Gilles Elkaim鈥榮 appetite for exploring began in 1984, when he spent a year living in an Inuit community on the west coast of Greenland learning the local language, seal hunting, ice fishing and training sled dogs. Since then, he has journeyed through west Africa on a camel and crossed Mongolia on a bicycle. Elkaim gave up his career as a physics teacher to become a full-time explorer in 1992. He is now writing a book about his recent Arctic expedition. You can read dispatches from his trip at
Why did you decide to do this trip now?
Around 40 you become a bit crazy. I didn鈥檛 feel comfortable with myself and I didn鈥檛 feel good in our society. I knew that I needed a long and difficult trip. I had already been on expeditions lasting a few months or a year and I knew that, this time, one year was not going to be enough. I also knew that I wanted to travel in the north because I鈥檓 passionate about ice and the polar areas. I could have gone back to Greenland, where I once lived for a year, but I needed even more wilderness than that. I chose Siberia in Russia because there is so little infrastructure that you really have to become an adventurer and explorer. I decided to cross the continent, from the North Cape to the Bering Strait. I thought that 12,000 kilometres would be challenging enough to quench my thirst for exploration.
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How did you survive the extreme weather?
Confronting the elements was one of the particular challenges of this expedition. The cold would be nothing without the wind, but on the tundra the wind blows almost constantly at gale force. For four years I was living in the cold 24 hours a day. It was worst in the winter. There were mornings when I would have to reshape my frozen clothes so that I could put them on. Even people who live in this environment worried that I might freeze to death. If you live in a hut in a village you can keep it warm even when it鈥檚 cold outside, but not a tent. Sometimes I would wake up and find it was -45掳C in the tent and I would have to warm it up with my stove or, when fuel ran low, a candle. My movements and even my mind worked slowly. Even to open a zipper, I would have to prepare the movement in my mind before doing it with my frozen fingers.
Did you suffer frostbite?
In the first year of the expedition, I did get some frostbite on my nose and toes, but in the second year I suffered less and in the final year there was nothing. Even when, in the third year, I developed a problem with my blood circulation I didn鈥檛 get frostbite. It was interesting to see how my body adapted.
Why did the European Space Agency agree to sponsor your trip?
One thing they wanted me to do was test the coverage of their satellite networks. I measured the reception for satellite phones in areas where very few people with instrumentation have ever been. The real coverage was quite different to what theory predicted. This was interesting not only for ESA, but for companies such as Inmarsat, Globalstar and Iridium. Each of these systems showed their advantages and faults.
But they were also interested in how my experience of isolation might apply to astronauts. When I came back, I had a very interesting debriefing with ESA at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne in Germany. We discussed how to train and recruit astronauts for future missions to Mars. This team will be isolated for a minimum of one-and-a-half years in a harsh environment where communication between the spacecraft and Earth will be so delayed that astronauts will have to solve problems on their own. Those are the kind of conditions I experienced. We analysed how I coped with the loneliness and the stress.
How would you select the crew for a big space trip?
My own recommendation would be to send just one person. A team may be safer, but the mental stresses will be more. For example, a team of polar adventurers from Norway and Japan tried to make the same journey that I have just completed. They didn鈥檛 finish because the team wasn鈥檛 in harmony. The team members became enemies. That鈥檚 a very big danger for a big team on a long trip.
What qualities would an individual need for that kind of mission?
More than anything else, you have to be strong-minded and motivated to achieve your goal. You also have to be extremely painstaking and accurate.
How did you cope with four years of isolation?
Loneliness is huge in the Arctic. It鈥檚 harsh land. There were long stretches of tundra with no settlement for 1000 kilometres and sometimes I would go for two months without meeting anyone. Being face-to-face with the elements of nature with only my own resources to rely on was a great challenge. But these periods of loneliness, with only my sled dogs and bears around, also gave me a great sense of freedom. I grew to love it.
Did you keep in contact with ESA while you were in the Arctic?
I spoke to them frequently and when a runner on my sled broke after it fell into an ice canyon I asked their engineers for advice. Although it would seem that there was a huge technological gulf between me, a guy moving with the most basic means of transport, and the organisers of the trip, with their sophisticated technology, we were always on the same wavelength. I was delighted to have a sponsor who understood the spirit of exploration.
The head of ESA鈥檚 Moscow office, Alain Fournier-Sicre, even came to visit me once. At the time, I was living in a hut in Chukotka, in an abandoned military base at the edge of the Arctic Ocean. There were many bears in the neighbourhood; the place was on their migration path. I lived there for nine months with my dogs, existing mostly off food that I hunted. Those months were the best of the whole expedition because I felt I had achieved my main goal, which was to fully adapt to the polar environment. Alain came with a cameraman to make a short film about our collaboration.
Were there any particularly scary moments during the journey?
Once I had to be rescued from a piece of drifting pack ice. That was November 2002, in Buorkhaya Bay on the Laptev Sea. I had set up camp on the bay鈥檚 icy shores. Overnight, a hurricane stormed in. The winds were blowing at more than 150 kilometres per hour and I spent 10 hours bent and leaning against the sides of my tent, trying to save what had been my home for more than two years. In the morning, I could see that the ice was breaking up and I couldn鈥檛 find any way to reach land. After three days I knew that the fourth would be the last and that鈥檚 when I called for help. I set off a distress signal that summoned a Russian military helicopter. Looking back, I would say that being adrift was no more scary than anything else I went through, but it was a problem I could not solve alone. I had 13 dogs to save.
鈥淟oneliness is huge in the Arctic. I would go for months without meeting anyone鈥�
How important were the dogs to you?
The dogs were both my best companions and my transport. I travelled only by traditional means such as skis, kayak and dog sled. Many dog sled expeditions use snow-scooters to make tracks, but we were off-track almost all the time and the sled was very heavy, sometimes half a tonne or more. I had a special sled made with a spinnaker sail that was loaded with equipment and food. Dragging this across sea-ice, tundra, rivers and mountains was hard for the dogs, but they enjoyed pulling the sled and they loved me. I had chosen some of them when they were young so they grew up with me and I trained them while marching. It was like building a family.
Now that the expedition is over, how are you adapting to being back in the normal world?
My body will very quickly return to the way it was before the trip. Mentally, it will take much longer to adjust. But I don鈥檛 plan to be in civilisation for very long. I am already thinking about my next project.
What will that be?
During the third year of this expedition I just wanted to keep going, to explore Alaska, Canada and Greenland the same way that I was exploring the Siberian Arctic. But after the fourth year I realised that I needed something new. It had all started to become routine. What I want to do now is build a permanent drifting base on the Arctic Ocean. This base would be a yacht specially built to withstand the pressure of ice. Scientific teams could visit the base and explore the area around the boat by dog sled. They could study climate change in the polar area. When it will happen depends on what sponsorship I can find because there is always the question of money. I hope that it will start in the next two or three years. In the meantime, I am working on a book about my experiences.
Do you think you were born to be an explorer?
I think I knew even when I was five that I was destined to be an explorer. I used to look up at the sky when everyone else was sleeping. I was always curious. I wanted to go ahead, to look beyond horizons. I studied physics at university and I think that was exploring too. A physicist is, by definition, an explorer. You want to understand and to formulate the rules of the universe. You can explore with equations, using mathematics. But I wanted more. I wanted to play a real part in nature. It took me time and effort, but in the Arctic I achieved this.
But exploring is more than travelling, it is about going to distant places and bringing back scientific and cultural material. It is very important to me to finish my expeditions by helping other people discover what I have seen.
