The four adventurers who set out to kayak 700-800km around King William Island in Canada’s central High Arctic have called it quits.
Kevin Vallely, Julie Van De Valk, Nicky Hastings, and Ken Stanick made it from the hamlet of Gjoa Haven to Washington Bay before too many windbound days, and the prospect of many more in the future made them realize that with so many days on shore, they couldn’t circle the island with the supplies they had with them. In the end, they covered about 170km one way.
It has been an unsuccessful summer for those attempting ambitious traverses in Canadian Arctic waters. This week, a group that tried to sail in a small yacht to northern Ellesmere Island realized that the ice was not going to cooperate. And a Spanish paddleboarder almost died of hypothermia, then lost his gear when he left it on the ice overnight while trying to SUP the Northwest Passage.
The four kayakers chose King William Island because of their interest in John Franklin‘s Northwest Passage expedition. Washington Bay, their endpoint, is just east of Terror Bay, where the sunken wreck of HMS Terror lies. In the 1850s, some Inuit spotted some still-living members of that doomed expedition on an island near Washington Bay. All ultimately perished. And in 1942, a skull and some bones were found in the same area.
