Far and Beyond

by

Words by Robb Pritchard

Images by TransGlobalCar expedition and Andrew Comrie-Picard

The TransGlobalCar expedition is scheduled to begin next year at the very southern tip of Argentina. Heading north through Tiera Del Fuego, along the spine of the Andes mountain range, where the highest elevation with be a breathless 4200 metres, they will skirt the western fringes of the Amazon rainforest. A short sea trip will see them from Colombia to Panama, skipping the Darien Gap. Their vehicles, specialized for the North Pole, could make it through the swamps but the risk of being kidnapped by separatist rebels is fat too high.

Central America, through the USA, they will arrive in the far north of Canada in deep winter where they will utilize the big-footed AT44 Arctic Trucks based on a Ford F-150. Here they will drive over the ice between the islands of the North West Territories. At Resolution, a settlement only usually accessible by boat in summer and plane in the winter, they will swap the AT44s for the highly sophisticated and specialised Yemelyas. These self-made vehicles float so breaking through the ice isn’t the disaster it would otherwise be. In these they will spend around four and a half months on the ice flows going straight over the shifting ice flows to the top of the globe. Although that is pretty much the most extreme off-roading anyone has ever done before, for the TransGlobaCar expedition it will just mark their half way point. Now heading due south, from there they will continue down the length of Greenland. Still extreme territory but much easier with terra firma under the wheels than open water.

A boat will see them to Denmark and back at the wheel of normal SUVs again it will be a simple drive to Turkey. Another ship will get them around the complicated political situation in the Middle East and from Egypt to Cape Town it will be all overland through African desert, steppe, jungle and savannah. Another ship will drop them off on the continent of Antarctica. Twenty Seven Arctic Trucks are already there being used for various scientific purposes, but they don't generally drive the 6,500 km from one end of the continent to the other. About a year after setting off, the epic 40,000 km, 32 country circle will be complete back in Argentina.

Obviously you can’t just turn the ignition key and set off on such an incredible journey, a massive amount of logistical and practical preparation is needed before setting off. A few years ago what the team did with just their recent reconnaissance drive across the icy wastes of the Antarctic interior would have been headline news but the test crossing didn’t warrant anything more than a simple press release. The North Pole is a different beast though and while the ever shifting glaciers on the most inhospitable continent on Earth was done in the 24 hour daylight of mid-summer, the reccy for the North Pole, where all driving is done on ice floating over the ocean, was done in the depths of the Polar winter.

Thanks to some extenuating circumstances, such as a certain pandemic, the expedition is already a couple of years behind schedule and, as there are Russians involved, a certain despotic dictator deciding to invade a neighbouring country also didn’t help. Sanctions, travel restrictions and a free-falling value of the rouble and all caused their own issues, but in March 2022, after their Russian registered plane caused a minor diplomatic incident in Canada’s Northern Territories, the sixteen member team, hailing from Canada, the Ukraine, the United States, Iceland and Russia the reconnaissance expedition finally left.

In a convoy of six vehicles, four specialized Yemelyas and a pair of Arctic Truck AT44s, drove out of Yellowknife, in the North Western Territories. The plan for the following two and a half weeks was to reconnoitre the route to Resolute Bay, Nunavut in the far, far north. Intrepid people on skidoos have done this route when the ice over the lakes is deep and frozen, but no one had ever attempted it in a wheeled vehicle before. Following a mining company track through the frozen tundra for some of the way, they then ventured off over frozen lakes across Contwoyto Lake, Bathurst Inlet and Cambridge Bay.

The giant tyres of the AT44s can be deflated down to about 3 psi which is less pressure than someone walking on the tundra, so they tread very lightly and no traces more than a curious image in the mind of a polar bear are left. More importantly it gives the vehicles massive footprints so they can drive on top of certain types of snow and are safe on ice only 30 cm thick.

The Yemelyas on the other hand are built for one purpose only; getting to the North Pole. They need to be tough, simple and ultra reliable, and so they are powered by 2l Toyota engines from a Corolla. The chassis is made from aluminium, which is lightweight and durable and the rather flimsy looking independent suspension arms, which allow 450 mm of articulation, can be lightweight as the tyres are only inner tubes, so only weigh a few kilos. Each of the three differentials is lockable and the engine and all of the transmission are located in the sealed body are kept away from the corrosive salt water. The sealed body also acts as a hull as they also float...

