SAMAYA x SÉBASTIEN OVERNEY

 

 

The fine Ubac Images team - skier and expedition leader Sébastien Overney, skiers Julien Colonge and Anthony Calvet, telemark skier Antoine Bouvier, skier and joke-teller Claude Vallier and cameraman and director William Mermoud - travelled to Svalbard in the Greenland Sea by soft mobility, to practice ski-pulka itinerancy and descend inhospitable steep slopes.

 

This expedition is part of the SOFT SVALBARD project, which is divided into 3 phases. The first phase consists of a low-impact trip using alternative means of transport on both the outward and return journeys, reducing the carbon footprint by a factor of 10. Phase 2 involves an educational project with local schools and radio monitoring during the expedition. Finally, the production of a documentary film entitled "An Arctic Journey", to be released this autumn at festivals, brings the project to a close.

 

On their return to France, Sébastien Overney tells us all about this unique expedition.

 

"We went to the Svalbard archipelago, to Oscar Land II on the main island of Spitsbergen, just 900 kilometers south of the North Pole, to go skiing on some grandiose peaks.

 

We travelled there solely by alternative means of transport such as train, sailboat and ski, in total autonomy. We wanted to see if it was possible to travel so far in this way, so that we could continue to dream of Arctic exploration with the lowest possible carbon impact. It was also an opportunity to take stock of this type of mobility, weighing up its strengths and weaknesses.

 

We wanted to relive the "old-fashioned" way of travelling, and above all to slow down and take the time to appreciate and give new meaning to the word "travel". Skiing was seen more as the icing on the cake, without being the sole objective.

 

On the whole, the trip went off without a hitch, apart from the unexpected train breakdowns in the heart of Lapland, the nine changes, the fact that three out of six team members were so ill on the yacht that they couldn't stand up, three days of non-stop rough seas, the Isfjord blocked by ice and our salvage yacht finally being unavailable four days before departure. Apart from that, everything went smoothly.

 

Our days on site were punctuated by melting snow to make water, meals, weather information, skiing with or without a pulka, guard duty to optimize the ultra-short weather slots and camp security in the face of the presence of the polar bear. Roaming is extremely energy-intensive. Constantly packing and unpacking tents, pulkas, packs, mountaineering gear and all our belongings. We set up and dismantled our camp every two days, taking care to do so when the weather wasn't good enough for downhill skiing, but good enough to allow us to roam with ski-pulkas. When this window of opportunity opened up, we had to be sufficiently rested and reactive to take advantage of it. It took us almost three days of adaptation to really understand how to function in this environment, navigating between permanent daylight and changeable weather.

 

Three days into our expedition, we suddenly realized that our gasoline stoves were consuming an abnormally high amount of fuel, and that we wouldn't have enough for a ten-day crossing. We couldn't find any type E gasoline on the spot, which meant that the one we were using was clogged and over-consumed. In this icy environment, having nothing to melt the snow and turn it into water means either waiting to die of thirst or hypothermia, or turning back and going home. We were very lucky. We managed to contact the sailing boat "Life Song" by satellite phone, with skipper Cécile and captain Christophe, two extraordinary and inspiring people, who were trapped in the ice after our drop-off on the coast at Far Hamna, 25 kilometers from our camp on the Eidembreen glacier. They agreed to put the dinghy in the water to bring us 7 liters of petrol the next day and save the expedition.

 

Despite a wonderful weather window in the forecast, two of us had to make the round trip during the day to pick up fuel and give the rest of the team a chance to continue the expedition. As expedition leader, it seemed only natural to be part of the trip. Antho appointed himself for this intense but incredible day. We drove non-stop for 7h30 in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by endless glaciers, alone in the heart of this gigantic space. To thank Cécile and Christophe, the whole team baked them a cake. Back at camp, it's party time. We had enough water for at least ten days, and the friends who had stayed on the glacier had finally managed to ski the first mountain of the expedition, after numerous failures due to the weather. What a day!

 

I think moments of doubt are part of what you're looking for in this kind of expedition. Leaving Haute-Savoie by train to cross Europe, sailing a boat almost exclusively under sail across the Barents Sea - also known as the "Devil's Sea" - without any previous offshore sailing experience, to reach an archipelago 900 kilometers south of the North Pole without any information about the local conditions or the mountains we'll be crossing, in total autonomy on skis, is no mean feat. We had done everything in our power to face up to these moments of doubt.

 

As we prepared for this expedition, we knew that we would have a much greater chance of failure than of success. We took it one day at a time, in good spirits and with a lot of solidarity, and everything went well. We always found solutions. The biggest doubts were about the weather for skiing and filming. William, our cameraman and director, was not spared in this respect. We supported him all the way, and we're going to make a great adventure film.

 

When faced with such meteorological hazards, it's vital to have solid, compact and lightweight equipment, so as to be able to change our way of moving easily and as quickly as possible, and above all to optimize the number of pulkas and their weight. As we prepared our equipment, we kept in mind that we always needed to have something in double so as not to be robbed and vulnerable in the event of breakage or carelessness. So we set off with a Samaya BASECAMP, which we doubled up with a final four-seater Samaya prototype. This configuration was absolutely necessary in the event of violent catabatic winds that don't give any warning, or if our tents became unusable.

 

The time spent in the tents cannot be compared to nights in a tent, since at this latitude daylight was permanent. We spent a lot of time in these shelters, which enabled us to rest and regain our strength. There was 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 out and froze. We endured almost constant winds of 80 kilometers per hour for two days and two nights, with our tents stapled solely to the glacier ice, without suffering any material damage.

 

All these elements put together made possible an exceptional journey, whether in terms of adventure, landscape, exploration, isolation, discovery or humanity. We don't know if this type of trip has ever been undertaken by others on the island of Spitsbergen. Most of the time, people come by plane to go skiing. It's very rare to ski steep slopes over several days and in complete autonomy to reach several peaks several days' skiing away in these latitudes. For the whole team, there is a before and an after that mark a unique, intense and exceptional trip."

 

In all, the UBAC IMAGES team will have covered 3500 kilometers by train from Saint-Gervais to Tromsø, 1200 kilometers by sailboat aboard the "Life Song" from Tromsø to Longyearbyen to Oscar Land II, then 110 kilometers by ski-pulka in total autonomy, from Eidembukta to St Jonsfjorden.

 

They will have skied four summits, due to very unstable weather and extremely short windows, on Oscar Land II on the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard: the Sparefjellet antecima, two unnamed summits in the Motalafjella and Løvliefjellet, the Trollslottet and the Storetrollet, which is probably a first descent.

 

Photos by Julien Colonge @j.colonge