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Profile of Mike Beedell
— Part of the first expedition to make the first-ever sail of the Northwest
Passage using only wind power. Experience the bleakness of an unsupported expedition to
the high arctic: ...With a crack,
the only thing that separated them from an icy grave began to come apart. Electrified into
action, Mike and Jeff heaved everything out of their rapidly sinking tent and stowed it on
their sailboat.
Outside, a severe storm had come out of the night,
packing with it winds of close to 100 km per hour. Snow was being blown horizontally into
their faces. There was thick fog. If there was one thing they didn't want now, it was to
be forced outside into the elements.
They had no choice. The hockey-rink-sized pan of ice
on which they had pitched their tiny shelter was breaking into pieces. With every passing
minute, the piece of ice was being blown further and further out to sea. Out there, in the
middle of the maelstrom, they knew there would be no hope. Their chances of rescue were
nil 800 km north of the Arctic Circle in the heart of the Northwest Passage. The town of
Resolute was 80 km to the north, but for all intents and purposes it might as well have
been 800 km. In these conditions, there was no way a plane could even reach them, let
alone land in the heaving pack ice.
Their only hope was to break camp and haul their
320-kg catamaran deeper into the pack. For Mike, there could have been no better training
than the three-month Qit expedition he had completed just months before. Lean and strong
from repeatedly hauling the heavy sled over sections the sled dogs had no chance on by
themselves, he was ready for the Passage.
Mike and Jeff pushed and pulled with everything they
had. The wind tore through the boat's rigging, whistling with such intensity that both had
to yell at the tops of their lungs just to make each other hear.
Well after midnight, after advancing a little over
two kilometres, they were forced to stop in exhaustion. After hauling Perception up onto
the largest pan of ice they could find, they put up the tent again and collapsed inside...
And learn that truly not everyone measures success by the house they live in, the car they
drive, or whether they are recognized when they walk down the street:
..."I don't do any of my journeys for fame and
fortune, although I've got mixed up with individuals whose only purpose is to
sensationalize their endeavours and make them far more than what they are in order to
build a false image of themselves. I quite detest that because I think people who get like
that must be very desperate. They begin to stomp on other people and lose their sense of
morality. For me, it's the joy of the experience and the joy of sharing. The priceless
jewels of deep experience are lost too often to man's thirst for fame and fortune."
Mike adheres to the philosophy of British writer
Miles Clark. In Clark's view: "The acid test of a true adventurer, if presented with
certain anonymity, is whether each of us would still have made the journey beyond that
last blue mountain....
...Mike does not want to set the world on fire, his
father says. "Money is incidental to him. If he wants to achieve, he'll take everyone
he knows with him. He enjoys recognition, but he doesn't trample on others to achieve
it."...
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