SAMAYA x SÉBASTIEN OVERNEY

 

 

The fine team at Ubac Images, composed of expedition leader and skier Sébastien Overney, skiers Julien Colonge and Anthony Calvet, telemark skier Antoine Bouvier, skier and joke-teller Claude Vallier, and filmmaker and cinematographer William Mermoud, traveled to Svalbard in the Greenland Sea using low-impact mobility to engage in ski-pulka trekking and descend inhospitable steep slopes.

 

This expedition is part of the SOFT SVALBARD project, which is divided into 3 phases. The first phase consisted of a low-impact journey using alternative means of transport for both the outward and return legs, resulting in a carbon footprint reduced by a factor of 10. The educational project with local schools and radio tracking during the expedition make up phase 2. Finally, the production of a documentary film titled "An Arctic Journey," which will be released this autumn in festivals, concludes the project.

 

Upon their return to France, Sébastien Overney shared the story of this unique expedition.

 

"We traveled to the Svalbard archipelago, specifically to Oscar II Land on the main island of Spitsbergen, just 900 kilometers south of the North Pole, to ski magnificent summits.

 

We reached it solely using alternative means of transport such as trains, sailing boats, and skis, in total autonomy. We wanted to see if it was possible to travel that far in this manner, to continue dreaming of Arctic exploration while maintaining the lowest possible carbon footprint. It was also an opportunity to take stock of this type of mobility, by weighing its strengths and weaknesses.

 

We wanted to relive the "old-fashioned" way of traveling and, above all, to slow down and take the time to appreciate the journey, to give the word 'travel' its full meaning again. Skiing was seen more as the icing on the cake, rather than the sole objective to be reached.

 

Overall, the journey went smoothly, if we set aside the unexpected train breakdowns in the heart of Lapland, the nine transfers, the fact that three out of six team members were sea-sick on the sailing boat to the point of being unable to stand, three non-stop days of rough seas, the Isfjord blocked by ice, and our retrieval sailing boat no longer being available four days before departure. Apart from that, everything went perfectly.

 

Our days on site were punctuated by melting snow for water, meals, weather reports, skiing with or without pulkas, guard duty rotations to make the most of ultra-short weather windows, and camp security against the presence of polar bears. Trekking is extremely energy-intensive. Constantly setting up and taking down tents, pulkas, bags, mountaineering gear, and all our belongings. We set up and dismantled our camp every two days, taking care to do so when the weather was not favorable for downhill skiing, but good enough for us to travel via ski-pulka. When that window opened, we had to be rested and reactive enough to take advantage of it. It took us almost three days of adaptation to truly understand how to operate in this environment, navigating between the permanent daylight and the changing weather.

 

Three days into the expedition, we suddenly realized that our gasoline stoves were consuming an abnormal amount of fuel and that we wouldn't have enough for the ten-day crossing. We couldn't find E-type gasoline on site, which caused clogging and overconsumption of the fuel we were using. In this icy environment, finding yourself without anything to melt snow into water means either waiting to die of thirst or hypothermia, or turning back and going home. We were very lucky. We managed to reach the sailing boat 'Life Song' by satellite phone, on board which were the skipper Cécile and Captain Christophe—two extraordinary and very inspiring people—who were stuck in the ice after dropping us off on the coast at Farmhamna, located 25 kilometers from our camp on the Eidembreen glacier. They agreed to put the dinghy in the water to bring us 7 liters of gasoline the next day and thus save the expedition.

 

Despite a beautiful weather window being forecast, two of us had to make the round trip in one day to get the gasoline and give the rest of the team a chance to continue the expedition. As the expedition leader, it seemed natural for me to be part of the trip. Antho volunteered for this intense but incredible day. We moved for 7.5 hours without stopping in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by endless immense glaciers, alone in the heart of this gigantic space. To thank Cécile and Christophe, the whole team chipped in to prepare a cake for them. Back at the camp, it was a celebration. We had enough to make water for at least ten days, and our friends who stayed on the glacier finally managed to ski the first mountain of the expedition, after many failures due to the weather. What a day!

 

I think moments of doubt are part of what you come looking for in this type of expedition. Leaving Haute-Savoie by train to cross Europe, sailing with a boat almost exclusively under sail while crossing the Barents Sea—also known as the "Devil's Sea"—without any prior offshore sailing experience, to reach an archipelago 900 kilometers south of the North Pole without any information regarding conditions on site or the mountains we would encounter, while in total autonomy on skis, is not trivial. We had stacked all the odds in our favor to find ourselves facing these moments of doubt.

 

While preparing for this expedition, we knew we were much more likely to fail than to succeed. We took each day as it came with good humor and a great deal of solidarity, and everything went well. We always found solutions. The biggest doubts revolved around the weather for skiing and filming. William, our cinematographer and director, was not spared in that regard. We all supported him together, and we are going to succeed in making a very beautiful adventure film.

 

When faced with such meteorological hazards, it is essential to have solid, compact, and lightweight equipment, so that you can change how you move easily and as quickly as possible, and above all, to optimize the number of pulkas and their weight. We prepared our equipment keeping in mind that we always had to have backups for everything so as not to be left stranded and vulnerable in case of breakage or inattention. We therefore left with a Samaya BASECAMP, which we doubled with a latest Samaya four-person prototype. This configuration was absolutely necessary in case of violent katabatic winds that provide no warning, or if our tents were rendered unusable.

 

The time spent in the tents cannot be compared to normal nights, since at this latitude, there was permanent daylight. We spent a lot of time inside these shelters, which allowed us to rest and regain our strength. We experienced no condensation or frost inside the tents, which was our main fear at camp. Over there, condensation was our worst enemy. If we got wet, we couldn't dry off and we would freeze. We weathered near-constant 80 km/h winds for two days and two nights with the tents only pegged to the glacier ice, without any material breakage.

 

All these elements combined made an exceptional journey possible, whether in terms of adventure, landscape, exploration, isolation, discovery, or humanity. We do not know if this type of journey has ever been undertaken by others on the island of Spitsbergen to date. Most of the time, people engage in coastal hopping to go skiing and arrive by plane. It is very rare to practice steep-slope ski touring for several days in total autonomy to reach multiple summits located several days of skiing apart at these latitudes. For the whole team, there is a before and an after that mark a unique, intense, and exceptional trip."

 

In total, the UBAC IMAGES team traveled 3,500 kilometers by train from Saint-Gervais to Tromsø, 1,200 kilometers by sailing boat aboard the 'Life Song' from Tromsø to Longyearbyen and on to Oscar II Land, then 110 kilometers by ski-pulka in total autonomy, from Eidembukta to St Jonsfjorden.

 

They skied four summits—due to very unstable weather and extremely short windows—on Oscar II Land on the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard: the sub-peak of Sparefjellet, two unnamed summits in the Motalafjella and Løvliefjellet range, Trollslottet, and Storetrollet, which is likely a first descent.

 

©Photographs taken by Julien Colonge @j.colonge