Chilling Adventures: Athletes Explore the Frozen Wilderness

What do two highly skilled multi-sport polar explorers do when they have time off? Well, if you are seasoned northern explorers like Erik Boomer and Sarah McNair-Landry, you plan a crazy polar vacation that relies on precise timing. Their plans require ice for ski travel and wind assistance to kite ski.

Moving along the ice and skiing, they headed north along the east coast of Baffin Island to reach Kangiqtualuk. Once there, they had some work to do on their vacation, bagging some big wall climbs and running whitewater rivers that had never been boated before. This became a true adventure.

Two months into this epic, they discover that the sailboat cannot pick them up due to the pack ice still clogging the inlet. The adventure is now referred to as a ‘vacation on ice’ by this dynamic adventure sports duo. In the Arctic, Mother Nature has challenged the two to decide on Plan B.

Nothing new to Sarah McNair-Landry, the daughter of polar expedition guides, and the youngest person to travel to both the North and South Poles. McNair-Landry and her partner, Erik Boomer, a professional whitewater kayak athlete with numerous first descents to his name, have completed many previous epics together, including a 46-day crossing of the Greenland Ice Cap in search of first whitewater kayaking descents that end in the Arctic Ocean.