Benedict Allen - Into the Abyss

Chapter I

When I think of Siberia I smile. Thats not to say Siberia turned out to be a happy land of skipping children and promenading lovers, but if youre picturing that ridiculous old stereotype a nasty, frozen-stiff, windblown hell, snow snagging occasionally on ruins but otherwise tumbling for miles well, thats about right.

However, Siberia is a land of survivors as well as the Gulags, and survivors speak to us of possibility. A place of despair becomes the terrain of what might be. Even the smallest act becomes a feat, a fight-back. So when I think of Siberia I dont think of the unfortunate weather or my expedition as it fell to bits but the inspiration I found out there, a certain kind of rare beauty and strength. And I think of a night when I might have died a night that stands out, even on this particular trip.

A cold silence had passed over my dog team. I couldnt see much in the starlight, but I knew the sounds of the ten dogs the weight of their breathing, the click of their paws on the ice and I sensed that something was very wrong. I threw the sledge anchor into the ground, but it was already too late. I saw my two lead dogs disappear; the two animals I trusted with my life had dropped from sight. And now I knew why the team had gone quiet. It was the moment that we all recognize instinctively, that moment when we know weve bitten off more than we can chew, when we have risked all and been caught out. The dogs had made a mistake, and they knew as much as dogs can know about these things that they might die. They were heading over a precipice.

Exactly how far the fall was, Id soon find out already the second row of dogs had followed the first off the cliff. The third would go too, then the fourth, their feet scrabbling in the air as they tumbled into the void.

Soon enough it would be my turn.

What happened next took only a few seconds, but time seemed to slow, giving me all the space in the world in which to contemplate our unhappy fate. As the sledge launched off the ledge and I flew through the darkness to what might be my end, I even managed a wry smile at the irony of it.

I was being taken to my death by hardened professionals. At minus forty, these dogs only shelter was the snow; their food was frozen walrus; their water was the ice which they gnawed as they ran. Yet were they so different from us, these creatures? We are, after all, pack animals.

Each of my dogs was doing his utmost to make a go of things, as we humans do within our own tribes. Youll have seen them before: in your workplace, the alpha male who struts in the boardroom, the plodder happy in the corner of the office; or at home, the boy striving to get a half-decent mark at maths, his mum trying to be a better friend.

The ground rules were always the same: whether we lived our lives ponderously or in haste, whether as stalkers or grazers, in silence or in song, life was warfare. It was a sequence of skirmishes, advances and retreats, as we each sought to improve our chances of survival.

And if you really want to know how we humans go about the business of surviving, where better than Siberia? And what greater expression of mans ingenuity than the relationship weve forged with the dog? Mans best friend, we are fond of saying. Well, in the Russian Far East he is sometimes mans only friend. There the two species can be seen working with geometrical perfection: man contributing his brain and tool-making hands, dogs their senses and physical stamina.

That is how it was that winter: my dog team, like a diamond-tipped lance, piercing the northernmost tundra. Nothing was quite able to stop us. We came to decayed settlements and communities steeped in alcohol, and the dogs passed through them, unscathed. They remained undiminished, without, it seemed, even a scratch. These animals succeeded in the harshest land humans had ever successfully colonized, while in less demanding parts of the very same planet we humans in our own packs have such mixed fortunes so many disappointments and broken dreams.

Ten colleagues, then, each doing their bit tonight to deliver me through terrain that offered so little. Except that the dog leading this particular foray had made one elementary mistake and we were about to face the consequences.

It was upon us, the event that might mean our end. I wasnt much aware of the pain at first, just that Id taken the first impact and that there would be more. I was close behind the rear dogs, and the 300-kg sledge had smashed me into the snow with what felt like the force of a train. But the sledge was still upright, and I sensed we were speeding up, not slowing. Skating down a crumpled bed of ice, perhaps. Snow was striking my face, flying past as we careened left, then right, creating what seemed like a funnel of light through the dark. But there was always the one comforting thought: if I was to die, it would be alongside my dogs.

That night there was something so exquisitely beautiful in their unity of purpose, something beautiful even in them flying, as one, into the abyss.