One of the aims of the reccy trip was to test and train those who’d never operated a Yemelyas in such conditions. At one point they intentionally drove one off the ice shelf into open water so they could practice getting it back out with a system of poles and pulleys.

A bad storm slowed the team down as its impossible to drive on snow and ice in a white-out when the horizon is indistinguishable from the ground. The high winds also created ridges of ice that were time consuming to negotiate over. The nine day outward trip was a success though and the Yemelyas were delivered to Resolute, where they will be stored ready for the North Pole crossing while the crew drives up through the Americas next year.

Most of the crew flew back to civilization while four of the Arctic Trucks team drove the pair of AT44s back south, but it was on this return trip that things went wrong. Whenever we talked to SEO Emil Grissom about the inherent dangers of driving on ice, where vehicle-swallowing cracks and crevices are a constant threat, he always stated how important it is to know exactly what you’re driving on. His over-abundance of caution paid off as there were no serious incidents for many years, even though his trucks routinely operate in barely conceivable places. But this time the nightmare happened.

Trying to make up a little of the time lost in the storm, they drove back in the dark. So far north in March there are only a few hours of daylight, but they were following their tracks of a few days before, so there shouldn’t have been an issue. Torfi, the driver of the ill-fated Ford has some thirty five years of experience as a member of rescue team in Iceland and with 15,000 km driven on the Antarctica plateau under his belt, is a world-class ice-driving expert. As soon as the ice began to break and the truck pitched over at an angle, he realized what was happening. “I tried to give it some gas to speed up, but it wouldn’t move so I yelled at my co-driver to open his door. The truck was leaning to my side and my door wouldn’t open so I jumped out through his side.” He knew it was deep water under them and that they’d be losing the truck, so as the ice cracked and crunched and it began to sink, he thought about what we would need for the rest of the trip. “I didn’t dare go back inside for the computers and cameras so I got on the roof and started unstrapping our bags of extra clothing.”

No one was harmed but in such an extreme environment, no one is ever truly safe. The ice is constantly moving, being out in a storm would be deadly and Polar bears prowl the wastes. Not knowing it was safe to drive or not, the second AT44 had to stop exactly where it was with the crew throwing out the heaviest items to get the weight down as much as possible. They had to contact scientists in the UK and Germany who can measure the thickness of the ice from satellite data so it was many worrying hours before they got confirmation it was safe to drive the other truck to a nearby island… although with it on tick-over and the driver hanging out of the door ready to bail at the first sound of ice cracking.

The local guide they had with them called for a helicopter, so with as much equipment they could get into it, Torfi and another Arctic Trucks driver brought the surviving truck back… with the route thoroughly checked by the satellite team.

With everyone safe and back in Yellowknife, thoughts then turned to getting the truck off the sea bed. Most of us off-roaders will have had to recover a 4x4 from somewhere at one point before. (Personally, I’ve done the Ladoga Trophy a few times so thought I was pretty well versed in extreme extraction situations.) The Arctic sea bed is the most extreme situation we’ve ever come across though.

Any amount of time immersed in salt water would render the electronics and aluminium unusable so they knew they weren’t savaging a repairable truck but the fuel tank was full of diesel, the engine was full of oil and there were plenty of plastic items unsecured inside so it couldn’t be left in such a fragile environment.

The depth the truck sank to was eight metres, which although presented enough of a challenge, wasn't as bad as it could have been. They waited until August, when the weather is calmest, then flew in experienced cold-water divers from Iceland. Using a technique marine archaeologists have developed for raising precious artefacts, they attached giant airbags. Once inflated, they managed to raise it off the ocean floor. Suspended in the water they towed it to a nearby island where it was righted and dragged it to shore. Immobile and in such a remote location, the only way to get it back to civilization was hanging under a heavy lift helicopter.

Emil is philosophical about the incident. A warming climate, currents affected by the moon and the fact that they were driving in the dark were all contributing factors and are things he’ll be researching in the future. “My feeling of seeing out of the water after five months of preparations and hard work on the extraction gave a sense of completion and is a testament to the ability of expert teamwork to achieve a very, very difficult task. With all our work in Iceland and Antarctica, we always seek to respect the environment, and I’m glad we were able to do that here.”