SKIING SEASON is not necessarily sailing season in the Arctic. Sailboats cannot navigate if large parts of the coast are iced over. Before crossing into Arctic waters, boats must carefully monitor sea ice and weather patterns to ensure safety upon arrival. Captain Ben, who was set to arrive with the Knut on May 1—the same time as the rest of us flew in from around the world—was not afforded the luxury of being able to wait for a perfect weather window. Greenland experienced an extremely cold spring in 2022, receiving six feet of snow days before we arrived. Ben sailed solo from the Canary Islands, over 2,620 nautical miles through that storm cycle, for three weeks. My heart, having been so excited to see Ben and the Knut, sank immediately when the Knut arrived completely out of power and coated with a thick layer of ice. Ben is a visionary. Born in landlocked Switzerland, by the time he turned 10 years old, he could sail an Olympic class dinghy. At 13, he told his family he was going to buy a sailboat and sail around the world. He went to college to become a photographer, but by 23 he and a friend had rebuilt an engineless 30-foot sailboat named the Dira, and spent the next seven years trans-navigating the globe. They floated without wind for weeks in open ocean and even wrecked off the coast of Patagonia. Despite the high-seas experience, Ben, now in his late 30s, is anything but a swashbuck-ling sailor. He stands medium height with strawberry blond hair that defies gravity. He is an artist. He reads a book a day and has published several of his own. He jokes that he is more a janitor than a sailor because he is constantly fixing everything. He does not typically work with skiers. Ben runs a nonprofit called MaréMotrice, bringing artists into the wilds of the Arctic. “Taking artists to the sea or around icebergs has a particularity,” he says. “It is their job to feel the place and what is happening there—it is their job to transmit what they see and experience on a sensory and emotional level.” Ben believes in the power of art. He believes that if he can take artists through the presence of this ever-changing icy greatness that they can capture and portray its sacred beauty though artistic expression. Lucky for Jess, our expedition leader and professional mountain guide, Ben sees skiing as a form of art. Jess is an AMGA-certified ski and alpine guide with one remain-ing certification to be a fully-credentialed IFMGA/AMGA guide. She is a mother of two bright little girls and married to another extremely accomplished mountain guide—in other words, she is forever connected to the mountains. We first met 20 years ago and I knew then that Jess was her own kind of visionary—she just comes up with an idea and figures out how to make it a reality. Ben and Jess both dream in challenges. They met in 2016 in Svalbard, Norway, and immediately became like family. They have led parallel lives in their different disciplines, but each has two children about the same ages, run their own businesses, and are passionately drawn to sharing the Arctic with others. They decided to partner for a 2016 expedition and immediately challenged each other’s norms. Jess wanted to access larger mountains in the south of Svalbard, which are not easily reached from the port town of Longyearbyen. To ski those southern ranges, Ben’s solution was for Jess and crew to make the arduous crossing from Hammerfest, Norway, to Svalbard the following year. That, as the story goes, is where I came in. Jess and I had been on several ski trips together and she had told me about skiing in Svalbard among icebergs, polar bears and reindeer. I’d always wanted to ski a line straight down to the sea. So in 2018 I jumped aboard the Knut having never sailed a day in my life and signed on to cross the Barents Sea—500 nautical miles of unforgiving Arctic Ocean. I had never felt the force of wind on a sail. A sailboat’s happy place is ripping through water in balance between sail and keel. This means the sailboat is almost always tipping while ocean pours over one side of the railing. Wind also creates waves—which is a “duh” of sorts—but one I was not pre-pared for during the crossing. Along with sailing shock, once we reached the icy archipelago we had to navigate skiing through the hightest concentration of polar bears on the planet. In 2018, I got off the Knut and vowed never to sail or ski in the Arctic again. I clearly have a short-term memory. A mere five months later, Jess pitched Greenland, and I agreed immediately. The Arctic haunts you with its vast beauty. That 2019 expedition was an overwhelming success. Still reliant on a diesel engine, we were able to motor confidently through uncharted water. When I signed up for a further investigation of Greenland in 2022, I did not under-stand the full implication of what it meant to “go green” in a world encased in ice. 054 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 3: Page 54
