By Steve Hubrecht
A man has been trudging along the streets of Edgewater throughout the fall and winter months harnessed to a heavy set of tires.
He hauls his rubber load behind him, straining hard as the tires half-slide, half-grind across the irregular pavement. This he’s done through rain, sunshine and, lately, through the snow, ice and crud of winter roads. Even when it’s well below zero the outdoorsy looking man usually wears nothing more than a T-shirt over his torso, and if you think about it for a minute, this makes perfect sense: he’s working up quite a sweat dragging all that weight. Atop the tires is a wooden sign reading: ‘What do you do to reach your dreams?’
If you’re curious just what this man is doing, you’re not alone. Prompted by the sign, plenty of Edgewater residents have stopped to ask.
The man is Bruno-Pierre Couture and he is training to ski across Hudson Bay this winter.
It’s a daunting goal: Bruno and his friend Jacob Racine will need to cross more than 1,000 kilometres of sea ice, going from Churchill, Manitoba to the northwestern reaches of Quebec. They’ll need to deal with bitter cold, the constant threat of polar bears, and — most treacherous of all — the constantly shifting sea ice underfoot.
The ice on Hudson Bay is unpredictable at best. Strong tidal currents, temperature fluctuations, differences in snow cover, the relatively low salinity of the bay, and a range of other factors mean the frozen winter surface of the bay is always changing. For starters, it’s not actually entirely frozen; there are frequently large stretches of open water. When there is ice instead of open water, the ice exists as ‘plates’ that move just like the earth’s tectonic plates. These ice plates can be the size of the entire Columbia Valley, or as small as a kitchen table. They are continually breaking up, banging into each other and re-forming. When they bang together, they create large pressure ridges of ice formidable enough that Bruno and Jacob will need ski crampons to get over them.
All this means that skiing across the bay is not a straight line from Manitoba to Quebec. Instead it is a giant, hop-scotch-like puzzle with the duo trying to ‘hop’ from one really large plate of ice to the next, to minimize the dangers of (and extra time and energy spent) getting across the cracks in the ice, the pressure ridges, and the big gaps of open water. Except just like Tetris the ‘puzzle pieces’ in this game can transform from one moment to the next without warning.
Even when the ice stretches unbroken for miles, conditions don’t necessarily stay the same for long. The ice can be several feet thick at one point, then just one inch thick nearby. Or several feet thick first thing in the morning, and one inch thick by mid-afternoon
“It’s tricky,” explained Bruno. “You can never be 100 per cent sure the ice is thick enough to, for instance, pitch your tent. It might be (thick enough) at night. But maybe by morning it has disappeared. So we will have to sleep on something that floats.”
Bruno and Jacob think they may pull their supplies behind them in canoes, rather than in the pulks (snow sleds) common in Arctic and Antarctic trips. They could sleep in canoes and then use them to get across open water.
In some respects reaching the North or South Pole is easier than crossing Hudson Bay, since at least those places have snow that is usually firm. On Hudson Bay, on the other hand, there can be several feet of light, fluffy snow to trudge through, with the duo sinking into it up to their knees with each step, slowing their progress to a snail’s pace. In addition, the snow can hide the hazardous cracks and holes in the ice.
Their nordic skis will help disperse their weight, keeping them atop the snow as much as possible, and hopefully keeping them from falling through the ice when it is only an inch or so thick.
If all this sounds difficult, that’s because it is. And therein lies the lure for Bruno and Jacob: to see if they can accomplish something many deem impossible.
“As far as we know, no one else has ever done it,” Bruno told the Pioneer.
The sleds (or pulks or canoes) they will pull behind them as they ski will weigh 300 to 350 pounds each. That’s partly because you need a good deal of equipment to survive out on Hudson Bay in the winter, and to be ready for emergencies. It’s also because the area is so remote and perilous that no food drops by air are possible en route. They must take all their food with them.
That’s why Bruno has been dragging those tires around Edgewater. The friction of the tires on the pavement is an excellent simulation of dragging 300 pounds over the drifting snow on Hudson Bay. If Bruno’s training is any indication, it won’t be easy out on the ice.
