Airborne team rescues three adults, child from ice floe

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Don’t underestimate the deadly tides of Frobisher Bay.

Three Iqaluit hunters and a 10-year-old boy said they learned their lesson last week when they tried to retrieve a stuck snowmobile on the floe edge near Iqaluit.

Andrew Cox, an experienced seal hunter, drove his mother’s skidoo about 35 kilometres down Frobisher Bay with the three others last Wednesday, Jan. 12, after a seal hunt went awry on the weekend.

Cox, 33, wanted their help chipping his own skidoo out of the ice on what he expected to be a perfect day, where nothing could go wrong.

“Everything was so beautiful,” Cox said by cell phone last week. “I had all the things that could go wrong crossed off my list. It was such a freakish thing that happened.”

The “freakish” event ended in a high-level rescue mission involving a Hercules military plane from Nova Scotia, a helicopter from Iqaluit and a ground search party, which ended early in the morning the next day. No one was injured.

The day began when Cox and his companions set out around 7 a.m., riding two snowmobiles, with a rowboat in tow, until they reached the trapped skidoo near Frobisher’s Farthest Island.

Cox said he felt confident about travelling the area. He’s made previous trips to his cabin on a nearby island for several years. Plus, he had experience from hunting on the ice of the St. Lawrence River when he was growing up in rural Quebec.

Cox and the group reached the stuck skidoo around noon. On their way, Cox tested the thickness of the ice with a spear, estimating it was at least eight inches thick the whole way there. He also didn’t see any signs of cracks around him.

While Cox freed his snowmobile from the ice, Russell Chislett and his 10-year-old son, Marcus, walked to the floe edge, leaving their snowmobile with the other two machines. Jimmy Akpalialuk, originally from Pangnirtung, stayed behind and helped Cox.

After loading the broken-down snowmobile into a kamotik, Cox and Akpalialuk brought an eight-foot rowboat over to the Chisletts, and waited for them to catch a seal for lunch.

About 20 minutes later, Cox walked away from the group to test his rifle to hunt ducks, and noticed a wall of vapour climbing into the sky behind them.

They were adrift.

In hindsight, Cox figures the high tide broke an island of ice from the main sea ice, and tore away their other skidoos.

“I would never have guessed in my wildest dreams that the ice would have cracked,” Cox said. “It was the stupidest mistake of my life.”

While they watched the snowmobiles disappear in the rising steam around them, Cox rowed the Chisletts several hundred metres against the wind and current to the main body of ice. After retrieving Akpalialuk, who had drifted almost a kilometre away, Cox hauled the boat about two kilometres from the water’s edge, and set up a shelter using a tarp and a Coleman stove on the open ice.

At first, they called family on their satellite phone to see if Chislett’s brother could save them. But he couldn’t get through the broken ice.

So, around 3 p.m., they called the search and rescue team and spent the next 12 hours in the dark and cold, while Cox patrolled for wandering polar bears. The adults took care to give extra tea and soup to 10-year-old Marcus, who was having trouble staying awake.

Jimmy Akavak, who coordinated the search from Iqaluit, said the group’s satellite phone was the key to saving them.

Their satellite service, Globalstar, was able to give him the group’s exact coordinates.

The skidoo team found them first around 3 a.m., before the Hercules plane dropped flares, allowing the helicopter to pick them up and bring them to Baffin Regional Hospital. The Iqaluit rescue team included Jimmy Sheutiapik, Joe Nowlak, Pauloosie Lucassie, and Johnny Nowdlak.

Akavak warned that anyone going out on the land for a day trip should bring extra food, a tent, and other supplies to last several days, in case anything goes wrong.

“You’re never experienced enough for ice conditions,” Akavak said. “It’s beautiful country, but it can be very harsh. It’s unforgiving at times. If you don’t respect it, it won’t respect you.”