Getting to Spitsbergen was harder than crossing it. Two days of cancelled flights, a finger I dislocated packing the night before, a route that kept rerouting itself through Frankfurt, Brussels, Oslo. I have skied across Greenland and crossed the Australian outback by camel, and somehow none of it was as hard as reaching Oslo that week.
Then the plane banked over Longyearbyen and I saw all that snow and ice, and my heart started going. That feeling never gets old. Thomas Ulrich came in on a later flight, and we spent two days in a chalet by the water, packing food, prepping skis, loading the sleds we would pull for the next ten days.
This is polar bear country. We carried a flare gun, a rifle, a motion alarm for the tent, and an electric fence with charges. There is something about moving through a landscape knowing a predator that size is out there with you. No fences, no barriers. You are truly in nature.
For three weeks we guided a private client across Spitsbergen. I do my own expeditions because that is how I get better in hard places. Guiding is a different reward. Passing it on, helping someone reach a place they had only imagined. Thomas and I have crossed enough country together that the work feels like being out with a friend, which is everything when it gets hard.
Now I am in a hotel room in Oslo, on the way home to Davos, already thinking about Greenland.