Seb Audy is a world bank manager turned corporate executive. Every a year, he takes time off and ventures to a polar icecap or to the top of one of the tallest mountains in the world. On the 30th day of his last trip, the quest took a sudden, tragic turn.
trudging across Greenland for weeks. His left foot was broken. The tendons and ligaments in both knees were swollen and aching. One of his kneecaps was cracked. The icy wind lashed at his face, blistering his cheeks, and as he plodded, he pulled a 200-pound sled full of food and supplies.
At one point, Seb crossed over a short snowbridge—maybe 30 inches from one side to the other—and watched it collapse beneath him, opening to a deep, dark crevasse. Later, he’d say that seeing the snow tumbling down into the darkness was terrifying, but in the moment the men said nothing. They both understood: If the opening had been just a little wider, it would have swallowed Seb whole.
Seb grew up in a small town in Quebec, the second-oldest of four kids. When he was little, he thought he might be a farmer, someone who works hard, outdoors, using his hands. He also played soccer, baseball, and hockey and dreamed of making it to the NHL, but at five-eight he was never tall enough. Instead, he studied business, got a consulting job at Deloitte, and started working 80 hours a week straight out of college.
The year after, he climbed Denali in Alaska, the tallest mountain in North America. Then Kilimanjaro. Then Everest. Then Elbrusz in Russia, the highest peak in Europe. When they emerged, Seb was surprised to see the way people were living in Greenland. No need for masks or distancing. People spending time together inside, even sharing food. “It was really interesting to have this experience of living a pre-pandemic life for a few days before the departure of the expedition,” he’d say later.
Only a few days after they finally started gaining ground, another hellacious storm was moving in on the radar. This one promised hurricane-force winds that would turn even hunkering down in a tent into an existential trial. So they headed for a point on the map labeled DYE-2: an abandoned US military radar station in the center of the island, once used to monitor the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Early on, he noticed the signs of a stress fracture in his left foot. Then his knees swelled: bursitis and tendinitis. An MRI would later reveal that the constant pounding against the ice, like a jackhammer in the bitter cold, had split one of his kneecaps. Still, the men kept on. As they crossed into the Arctic Circle and got closer to the end point, they pushed harder to cover more and more ground. Each night, they’d plan the next day’s route together. But the evening before they ventured into the crevasse zone, Seb wasn’t in on the planning. When they set up camp after another long day atop the punishing sastrugi, he realized he’d dropped his GPS tracker. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he’d reached for something, about a mile away, he guessed.
“The other kids look at their parents like, ‘Oh, my God, Mommy, I want to do that,’ ” Tania says. “And the other moms and dads are not going to do that.”But yes, these trips take him away from his wife and son—not to mention his job—for more than a month at a time. When there’s no wind to move the kites, or when an icy storm stretches on for almost a week, it’s hard not to dwell on what you left behind.
The first sign of trouble came from the horizon. Seb could see the mountains on the western coast, and he knew something was wrong. “It should have been another day or two before the mountains were visible,” he told me. First he needed to assess the damage and understand how badly Dixie was hurt. So he stretched out flat, face-down on the ice at the lip of the crevasse, peering into the darkness below. But he couldn’t see anything.
“It’s a friendship,” Seb would explain later. “But it’s hard to describe because you’re going through so many hardship experiences.” As he sat there in the frigid air, helpless, Seb’s mind clouded. The pit of his stomach swirled with guilt and shame. What could they have done differently? Why had they veered toward the coast so soon? Why was it Dixie in the crevasse and not him?
Seb was taken to the small hospital. Doctors there gave him something to help him sleep. But he woke up 15 minutes later on the floor, ramping on his belly like he was at the edge of a crevasse, calling out for Dixie. When Seb closed his eyes, he could see Dixie falling over and over. He could hear him grunting at the bottom of the crevasse and the chopping swooshes of the helicopter as it floated him up and left his friend there.
But even when the physical wounds faded, Seb was left with a pain so unfamiliar it felt unspeakable. Tania had never seen him so quiet, so listless. Sometimes he couldn’t talk about the trip without tearing up. Sometimes he couldn’t talk about it at all.
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