"Perhaps the Polar explorers really died from heatstroke !"

We were staggering across the rolling sand dunes, below the Henrietta Smith Glacier, when this irreverent thought occurred. Perhaps it was due to the more than uncomfortably large packs.

A few days earlier we'd started our visit to Ellesmere Island National Park by bouncing onto the seven hundred foot tundra landing strip at Fort Conger. It's so short that on takeoff everybody had to huddle in the back of the DeHavilland Twin Otter. And Karl, the master pilot - formerly a Glenshee ski instructor - actually woke up and flew the plane. For the rest of the trip he'd happily dozed while the apprentice, Steve, kept us on course, skimming just a couple of hundred feet above the pack ice.

Fort Conger is where the Greely party was icebound for two years in 1882, and where Peary had his base for launching his North Pole expeditions. It seemed as if it should be cold and desolate. But this particular day it was hot and sunny with idyllic view of icebergs in the bay and the north Greenland coast in the background. Even the six hundred pound musk ox appeared relatively friendly - that is, it didn't charge us immediately when we raised our cameras.

The first few days of our route lay along the shores of Lake Hazen - officially described as "an arctic oasis in a polar desert" - picture that if you can! No, there weren't any camels. But imagine a landscape of four thousand foot hills where the top half is summits, lochs and alpine vegetation that look remarkably like Jura; the bottom half though is sand, gravel and what can only be described as freeze dried tussocks and bog. The whole terrain showed all the familiar Scottish features created by large quantities of running water. But two and a half inches is the average annual rainfall there. Take that Jura !

Lurking behind the hills, hide the three thousand foot thick icecap of the Grant Land Mountains and the highest mountain in eastern North America (Mt. Barbeau, 8633ft). And like unruly offspring sent to torment us, there were the glacier tongues and their melt rivers. The park wardens had sounded worried about our crossing the Henrietta Smith Glacier outwash: "contact us on your shortwave radio before and after the crossing; there's an emergency stash with a satellite locator beacon and supplies on both sides; don't go too near to the snout of the glacier where the water is too deep; don't go too far downstream where you'll get into quicksand". And then they'd gracefully declined to tell us where they thought the happy medium might lie. "Use your own best judgement". They were equally circumspect when it came to a request for a weather forecast: "it is pointless to speculate about the weather".

We'd tried to use the radio the night before. It was a large sixties-era box of circuitry which required a long wire aerial held up on ski poles. One night we'd picked up the pilot on an arctic icebreaker. But then the radio stopped receiving. Turned out later that it was still transmitting, but we didn't discover that until long after Graham had broadcast to the whole high arctic, exactly what we thought of Basel and the radio he had rented to us in Resolute. It definitely took the prize as the most useless weight in our packs.

So it was 3am and we were teetering nervously on the bank of the "river". Trouble was, this river was two miles wide and as soon as we stepped into it, the innocent looking chunks of ice battered against our bare legs. Two or three people holding hands seemed awkward at first, but suddenly one person's boot would sink an additional couple of feet below the mesmerizing surface of the water; the whole group would lurch sideways in terror; and then the victim would be gradually pulled from the quicksand. So we had to walk slowly. And it was cold. It was so cold. "Are my toes still down there?" I was experimenting with a new pair of goretex boot liner/gaitor combinations. They worked great until particularly deep quicksand went over the top. But I think they'd be a godsend in my favourite Galloway bog. Just think of dry feet on the "Silver flow".

Safely across. Should we go back to sleep since it's still only 5am? Or should we pretend this is the Alps and keep going? Sleeping is tricky that far north. The twenty four hour light was no problem, but I wasn't really prepared for the effect of constant hot sunshine. The sun didn't go up and down. It just picked a height and went around you in a big, boring circle. You'd be sweating in your sleeping bag at 11pm and think about it cooling off for the night. But no! By 1am it was starting to get hotter again. But who's complaining? It wasn't raining or blowing.

