Camp Setup

Once we hit shore for the night, we set camp immediately. It’s a synchronized process, with each member of the team doing their bit.

Once out of our boats, we quickly strip out of our Mustang dry suits and PFDs into warm fleece and wind-breaking pants and jackets.

With all hands on deck, we then set about erecting our 6-person Helsport tent. In big wind, the more bodies to handle this process, the better. A half-erected tent has a nasty habit of catching the wind and doing things you don’t want it to do. This is how tent poles snap. We can’t afford that out here. Once erected, with guy wires pegged, we start moving gear inside.

It’s at this juncture that two of us head out to find water. Small lakes dot the landscape, but some can be a kilometer or so inland and some can even be salty. Whoever goes for water takes a shotgun for protection. The chance of running into a polar bear along this coastline is fairly low but not nonexistent. The local elder we met, Max, told us how he had to shoot an aggressive polar bear near Booth Point some years back. “You can run into them anywhere out here,” he told us matter-of-factly. Big scratches on the walls of his small shelter cabin confirmed his words.

The two of us who remain set about preparing camp. One goes inside the tent to inflate Thermarests, locate clothing bags, unroll sleeping bags, and make the sleeping arrangements for the team, while the other sets up the polar bear fence. After numerous polar trips setting up a bear fence with fishing line and shotgun blanks (and the unnerving prospect of blowing my fingers off) I’ve come up with a much more effective (and safe) solution to the problem of early warning against an approaching predator. On this trip we use a small motion-sensing device called a Critter Gitter, recommended to me by a Greenlandic mountain guide. It senses motion and sends out a piercing 130-decibel alarm with flashing red lights when something gets too close. Attached to thin landscape poles hammered into the ground, the Critter Gitters make the perfect perimeter protection. We have eight of them and arm them right before sleep.

When the two with the water return, we fire up our MSR XGK, boil water, prep a meal, and make tea.

Last step, Ken’s alone: solar panels, batteries, Starlink. That’s the whole reason we can post daily from a place this remote.

The whole process is simple and effective, and once dialed in, it unfolds without a word.