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Profile
of Mike Beedell — Part of the first expedition to make the first-ever sail of
the Northwest Passage using only wind power. Experience the bleakness of an unsupported
expedition to the high arctic......With a crack, the only thing that separated them from an icy grave began to
come apart. Electrified into action, Mike and Jeff heaved everything out of their rapidly
sinking tent and stowed it on their sailboat.
Outside, a severe storm had come out of the
night, packing with it winds of close to 100 km per hour. Snow was being blown
horizontally into their faces. There was thick fog. If there was one thing they didn't
want now, it was to be forced outside into the elements.
They had no choice. The hockey-rink-sized pan of ice on which they had
pitched their tiny shelter was breaking into pieces. With every passing minute, the piece
of ice was being blown further and further out to sea. Out there, in the middle of the
maelstrom, they knew there would be no hope. Their chances of rescue were nil 800 km north
of the Arctic Circle in the heart of the Northwest Passage. The town of Resolute was 80 km
to the north, but for all intents and purposes it might as well have been 800 km. In these
conditions, there was no way a plane could even reach them, let alone land in the heaving
pack ice.
Their only hope was to break camp and haul their 320-kg catamaran
deeper into the pack. For Mike, there could have been no better training than the
three-month Qit expedition he had completed just months before. Lean and strong from
repeatedly hauling the heavy sled over sections the sled dogs had no chance on by
themselves, he was ready for the Passage.
Mike and Jeff pushed and pulled with everything they had. The wind tore
through the boat's rigging, whistling with such intensity that both had to yell at the
tops of their lungs just to make each other hear.
Well after midnight, after advancing a little over two kilometres, they
were forced to stop in exhaustion. After hauling Perception up onto the largest pan of ice
they could find, they put up the tent again and collapsed inside...
And learn that truly not everyone measures success by the
house they live in, the car they drive, or whether they are recognized when they walk down
the street:
..."I don't do any of my journeys for fame
and fortune, although I've got mixed up with individuals whose only purpose is to
sensationalize their endeavours and make them far more than what they are in order to
build a false image of themselves. I quite detest that because I think people who get like
that must be very desperate. They begin to stomp on other people and lose their sense of
morality. For me, it's the joy of the experience and the joy of sharing. The priceless
jewels of deep experience are lost too often to man's thirst for fame and fortune."
Mike adheres to the philosophy of British writer Miles Clark. In
Clark's view: "The acid test of a true adventurer, if presented with certain
anonymity, is whether each of us would still have made the journey beyond that last blue
mountain....
...Mike does not want to set the world on fire,
his father says. "Money is incidental to him. If he wants to achieve, he'll take
everyone he knows with him. He enjoys recognition, but he doesn't trample on others to
achieve it."...
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