Alone Across the Arctic

My name's Adam Shoalts. I'm a writer and an explorer.

And my dream is to try to cross nearly 4000 kilometers

of Canada's Arctic wilderness alone.

As far as anyone knows this has never been attempted before,

probably because no one was stupid enough to try it.

It's a very Canadian approach I have, you know,

just coming out here skating around by myself as a way to train.

My first playground was the forests that surrounded my family home.

I mean that's where I grew up, I grew up in the woods.

All around us where we lived, we were in a really small town, was forest.

So with my dog and my brother, we would always be out in those woods

building shelters and making fire without matches and catching frogs.

And my father, he would encourage us and he taught us all the different trees

and how to build birch bark canoes and cedar strip canoes.

And that's where I really fell in love with the natural world

and just came to really appreciate it.

I mean I think it's so important that we preserve it.

And that's always been a big part of who I am and...

And why I do these expeditions and these journeys

because I feel like that's the most important thing there is,

is this natural world and we try to preserve it.

When I zoom in on the satellite imagery,

I measure all the exact distances so I will know exactly like, well,

okay, I've got, you know, 27 kilometers to go this stage where I want to get to

or, you know, 13-kilometer portage here.

But to get an actual topographic map,

I'm using a Garmin BaseCamp over here on this laptop

and I'm copying my route manually from the satellite imagery

on to the topographic maps here and then I can download...

Download the topographic maps onto this little device here, the GPS,

and carry with... This with me in the field.

The winner is Adam Shoalts!

Nice.

- Can you recall the price? - Yeah, it was 1,800.

This is good.

And I want something super tough,

durable that can withstand all the punishment that the Arctic can dish out to itself.

The polar bears mostly stay on the seacoast and they only come in land a little bit. So...

What about grizzly bear?

There's lots of grizzlies, but I figure I can take a grizzly.

You could take one? With what?

My bayonet.

You think I should take a gun?

Something more than a bayonet.

- I got a bear spray... - Or... or... yeah, bear spray.

Yeah, you're gonna make yourself flavourful while he comes at you.

It's just that I have to travel as light as possible

and the gun is cumbersome and it has to be kept protected,

it has to be inside a waterproof case.

I showed you a small gun.

I'd be bringing a gun with me, personally.

I know it's a lot of work and everything but,

I don't know, he's a... he's crazy not to.

I mean like polar bears, everything, like, it can happen,

especially if they're hungry this time of year.

So, he's definitely got like a lot to undertake.

I have full confidence in his ability to be able to carry their sel.

But there are things out there that see humans as a meal.

Especially in the part of Canada he's going,

there's things that could stalk him for... for multiple days and him not even know it.

The expedition that he's gonna do now is gonna be very tough.

There's a lot of unknowns and it's a long distance and he has got a lot of gear to carry,

it's very tough.

I would say there's only a small percentage of people that probably could do it,

especially doing it alone, that makes it even harder.

When you talk about an expedition that's gonna span several months,

several thousand kilometers, how could you not look at it by asking the question,

"Is it possible? Will he be able to do it?"

So, I know he has his determination working for him.

I think he has that advantage over top of anyone else.

I'm nowhere near as nervous as my mom, I can tell you that.

I'll sleep fine at night.

I have quite a confidence about it.

I won't be as near nervous as my dad who will be slightly less nervous than my mom,

but I'll be nervous thinking about it and hope for the best because, realistically,

it's like tackling the near impossible.

But, yeah, like his dream is my mom's worst nightmare.

Super-lightweight, but I'm doing a bent-shaft 12-degree one,

so it's a little more efficient for flat water and this will be for white-water rapids.

I don't know if this is gonna be enough Gorilla Tape. I'm gonna go to buy a second.

Which canoe are you taking?

Fifteen-foot solo, built for me by Nova Craft, weighs 53 pounds.

Middle is tough stuff, super hard.

You can hit it with a sledgehammer and it won't break...

If you don't make it back, can I have it?

Yep.

I don't think he's gonna have the anxiety that most people would probably have out there.

I think he's done enough of these and he's gotten out of his comfort zone.

It's just gonna be a very long trip.

So that'll be new for him.

But I think he's going to be able to break it up

into mentally shorter trips...

A month here, a month there.

So I don't think he's looking at it as one big long trip.

I think he's breaking it down into his mind

as a series of smaller trips and smaller accomplishments.

I think that's how you get past the... the five-month issue

being out there by yourself.

When you see the design that no one talks about.

The... it's like kind of more on the back of your head, more on the side.

So I like them better than last year. It's just all sanded.

