Free In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic by Jon Krakauer, David Roberts, Alison Anderson, Valerian Albanov

day we had to stop for long and complicated repairs. Fortunately we had reinforced the runners with iron strips; when the runners broke, the only way we could repair them was to screw the metal strips back onto the shattered runners, thereby holding the damaged sections together, however tenuously.

    But the month of May had arrived. It was at around this time that the sailor Bayev asked me to head in a more westerly direction because, according to his observations, there were long uninterrupted stretches of ice to be found in that direction which would speed up our progress. “They are,” he insisted, “as flat as a skating rink.” I gave in to his request, but although we headed westward for an entire day, the promised stretches of smooth ice did not appear. Bayev insisted that his level ice field really existed. “I saw it with my own eyes, sir. I skied along it myself. It stretched all the way to the island.”

    The next day, May 3, I resolved to head more to the south-southeast, to search for a better route. Bayev again asked permission to explore the terrain to the west.

    With several companions, I set out to the south-southeast. We found a fairly practicable route, and returned to our bivouac after three hours. Bayev was not there. Noon came, and still he had not arrived. At four P.M. , sure that something was amiss, we decided to search for the missing man.

    Taking some biscuits, Regald, Konrad, Shpakovsky, and I set off on the trail. Bayev was not a good skier, and he had left his skis behind. We could easily follow the tracks of his skin boots in the deep snow. At first they led to the southwest, but gradually curved to the west. About three miles from camp we encountered thin ice with very little snow on it. Bayev had followed the left edge of these ice fields, apparently in the hope that they would swing toward the south, but ice blocks continued to obstruct his route.

    In the meantime the weather had deteriorated, and snow had begun to fall. We soon ran across small leads, which we crossed on skis with no problem; but Bayev would have had to cross them by hopping from floe to floe. We followed Bayev’s trail for two hours, having covered at least six to eight miles. Finally the tracks turned back, but Bayev had not retraced his outbound route, veering instead to the left. Our flag, hoisted atop an ice hummock near camp, had long since disappeared from view behind the pressure ridges. Now Bayev’s track grew faint, as fresh snow covered it: We would find a few footprints, then lose the track altogether. The snow had even begun to obliterate our own tracks. We shouted, whistled, and fired our guns without success. Bayev had a rifle with about twelve shells with him. Had he been nearby, he would have heard our shots and responded in kind. But we heard nothing.

    We hurried back to the camp to resort to other methods of rescue. There, with the help of long sticks and ski poles, I raised a mast thirty feet high with two signal flags that could be seen from a great distance. If Bayev was lost not far from the camp, he could not fail to see them and would easily find his way back to us. Moreover, the weather was improving by the hour. When Bayev had not returned by late evening, we became increasingly worried. The night did not calm our anxiety. At first light we once more began to explore the area around us, but without success. We waited three days, still hoping to see him reappear. We could only assume that he must have fallen through a fissure in the ice. Perhaps he succumbed to the shock of the icy water, for he had often complained of a bad heart.

    We had done everything in our power to save him. Now all that I could do was to organize our departure, in order not to further endanger the lives of those who remained. This sad turn of events was enough in itself to dampen the men’s spirits; they sincerely regretted the loss of their companion, who had set off with such noble intentions, only to meet his