Jon Turk and Erik Boomer, the first men to kayak around Canada’s northernmost island, tackled unforgiving waters, rode ice floes, and dodged polar bears to make it through.

by David Browne

Jon Turk and Erik Boomer learned quickly why no one else had ever successfully circled Ellesmere Island by kayak. To begin with, the pair had to walk the first 740 miles because the seas were frozen. At their starting point in the tiny community of Grise Fiord, they strapped on skis and began dragging their 13.5-foot, 300-pound kayaks across the ice. “You get out on the ice, and it’s overwhelming — the cold, the loneliness, the danger,” says Turk. “No matter how prepared you are, you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

Throughout their 1,500-mile trip around the Canadian island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole, Turk, a 66-year-old Montana-based writer, and Boomer, an extreme-white-water kayaker 40 years his junior, had to deal with a constantly shifting environment. In the water, the two were forced to paddle around icebergs and watch as 20-foot-thick ice floes crashed into coastal glaciers, sending debris into the ocean. On foot, they’d jump from floe to floe, some miles long, others no larger than a king-size bed. They set up camp on one massive berg hoping to ride it south — until they realized it was actually moving north into the Arctic Ocean and bailed immediately. Dragging their kayaks, Turk and Boomer dealt with ice that was as smooth as a skating rink (which helped them travel some 15 to 20 miles a day) and as choppy as frozen waves (which slowed them down to as little as 1.3 miles a day). “Working on moving ice,” says Turk, “is like climbing glaciers and skiing avalanche slopes all rolled into one.”

Other than a few Canadian rangers and weather-station employees, Turk and Boomer saw almost no one. But they did encounter wildlife: As they were paddling in tranquil water, a walrus lunged and almost capsized Boomer’s kayak. One night they awoke to find a polar bear’s head poking into their tent. Somehow, they managed to scare it away without using the 12-gauge shotgun they’d brought along.

In August, after 104 days, they paddled back to Grise Fiord and celebrated quietly with some salsa and a bag of chips. The low-key party didn’t last long: Their hands and feet were swollen from the cold, and Turk’s ­kidneys had begun to fail. He was taken by medevac to a hospital in Ottawa. “To say we were content every day would be a lie,” says Turk. “When you’re shivering cold and wet, you wish you had a dry pair of socks. But at the same time, we were happy out there. That’s the glory of polar exploration.”