P EOP LE | SAF E TY | ROCK THE BOAT | NEWS
NEWS FROM THE PADDLING WORLD Flotsam Jetsam Turk in ice. PHOTO: COURTESY JON TURK PEOPLE BY VIRGINIA MARSHALL And Then There Were Two
THIS SUMMER’S MOST UNLIKELY EXPEDITION TEAM HEADS TO THE ARCTIC, ONE MEMBER SHORT Bradt was taking advantage of spring rains
“I really f***ed up. My boat flattened out halfway down a big falls and I broke my back. I’ll know a lot more in the morning when I talk to the neurosurgeon…”
S
o read the email dated 1:47 a.m. from Tyler Bradt that greeted Jon Turk on the morn-
ing of March 21, just six weeks before they were to head to the High Arctic to attempt the first sea kayak circumnavigation of ice-choked Ellesmere Island. Turk and Bradt used to paddle rivers togeth-
er, when both lived in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley and Bradt was just a talented 10-year- old kid. Now 24 and one of the world’s top whitewater paddlers, Bradt is best known for throwing his kayak off huge waterfalls, includ- ing a record (and injury-free) descent in 2009 of Washington’s 186-foot Palouse Falls. Join- ing them in the Arctic would be Erik Boomer, a 26-year-old expert whitewater kayaker, pho- tographer and good friend of Bradt’s. “The dichotomy of personalities is a really
interesting part of this trip,” Turk, a veteran sea kayaker, explorer and author, told Adventure Kayak just weeks before the accident. Senior to his trip mates by 40 years, Turk
22 ADVENTURE KAYAK | EARLY SUMMER 2011
is the only team member with experience in High Arctic travel—he’s rowed the Northwest Passage, dogsledded on Baffin Island, kayaked solo 3,000 miles across the North Pacific from Japan to Alaska, and much else. Bradt projects a young gun persona that
seems in polar opposition to Turk’s unassum- ing academic. Nevertheless, when the pair re- connected five years ago at a trade show, they agreed to some day do a trip together. Last summer, Turk received an unexpected email. “I sent Jon a two-liner,” recalls Bradt, “‘Hey,
remember that trip we’re supposed to do? Well, what’s up?’” Itching to “go back into the ice before I’m too
old,” Turk laid out the broad strokes of a dar- ing expedition: sea kayaking and dragging the gear-laden kayaks 2,400 kilometers through open water, thick slush and frozen ice fields around Ellesmere Island. During the 100-day journey, they could expect to face polar bears, shifting pack ice, hunger, exhaustion and what Turk refers to as the “trudge factor.” The pair invited Boomer, who jumped at the chance to round out the team. Then another unexpected email. This time the subject line read: Bad News.
in the Pacific Northwest on Oregon’s 101-foot Abiqua Falls when the accident occurred. After surgery involving pins and a metal rod to repair an extension fracture in his lumbar spine, he was told that recovery—which is expected to be 100 percent—would be 12 weeks. Shocked and saddened, and with pre-trip
logistics well underway after months of plan- ning, Turk and Boomer weighed their options: cancel, postpone the expedition a year, or move forward minus Bradt. “I fear that postponing would mean not do-
ing it,” Turk says. “Tyler is planning another expedition, momentum will be lost with spon- sors and I am getting older. I’m afraid if I put it off, I’m not going to be [physically] able to do it.” Now, when the expedition’s 13.5-foot Wil-
derness Systems Tsunami kayaks slip into some of the most northerly waters in the world, there will be only two paddles dipping amid the shifting ice floes. Turk and Boomer depart for Ellesmere the first
week of May. Follow their progress at
www.ad-
venturekayakmag.com/0011 and
www.jonturk. net/content/blog.
Boomer on river. PHOTO: BEN MARR
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