Kevin Vallely’s Paddle to the Arctic presentation, as part of the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival’s Family Show Monday, Feb. 13 7:30 p.m. at Centennial Theatre. Tickets and info: vimff.org/tickets.
Kevin Vallely was nine years old the first time he felt a true adrenaline rush.
Long before he went on any kind of extended journey, the Lynn Valley resident faced an unexpected test of survival.
“I would say it’s the first time I ever felt a real sense of fear and anxiety,” he says.
Vallely and his five-year-old brother had become separated from their parents in a downtown Montreal department store. Already afraid, the young siblings encountered an “overzealous” security guard who kicked them out of the store and onto the street at night.
“And there we were on the street, poorly dressed with no money and no way of getting home. And we lived a very long way from downtown,” recalls Vallely.
His instinct was to start walking. So Vallely took his brother’s hand and they trekked through Montreal in the middle of winter.
“It was epic,” he says. “Really, it was trying to figure out (how to get home), maturing really quickly and taking care of my younger brother.”
Four hours later, at one o’clock in the morning, the brothers arrived at the front door of their home.
“It was really an empowering moment for me. And in some crazy way ending up charting my life as an adventurer because I had a dream to go to the South Pole after that,” says Vallely.
It took Vallely 35 years but he ultimately realized that dream and, in fact, holds the world record as a member of the fastest team to ski to the South Pole. In 2008, Vallely and a carefully curated trio of experienced explorers shattered the South Pole record by a week – despite Vallely having never set foot in the harsh environment.
That epic expedition was a numbers game. It took 33 days, 23 hours and 30 minutes to complete. Vallely was hauling a sled that weighed up to 250 pounds. He was consuming upwards of 8,000 calories a day, partly achieved through eating chunks of butter half the size of a Rubik’s Cube (and he still lost 15 pounds at the end of it all).
In the home stretch, the Canadian trio was skiing 20 hours a day. After crossing the finish line Vallely figures there were 1.5 billion media impressions of their story, meaning one in five people worldwide caught wind of the fact they had broken the world record.
The South Pole conquerors connected with 10,000 school kids and sought to bring awareness to the issues in Antarctica, namely climate change.
“It opened my eyes to what you can do as an explorer or adventurer in terms of capturing world attention and being able to actually convey a message,” says Vallely, who is a guest speaker at the 20th annual Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival and part of the esteemed Explorers Club which counts Neil Armstrong among its members.
Last summer, Vallely and his equally adventurous wife, Nicky Hastings, decided to unplug their daughters, aged 10 and 12, from their iPads and give them the ultimate what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation story. The goal was to get the girls as far out of their comfort zone as possible.
“It had to be safe enough but in the wild enough that we were going to get a true outdoor experience,” explains Vallely.
Paddling down the remote Mackenzie River – the largest in Canada and exceeded only by the Mississippi River system in North America – fit the bill. Flowing through a vast, isolated region of forest and tundra contained within the Yukon and Northwest Territories, the Mackenzie means business.
“Not a lot of people do it,” says Vallely. “It’s pretty darn remote out there.”
His daughters didn’t know what to think when told what the plan was: a 1,700-kilometre kayaking trip lasting more than a month in the most remote wilderness in the world.
On July 4, 2016, Vallely and his family set off to paddle the length of the mighty Mackenzie, along with another North Vancouver couple and their 10-year-old son, who joined them for the first 400 kilometres, an epic adventure in itself.
Now iPad-less, the precocious explorers were immersed in one the most diverse ecosystems in the world. Vallely rattles off a laundry list of wildlife sightings.
“Golden eagles, bald eagles, a muskox, more black bear that I can throw a stick at, a grizzly bear, wolves, packs of wolves and one very aggressive wolf that I had to in fact use a gun to scare it off,” he says.
That’s the hook of Vallely’s VIMFF talk on Family Day, the wolf story.
“It started with my daughter waking me up at 4:30 in the morning going ‘Daddy, there’s something outside.’ And then trying to scare this thing that was right around our tent away and then realizing it was not going away and it’s growling and howling,” recalls Vallely.
Vallely reached for the shotgun, he thought he’d never have to use.
“I took a breath and stepped outside the tent and saw the biggest damn wolf I’ve ever seen. I tell you, honestly, its head was up to my chest. It was hyena-esque. It hissed. And he was not letting down. I screamed and hit an air horn and he was just growling and pissed. And I just locked up the gun and took an aim and went over his shoulder. I wasn’t going to kill him, of course.”
The loud sound stunned the wolf, but he stuck around and continued with the relentless howling to signal the pack.
“He wanted to battle,” says Vallely. “And if they bring the pack … we rallied and got out of there quick.”
The family packed up their stuff in a hurry, jumped in their kayaks and took off to the next town. Town, in the tiny sense of the word. Vallely’s family saw maybe six to eight towns during the 36-day trip, each with a population of about 50 people.
Meeting the locals was a highlight of the trip, says Vallely, whose daughters were introduced to members of the Dene Nation.
“Part of their (the Dene) culture is when you meet new people you share whatever you have and your time with them,” says Vallely of the welcoming reception.
Geographically, the trip was enlightening as well. From their double kayaks –one parent and daughter per boat – the family watched the landscape change and evolve until finally they were in the Arctic Circle.
They also learned Mother Nature is the boss on the Mackenzie.
“Some days we had to get up at crazy hours in order to cross some big water where we literally started at 8 p.m. and went until two in the morning because that was the right time to travel,” says Vallely.
The family survived on dry food and would gorge themselves on Wonder Bread and peanut butter sandwiches when they encountered relative civilization.
Ultimately, the epic journey was a life-changing experience for Vallely and his family. Learning to break the cycle of rushing around from one game or music lesson to the next and go on an adventure with your family is the message he hopes to impart during his VIMFF presentation.
“I hope that people have enough courage to do it themselves,” says Vallely. “That’s the thing, it’s really not as bad or as hard as you think and from my vantage point the rewards are incredible. “You will never regret it.”