“I barely move forward, I’m probably moving about one kilometre an hour,” he said, of his tire-pulling practice in Edgewater.
This also explains Bruno and Jacob’s fixation on “going ultra-light”, trying to strictly reduce their gear and supplies to the bare minimum of essentials. It’s an approach Bruno has embraced on other outdoor trips in the past, including an attempt to kite ski the summit plateau of Mount Logan (Canada’s highest mountain) in the Yukon. He and his mountaineering partner went ultra-light and were amazed at just how fast they moved up and down the peak. On one day it took them two hours to cover ground that normally takes 12 hours. Another group on the mountain spent several days doing what Bruno and his partner did in a day and a half.
But being ultra-light must be carefully deliberated, since ditching too much equipment creates risks. “You do a ton of research, a lot of calculating,” said Bruno. “It actually gets pretty geeky. How can I save weight without compromising safety?”
He and Jacob have spent countless hours pouring over research data on, and satellite imagery of, the ice on Hudson Bay, trying to get a sense of how they will navigate the ever-rearranging maze of ice plates.
The duo will go to Churchill later this month, and plan to begin skiing in early February. If all goes well, it will take them about 60 days to cross Hudson Bay. The pair hope to average about 18 kilometres a day. They don’t know precisely where in Quebec they will finish the crossing, since their exact route will depend on the ice conditions.
The pair met in Quebec many years ago, and cemented their friendship in 2013 when they (along with two other friends) skied 2,400 kilometres from Montreal to Kuujjuaq, on Ungava Bay, in the far northern tip of Quebec. The trip took 130 days to complete, from late December to early May, and the group named their endeavour Projet-Karibu. It made headlines all over Canada. When the four neared Kuujjuaq, a group of Inuit youth skied out many kilometres to meet them. The youth were inspired by the trip; Bruno, Jacob and friends were in turn inspired by the Inuit youngsters.
Kuujjuaq has high rates of youth suicide and substance abuse. The friends stayed in Kuujjuaq and, along with teachers, elders and community leaders, created outdoor programs for high school and elementary school students there, hoping to help the youth.
“It really snowballed,” said Bruno. “Now it’s grown into a huge program. It’s helped more than 3,000 kids.”
Bruno grew up in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. There’s plenty of outdoor recreation in that area, albeit not on the same scale as in the Columbia Valley, and Bruno spent many weekends hiking and camping in the nearby White Mountains in Vermont. In school he did an indoor rock climbing course and got hooked. Gradually his trips got longer and his exploits took him further afield, eventually taking him to Baffin Island, Patagonia and the Yukon.
In 2015 Bruno moved to the Columbia Valley. As he put it: “I’d done a lot of horizontal trips (long distance nordic ski traverses). It was time to go to the mountains where things are more vertical.” He lived in Invermere until recently moving to Edgewater.
A great many Columbia Valley residents enjoy getting out in the snow and ice of winter, but few do so with the same gusto and ambition as Bruno, who concedes he is particularly drawn to cold, windswept environments.
“I love the winter,” he told the Pioneer. On long multi-week ski traverses “you have a lot of time to think. It’s almost like meditating. You have to have a strong mental game. There’s a simplicity to winter trips — you eat, you put on layers, and you move. That’s the physical side. The mental game is the other side. Maybe I do well in winter because it’s familiar to me. I know it well (through past trips). That helps my mental game.”
To illustrate his point, Bruno outlined his first — and so far only — outdoor endurance race experience in extreme heat. He did an orienteering race with friends when temperatures were at 35 degrees Celsius. “It was awful,” said Bruno. He wasn’t mentally prepared for the heat and badly miscalculated how much extra water and food his body needed to deal with those temperatures. “I was on the ground, almost crying,” he said.
On Hudson Bay, Bruno will be back in his element. He and Jacob have labelled the crossing as a continuation of Projet-Karibu and are hoping that, just like that first trip, it will help inspire youth in the communities around Hudson Bay.
“Maybe it will snowball (into programs) again,” said Bruno.
To learn more, to follow the duo’s progress this winter, or to help with trip fundraising efforts, visit the Projet-Karibu Facebook page. Those keen for even more detailed accounts of the traverse can subscribe to their newsletter.
