Adventure Magazine Issue 220

Camp at the Greenland ice cap near Ilulissat, Greenland
Image by Christian Pondella/Red Bull Content Pool
"Curiosity, more than any other emotion or motivation, has always
pushed me forward. It has taken me to the edge of human understanding
and ability, a place that gets me up in the morning.
The excitement of answering “what would happen if we…” first drove
me to explore caves in my teens around the same time that curiosity
introduced me to ice climbing. I hooked up with an older crew of cavers
who brought me along primarily because I could squeeze my skinny
frame through holes that they couldn’t. We’d move through the rock
thousands of feet below the mountains, and then they’d send in “the
probe”. I’d squeeze into places no human had ever been, all because it
was wildly interesting and scratched the raw itch of curiosity.
Lately, more than three decades after my first caving experiences,
my worlds of ice climbing and caving have collided. Yet again, it was
curiosity: what is down those moulins, those big holes in the glacier?
Maybe it was time to send in “the probe” once again.
I researched what was known about glacial caves, and that took me to
Professor Martin Sharp at the University of Alberta. Together we worked
under the Athabasca Glacier, and found new life forms growing inside the
glacier.
I kept digging on the research front and wound up in contact with
Professor Jason Gulley, one of the top experts on glacial caves in the
world. Together we hatched a plan for what would become Beneath the
Ice, a project that pushed me further than any other project I’ve ever
done.
Come the summer of 2018, I was learning how to cave dive in Florida
with Gulley. Why? Because our plan involved going deeping into the
Greenland ice cap than anyone had ever gone before, and to do that,
we were planning to dive once we hit the water table inside the glacier.
When we emerged from the depths of the ice sheet, we hoped to have a
better understanding of how the ice cap ultimately moves and melts.
RIGHT: Topside view as Will Gadd
descends into a moulin on the Greenland
ice cap near Ilulissat, Greenland
Image by Christian Pondella
Red Bull Content Pool
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