Watching the Wildlife

It was the end of April, and I thought my winter was done – time for gardening and mountain biking – until I got a call from my friend Chris Davenport inviting me on a trip to film for Faces of Dav, his upcoming show with Red Bull TV. The mission would entail taking a 19-meter sailboat, the Arctica II, into northern Svalbard's endless fjords at the end of May with an all-star crew. Led by Davenport, one of the best freeride mountaineers ever, the team would include Michelle Parker, smiley bundle of energy, James Heim, super nice Canadian mountain man, and myself, plus Christian Pondella for photos and a crack team of filmers and guides.

Knowing Davenport's knack for creating great trips in amazing places and always somehow scoring good snow and weather, how could I possibly say no? We arrive in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, on May 25 at midnight under full sun. The following day we head to the marina to load onto our home for the next week. She's a sturdy-looking sailboat, not fancy but perfectly Scandinavian for her combination of beautiful, blue and white clean design and functionality. Fitting twelve bodies and their accompanying gear into tiny bunks and compartments is not an easy task, and it takes us until lunch before we are able to gather for a safety talk.

Part of this includes eating a massive sandwich while Stein and Helga – the captains, cooks and general masters of the vessel – tell us a big meal will help settle our stomachs. For 20 minutes after leaving port we holler and laugh as we get sprayed by the first bigger waves; ten minutes later I am down in my cabin, wishing I hadn't eaten such a big lunch. At one point I come back upstairs to see if that would help, and find a few equally pale people trying my same approach. Stein steers the boat perpendicular into each swell and says, "This really isn't that bad! It's not serious until you're in the green water." "Green water," I soon realize, is actually a nice way of saying that the boat is fully underwater.

I lurch back downstairs and flop down on my bunk. A few hours and several porcelain-hugging sessions later we leave the open seas and mercifully enter the smaller, sheltered Krossfjord to spend the night. We eat some of Helga's soup and scout the 20 or so couloirs visible from the boat before a long sleep. The next afternoon, skies are overcast but we gear up, choose two adjacent chutes and take the Zodiacs to shore. A thousand feet above the water, the chute forks into two equally good-looking runs. Multitudes of auks – small, penguin-looking birds with functional wings – shriek from cliffs above, dive bombing us every so often and keeping our eyes upward.

The snow skis surprisingly well, and we boot up the other Y for an even narrower chute, followed by a few thousand feet to the bay. Back at the boat, both teams swap stories over more of Helga's excellent Norwegian cooking. The week ahead stretches out with possibility. A storm arrives, however, tugging the boat against her anchor so violently that night that barely anyone sleeps. We motor further north, finding no better weather but lots of wildlife: an Arctic fox, partially molting his winter whites, trots effortlessly between auk nests in search of eggs, while a white reindeer watches our progress warily.

We find a sheltered bay as the storm rages for a second night, and through the hull of the boat we can hear seals singing underwater, an eerie but beautiful noise. A pod of beluga whales, their slick ivory-yellow fins lazily punctuating the water at regular intervals, entertains us while we drink tea and instant coffee the next morning. With a few days left, the weather finally clears and the sun returns. We climb up another set of parallel chutes, mindful of the sun on the new snow. A natural slough rips down the chute Chris, Michelle and Pondella are hiking, narrowly missing them and forcing a return to the boat. The following day, we leave earlier and make a plan to avoid couloirs and try to get higher up on a glacier.

The guides bring up the rear, loaded with huge pack and massive, legally mandated rifles in case we encounter a polar bear. Svalbard is polar bear country. Each year, the town of Longyearbyen usually sees at least one bear venturing into town, and out on the fjords, near the glaciers and pack ice, sightings are fairly regular – so much so that people come to Svalbard for the sole purpose of seeing them. Despite our hesitation, we are slightly disappointed that one never appears, but the rest of the wildlife is an abundant and colorful consolation. One day Stein gets really excited about what looks like a regular old duck from a distance.

It turns out to be a king eider, puffinish and with a crazy orange swirl over his head and beak, and one of the fanciest birds I've ever seen. It is our last ski day. We have only made a single, mellow run, and our options aren't looking good. Davenport suggests we make our way to the top of a nearby ridge – if nothing else we'll get some impressive open ocean views. We all perk up with the potential, and 20 minutes of glacier skinning later a wall begins to appear on our left with what looks like some longer lines. The snow is shaded and possibly decent. There is little to no exposure from above and there seems to be good run-outs. We skin faster, each hundred yards revealing another promising run about to come into the light.

We radio the filmers and crest the ridge, re-enthused, talking about who wants to ski what. As I sweat up the chute I've chosen, I look over and see Michelle topping out on her line and watch Heim rip down. All alone, surrounded by blue sky, fjords, and friends on peaks, I feel calm yet humming with energy. I drop in and open it up, arcing big turns toward the group waiting at the bottom. We hug and hoot, happy that what had started as a quest for a view has turned into one of the best zones of the trip. I smile and think how sometimes, on a ski trip, it's not the skiing that matters but the people and the adventure.