PART 1: VOORMI GOES TO SVALBARD
Last March, as my three girls pounded the floorboards above, I stood in our basement greedily unwrapping the VOORMI packages sent to keep us warm during our upcoming exploration of the Norwegian Arctic. Enclosed I found a tawny River Run Hoodie, a Sportsman’s Two-Pocket Hoodie (I had lusted after for hunting Sitka blacktail in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest), a gray beanie, some ski socks, an undershirt, and set of long underwear. Each garment wafting that new-clothes smell spiced with sheep wool. Damn if VOORMI and its vaunted CORE Construction wasn’t about to be put to the test.
Truth be told, even before setting foot in the Arctic I had already been convinced by the burly Sportsman Hoodie. From its comfy hood to its embedded waterproof layer – it had become my go-to sheathing. Whether picking chanterelle mushrooms or crab pots with the girls, dipnetting for sockeye at Redoubt Falls, or setting a halibut skate in Sitka Sound, I had come to trust the hoodie for just about all my rainforest needs.
And yet I knew Svalbard would be a separate story. Staying dry wouldn’t be the problem, the Arctic essentially being a cold-weather desert. These clothes I now carefully refolded and set in my gear pile would be responsible for keeping me toasty in a land known for popsicling humans since the Vikings first landed on its shores in the 1200s. The only reassurance being that if any of these garments didn’t cut the mustard, former Denali guide and VOORMI CXO Dustin English would be there to explain himself, alongside his sister Megan English, VOORMI’s Sales Director.
The house went eerily quiet, and I heard the girls whisper. Never a good sign. I grabbed my Sportsmans Hoodie and threw it in the pile, figuring I could double it up with the River Run Hoodie, and even the new Sportsman's Pullover. As they say in Alaska, 'the older you get, the colder you get.' At 44, I was old enough to understand I would be operating at stone's throw (600 miles) from the North Pole. I wanted to enjoy the difficult journey that awaited us; and that meant very, very good gear.
Svalbard’s quilt of nine islands likes just off the north pole, like a beret slightly askance. This a land of reindeer and polar bears, Arctic fox and bearded seal A land selected as the setting for the Game of Thrones, where no sustained human habitation existed before the 17th century. How would we get there? On a 150-foot three-masted wooden schooner, not so different from the original Vikings on their heavily-built exploring ships.
I decided to put VOORMI to perhaps the most crucial test right off the bat – how would that comfy mossy green crew-cut graphic shirt wick sweat and generally breathe over the course of my two-day game of connect-the-airports between Sitka, Alaska, and Tromsø, Norway. Touching down at midnight, scanning the periwinkle horizon for northern lights and mulled red wine, all I can say is that I felt fresh enough to stretch as I waited for my cab at midnight, and didn’t get the sensation of wearing a hairshirt, as so often happens when I make the mistake of flying distance in a low-grade underlayer.
As I walked to the harbor I picked out our vessel, the Linden - the three masts rising high into the night, her tidy deck awash in light. I lowered myself down to the deck, way off the bull-rail due to the low tide. The legendary Rasmus Jacobsen, who I recognized from photos, shook my hand, and led me into the ship’s lacquered salon. Inside we spoke of icebergs, low-pressure systems, and the probability of no one being at Pyramiden, the abandoned Russian coal-mining town our crew so wanted to visit.
“Nothing’s a sure thing, starting with this weather,” Rasmus said, his beard awash in the white light of the computer screen. “We’ll just need to see where the wind and ice takes us.”
The following morning I took in the sight of what would be out home for the next two weeks - a boat about as long as a college football player could punt. This boat, straight out of the seafaring storybooks of the early 1900s got me thinking that if VOORMI's reputation for versatility and durability, for blending technology with ancient and erstwhile materials, ever had its analog in the universe of sea craft, the Linden could certainly be it. Constructed in 1993 to specs set out on paper in 1920, operated on big waters with the help of an advanced tablet navigation system identifying a boat's captain, destination, and tonnage, the boat provide that timeless materials and new technology could combine to make the most versatile and resilient product in the land - or on the seas, as the case may be.
As I spread out my gear in my quarterberth, Megan and Dustin arrived, along with the rest of our expedition crew – an assembled team given a steerage price on the Linden in exchange for agreeing to help pilot the ship across the bumpy Barents Sea. We had Justin, an active-duty Special Forces Pararescue dude, a couple badass big mountain skiers, photographer Jordan Rosen, and three Swiss adventurers. Two Swedish outdoor gear owners had also signed up for the trip, but word on the docks was they had gotten stuck in Morocco. One Swede on board – Agnes, who sewed sails – was quite enough, Rasmus joked. Plus, Jordan sagely advised, we wanted to avoid any bare-knuckle brawling or dance-offs between American and Swedish gear reps.
Following the arrival of the Englishs’, the Linden transformed into a virtual VOORMI runway. Even the two Danish cooks, Kaya and Freya, sported VOORMI’s Chef’s Apron, with a heat shielding membrane most likely not to be tested in the Arctic unless something went very, very wrong for them and us in the galley. Dustin rocked his AN/FO jacket, its oversized pockets and low hem giving him the look of a futuristic custom’s collector. Already I regretted bringing my robin blue snowboarding jacket, both for its bulkiness and lack of warmth. I had been planning on appreciating my VOORMI gear, not lusting after the coats of others.
As we made loose on the morning of April 18th, Rasmus in his rust-trimmed Treeline Hoodie, looking both timeless and official as he stood behind the helm whispering directions that his crew somehow heard. Sigsten, the capable 23-year-old Danish First Mate, wore the equivalent hoodie trimmed out in turquoise. He had spent time in Greenland with the Inuit learning to hunt polar bear, and had already dropped the intriguing possibility of hunting seal upon arrival in Svalbard.
But first, we were to focus what we all had been hired to do: achieve this four-day crossing.
Part 2 coming, August 19th.