The Arctic Rower | First team to kayak Arctic’s Northwest Passage finds more than just world records and numb feet in epic adventure
- Mark Agnew, Eileen Visser, West Hansen and Jeff Wueste become first team to kayak from Baffin Bay to Beaufort Sea
- Quartet navigates sea ice, freezing temperatures, while covering ultramarathon distances day after day, and Agnew still can’t feel his feet
It is hard to believe that just two weeks ago I was standing in a remote region of the Arctic, staring at the sky waiting for a plane to pick me up after 103 days of suffering, camaraderie, unique and wonderful moments.
The culmination of years of work, three teammates and I had just set two world records kayaking the entire Northwest Passage.
We had thrown rocks at a polar bear as it pressed itself against our tent. We’d narrowly escaped a painful death when two huge bits of floating ice collided, with us in the middle.
We’d see the Northern Lights, narwhal, bowhead whales and beluga. We’d covered ultramarathon distances by kayak for days on end and spent an equal amount of time trapped in our tent by storms. My feet still sting with cold and the doctor says I should expect full sensation to return in a matter of months – I last felt my toes on July 2.
We were the first people to kayak the fabled route, and the first to do it under human power, in any craft, in a single year. These were world firsts, sought after by the adventure community for at least a decade – even this year there were two other rowing teams attempting the same feat.
