiredness and you just kind of...
01:22:27Yeah.
01:22:29What we've recognized from this project Expedition 7 in its entirety is that vehicle based expedition travel is a meaningful
01:22:41way to explore the world and it provides an accessibility that some people may never have.
01:22:48I think the biggest thing that I learned from my Greenland experience was the importance of surrounding yourself with great
01:22:58people.
01:22:59All of us were together for 21 days and five of us were together for almost a month.
01:23:06And in all of that time, in all of those intense circumstances, there was never a single cross word spoken.
01:23:14That just doesn't happen.
01:23:16That is evidence of the quality of individuals that were on this trip and the respect they had for one
01:23:22another and their commitment to the greater goal.
01:23:26And if you have those kind of resources at your disposal, you can accomplish just about anything you set your
01:23:32mind to.
01:23:36If I learned anything, it was to be more like those guys because every one of them had attributes that
01:23:41I can only aspire to be.
01:23:43I mean, it only speaks to the people that were there.
01:23:46Those six guys I spent time with, I have amazing respect for all of them.
01:23:49What I learned on this expedition, it's just no matter how big the challenge is, it's just a question of
01:23:58the right preparation and the right team.
01:24:01And wondering what's over the next hill or the desire to learn something new, sometimes comes a point in people's
01:24:08life where it just feels like they've lost the lust for life or the desire to explore.
01:24:14And I think people start aging much more quickly when they reach that point.
01:24:18The lessons, the relationships, the memories, none of those things materialize unless you get out and have an experience.
01:24:28You will have many people coming back from an expedition like they say, never again.
01:24:33But you will have them in a few months later, they say, when can I go again?
01:24:36We want to check the box. We want to achieve the goal. We want to make it across the ice
01:24:41sheet.
01:24:41All of us do in some version in our life.
01:24:44But if we don't at the end of it, have a team of people or a family member or a
01:24:49loved one that we get to experience that with.
01:24:52And what's the point?
01:24:53It may not make a lot of sense to you or to someone else.
01:24:57But if you're passionate about it, you've got to go do it.
01:25:00You've just got to.
01:25:01Because don't ask yourself what the world needs.
01:25:04Ask yourself what makes you come alive.
01:25:05Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
01:25:09And I would encourage anyone to take that on and see how that will change your life.
01:25:14Because it certainly has changed mine.
01:25:19All right, that's a wrap.
01:25:22Good job, Kurt. You're the man.
01:25:26Done, Greg. Thanks.
01:25:27Yeah.
01:25:31Scotty, you're good.
01:25:34Yeah, it's great.
01:25:35Good job, Scott.
01:25:38Awesome, John. Thank you.
01:25:39Yup, thank you, guys.
01:25:41You can.
01:25:41Torby, you're done.
01:25:45All right.
01:25:47Thanks, Timble.
01:25:48Okay.
01:25:52On to the next one.
01:25:55Yeah, go for it.
01:25:56You're falling out of here.
01:26:11All right.
01:26:21Let's go.
01:26:21Let's go.
01:26:22Go.
01:26:22You're being back.
01:26:22Yeah.
01:26:22Yeah.
01:26:22Yeah.
01:26:23Ah, yeah.
Comments