Pack ice confounds adventurers

ANCHORAGE — A helicopter airlifted two adventurers from drifting sea ice in the Bering Strait, ending their attempt to be the first to cross the strait to Siberia and back.

Belgian Dixie Dansercoer, 42, and Alaskan Troy Henkels, 38, were picked up Wednesday on firm but swiftly moving pack ice 55 miles south of Wales, Alaska, before 30-mph winds grew stronger.

Fifty-six miles mark the shortest distance between shores on the narrow but erratic channel. The men had skied about that distance but wound up nowhere near the Siberian shore.

"It's a wild place," Henkels said yesterday from a base camp in Nome.

For more than two decades the strait has lured adventurers to cross it by various means, including bike, car, tank, dogsled, kayak and balloon. Most fail or chicken out. Several have been rescued. Only Russian Dmitry Shparo and his son Matvey have made it into Guinness World Records for crossing the strait on foot in 1998, after their third attempt.

Dansercoer and Henkels wanted to one-up the Russians and cross it in both directions.

With $250,000 in sponsorships and the patronage of Belgium's Crown Prince Philippe, they set out on March 30 from Wales, Alaska, the farthest point west on the North American continent. They headed toward Siberia, beginning the trek by sailing in their buoyant sleds. But from the onset the current spit the men out of the icy passage and sent them south.

For eight days, Dansercoer and Henkels were skiing across moving ice floes, trying to travel west, but a southern current sent their ice deeper into the open Bering Sea. At one point, the men tried to fight the drift by skiing east only to discover their own ski tracks miles later.

Each day the men had to find a path through jumbled blocks of ice, often retreating from impassable dead ends. Slushy ice and gaps of open water routinely confronted them as they drifted uncontrollably off course, each hauling 265 pounds on their sleds.

"We tried every day," Henkels said. "We traveled for eight hours and might get six miles. We'd camp for 10 or 12 hours and lose 12 miles."

Henkels is a troubleshooter for a phone company and lives in Eagle River, Alaska. Dansercoer is a celebrated adventurer in his country and makes his living doing extreme expeditions. In 2002, Dansercoer and another partner tried to ski across the Arctic Ocean from Siberia to Canada. They gave up after 69 days on fractured ice and rolling waves.

Quitting on the strait, for Dansercoer, meant getting an evacuation instead of a rescue.

"It would have been too easy to continue, allow ourselves to physically weaken, place ourselves in a risky environment for the search-and-rescue team to reach us," he wrote on the adventurers' Web site.

The two men had the will and the gear, but not a wind they could work with, Henkels said.

"I'm just ecstatic that I had the opportunity to spend time out in that environment," he said.

On their journey, the men came across polar bear tracks and a walrus.

"There was nobody else out there," Henkels said. "We got to see things I'll never forget."

Henkels said the two have not yet decided whether they will try the strait again.