Description:
Don Starkell has a thing about paddling. In 1980, he won a place in the Guinness Book of World Records by paddling a canoe 12,000 miles from Winnipeg, Canada, to the mouth of the Amazon in Belém, Brazil. Ten years later, he decided instead to head north across the top of the world; this time he took a kayak. Paddle to the Arctic is the account of his journey, presented in diary form and illustrated with 24 pages of photographs and 12 maps. Starkell's window of opportunity was small; he had only the months between June and September to cover the 3,000 miles from Churchill to Tuktoyaktuk before the winter freeze set in. In all, he made three attempts before finally reaching his goal. The challenges were extreme: terrible storms, ice, capsizes, even polar bears. At times, he was forced to drag his kayak over impassable ice flows; at others, he nearly died from starvation. In the end, however, he achieved what seemed impossible: conquering the Northwest Passage in an Inuit kayak, a feat never before accomplished. Paddle to the Arctic is a hair-raising chronicle of one man's epic quest and eventual triumph.
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