Routefinding turned out to be rather tricky too. We were south of the real North Pole by about five hundred miles. But we were north of the magnetic pole and fairly close to it. So the compass was spectacularly useless. And for maps we had a choice of the five hundred foot contour model or photomosaic pictures. Both left a lot to the imagination. This produced hilarious group dynamics. There was no official leader. But most of the group could have been leader. So whoever could walk fastest would pick the route and then get annoyed when the next person would go a different way.

We almost lost Russ that way. It was a misty morning with occasional glimpses of Airforce Glacier across the valley. We had to find a way across a steep tongue of ice that rolled down from the Ad Astra icecap. Russ climbed steeply up from camp to the level plateau beside the icecap and then settled down to wait for the rest of us before crossing the ice. Unfortunately the rest of us chose a different approach: down steep scree to the river and then straight up the glacier snout until it leveled enough to escape on the far side. Finding the spot to get off was a little tricky with overhanging ice leading to unstable mud pinnacles. Eventually I realized that all I had to do was follow the trail of dead musk oxen skulls. If they got onto the ice, then I could get off.

But after all that, there was no Russ! I ended up making five trips across the same two thousand feet of glacier. At least my crampon only came off once as I teetered above the icy torrent flowing out from the snout; and no one burned those two thousand year old pieces of wood that they found while waiting for Russ to reappear. Imagine what the park warden would have said about that. We camped right beside the glacier that night with the mist swirling in and out and not even a solitary lemming for company.

At other times there was more wildlife, although, strangely, most of it seemed to treat us as if we were wolves. Since we backpacked for seventeen days and never met another person I suppose that for other animals to regard us as wolves was an eminently reasonable assumption on their part. Other packs of wolves howled at us from across the river as if to say "here we are". Musk oxen looked at us suspiciously and slowly ambled away - their six hundred pound bodies gracefully balancing across steep scree slopes on those tiny legs. I wish I could balance like that with my pack!

But the river crossings were the major recurring problem. There were a few of the Scottish boulder-hopping variety, but most were deep and fast and cold. Everybody developed their favourite crossing partner and clothing style: heavy boots and rain gear; or neoprene wet suit booties and underwear; slow patient steps or wild leaps; ice axes or ski poles for extra support. But by mid-thigh depth it's pretty scary! And of course I left my treasured Swiss army knife on the wrong side of the deepest one and had to backtrack two miles and cross it three times. "I didn't think you were going to make it that last time" was Kirk's verdict. But at least he had volunteered to come back and watch.

Even the last day we had a river challenge. The park headquarters on Tanqueray Fjord lay right before us - but on the other side of the MacDonald River. We remembered the warden's words about a visitor being swept away right there. And we argued about the best place to cross. Half of us navigated a wide arc out into the fjord, just where the alluvial fan dropped off into the deep water. It was shallower but the quicksand was nasty. The other half wandered off upstream and eventually reappeared on the far bank for our last lunch before walking along the airstrip to the warden's luxury camp.

But Renee was very generous with his luxury, allowing us showers and video watching as we waited the long hours for our pickup plane. We watched the movie about the Hercules which had crashed on approach to Alert base, just north of the park and heard the stories of the incredibly incompetent twenty three hour rescue organized by the military in Ottawa. "We could have been there in a couple of hours was the comment of one of our pilots. But then they require six people to fly a plane that we can fly with one", he added.

With that thought we were off on our return flight, skimming over the jagged peaks of Axel Heiberg Island with its amazing fossilized tropical forest, and searching for polar bears on the pack ice - back to what passes for civilization up here. The tourist shirts in Resolute say: "If you don't think hell freezes over then you haven't been to Resolute Bay" And they're not kidding! It has to be one of the most god-forsaken spots I've ever visited. But that's where we picked up the jet back to what passes for civilization down here in California where you only have to worry about riots and forest fires and earthquakes. Perhaps heatstroke at the North Pole isn't so bad after all!