Whiteout

There is no ground. No sky. Nowhere to look, nothing to see, no reference point. There is nothing but white. We cannot see. Not one of us. Not our Norwegian guide Audun, nor any of the four of us on this insane expedition to the eastern coast of Spitsbergen. Audun has a GPS device. It is the only way he can make it. I have no idea how he manages to see it. We left Longyearbyen on snowmobiles for a one-week camping trip in the mountains. We will push from 78 to 80 degrees North, as far to the North Pole as we are permitted to travel this way.

The first four hours of our drive to base camp is deceiving. There is nowhere in the World to see scenery like this, all made of snow and ice. We drive at speeds topping off just over 60km\hr. At this rate we can make it in four hours. Four will become eight. At midpoint, whiteout. It snows so hard and the winds are blowing at least 40 miles an hour. Despite all my gear for this weather, I am bitterly cold. Freezing is no longer an adjective that applies. Freezing is tragically laughable at this point. These are subzero temperatures at their most severe.

We may be driving considerably slower, but it is sheer terror. This is rugged terrain. But I cannot see any of it. I cannot anticipate it to slow down or speed up a mountainside without becoming stuck. I cannot see the slope in order to lean over the machine in the opposite direction and keep it from rolling over. Remarkably I only roll my vehicle twice on the way to our campsite. I cannot feel the pain of being thrown and landing where I cannot see, either because it is so damn cold or because my fear is all I can concentrate on. I can only see a dot of light in front of me, which I know to be Audun's snowmobile and I try to regulate my speed by staying the same distance from that dot of light as we push on. I have now come to ask myself the question I will repeat in my head over and over for a week: Why?