Stephen Smith

A team of scientists, field guides and a descendant of U.S. polar explorer Adolphus Greely set out to retrace the 1881 Lady Franklin Bay Expedition’s perilous attempt to build a scientific research station on Ellesmere Island near the North Pole. Chronicle their modern-day journey by kayak with a historical retelling of the Greely expedition through diary entries, letters and archival photographs.

Five hundred miles from the North Pole, a scientific expedition is beset by the sea ice it has come to study. Three red kayaks, tiny specks in an austere wilderness, the team is in shock, its way forward blocked by a crumpled and pulverized wreckage of floes. Conditions are unrecognizable, no research can be done. With the Arctic Ocean collapsing all around them, they must escape the chaos by traversing Nares Strait, the most formidable passage of the polar North.