It's like unbelievable. You can have a beach picnic there, right?

They called it Sandy Creek for obvious reasons.

But it turns out that that's not why they call this Sandy Creek.

I was... my... my eye was burning, so I just... the only water...

- Here is Dawson City. - Okay.

Coming down the Klondike Highway and then if we were going east on the Klondike

and we were going up the Dempster through Tombstone Territorial Park through here.

What I've kind of done is I've taken all these historical accounts

and stitched them together into one big epic journey.

And no one knows if it's really possible to do it all in a single season.

You could do it maybe if you spread it out over several years.

But it's gonna be a race against time to see if I can squeeze it all into one year.

I mean my first wilderness trip by myself,

I was only 13 years old and I was terrified all night long.

But, you know, 18 years later of wilderness adventure,

you... you get into the rhythm of things and you start to feel much more comfortable.

So now when I look at on that wilderness,

I don't see an alien foreign environment,

I see something that looks like home.

So, you know, I'm in my element.

There's nowhere I'd rather be in the world than right here.

SOS.

Thank you.

This is the send-off, I suppose.

Long time coming.

Yeah. It's... this expedition has been three years in the making, at least three years.

So it's been a long time coming to get up to the Arctic Circle

and now I'm finally here and all these years of planning and preparing

and dreaming and visualizing has culminated in this moment.

So, we'll see how it goes from here.

Godspeed.

Thank you for all your support, Chuck.

Yeah.

It's been a blast having you here as part of the expedition support. So, that was awesome.

So honoured to help.

Oh, well, I'm honoured to have you and everyone else here.

So, very good.

What a contrast from the days when it was just me.

I mean I guess I'm gonna get to that pretty soon. Okay.

So I mean look at the size of that. I mean it's massive.

Going off in that direction.

So, bear crap and bears on the road here.

And the road can give you a false sense of security.

I mean you think it's a little outpost to civilization, but it's not really.

I mean, the grizzly is... they just walk right on them.

They do their business on the road.

And probably coming down from those mountains there.

And it kind of makes me want to keep, you know,

one eye over my shoulder as I do this hike.

I feel like I could almost be in one of those post-apocalyptic movies

and everything is just desolate and barren

and I'm like one of the last people left alive on Earth looking out on this landscape.

Here is my canoe fully loaded

and ready to set off on my journey across the Arctic.

This canoe and I are about to become very good friends and very close companion.

If I'm to cross the Arctic,

I have no choice but to travel up river on many of these waterways

because they're flowing north out to the Arctic Ocean

and I have to go east if I'm to cross the Arctic.

It's a matter of necessity.

The vast Mackenzie River.

Over two kilometers wide, sometimes three kilometers wide.

Way down there is my canoe. Who wants to be my pole?

My main strategy for getting upriver was kind of hauling along the bottom a bit

like they do on those boats in Venice, gondola I think they call them.

So that's my... that's my style, it's very romantic,

I like to think, as I pull my way up the Mackenzie River.

I may be doing this journey alone but in reality I could never do it

without the support of people like Chuck, Mark, my family, the crew.

I mean they've all been terrific and it's just... I mean it's...

It's really an overwhelming feeling having done expeditions for years

on a shoestring budget all by myself not having anyone to support me.

I mean saying thanks doesn't seem adequate.

But it's just a really nice feeling knowing that there are people out there

who are rooting for me, who are cheering for me, supporting me.

And without that... without their support I really couldn't do it. That's the truth.

Yeah, I got my stuff up here, satellite phone, first-aid kit,

bear spray, air horn.

These are my little accoutrements of weapons, air bangers over there.

My pillow, I just take my clothes and I...

You know, socks, dirty socks and things

and I stick them inside my sleeping bag case

and that's my pillow and I... you know, I love that pillow.

So friggin' comfy.

Look at the remains of that massive blister down there

from hiking along the Dempster Highway.

I think my dreams of becoming a foot model have pretty much been decisively ended now.

It's pretty cold but there's... there's no really no other option right now.

I've got to wade across this mud flat.

So I just took my boots and my socks off.

I've rolled up my pants. It's kind of like quicksand.

It's pretty cold but didn't seem to be any other option. So here we go.

There's the grizzly track. There's another one up here.

Imagine if I am just pulling along and the bank gives way

and... and just smacks into my canoe and sends me into the river,

probably from the melting of the permafrost and the ice breakup.

It's really quite strange though coming along this section

I got a bit of a chill like you get in the grocery store when you go on the frozen food aisle.

That's kind of what it feels like with all these mounds of ice here.