After two weeks of trekking through a moving obstacle course of shifting, treacherous plates of pack ice, adventurers Karl Bushby and Dimitri Kieffer have crossed the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia.
The pair stepped ashore in Siberia on Friday, said Karl's father, Keith Bushby, from his home in Hereford, England.
"All of us knew the chances of them getting across were slim," he said. "We were obviously elated when they arrived."
Karl Bushby and Kieffer are now in an elite club of a few adventurers to make the trek across the 58-mile stretch of largely frozen ice pack.
Leaving sometime in mid-March from Wales, a village of about 150 people on the tip of the Seward Peninsula, they battled minus 20-degree temperatures, fast-moving ice, and arduous climbs over fields of crumpled ridges the size of refrigerators, Keith Bushby said.
Keith Bushby, 58, said his son called him every morning on his satellite phone to find out about ice conditions. The elder Bushby would log onto the Internet to examine satellite photos on weather Web sites to help his son chart the best course. It was a race against time, he said.
"The ice was splitting up behind them," he said.
At one point, Bushby and Kieffer abandoned the sleds they pulled behind them and fashioned backpacks out of their survival gear because they were unable to drag their gear over the rough, uneven ice. When they found the ice leveling out a few miles farther on, they returned for the sleds.
Leads opened quickly, and pack ice moved rapidly with the currents -- at times 5 knots an hour. While sleeping in their tent one night, the two adventurers were swept in a crazy loop miles off course.
Karl Bushby is 18,000-miles into a planned 36,000-mile walk around the world that he began seven years ago in Chile. The 36-year-old former paratrooper plans to continue his hike across Siberia, Asia and Europe. He hopes to return home by 2010 -- after crossing four continents, half a dozen deserts, mountain ranges and now, a frozen sea.
Kieffer is a French adventurer who joined Bushby for part of the trip, after the two met in Alaska.
Bushby ran into his share of hurdles getting across Alaska.
Last year, an expired visa forced him to retreat to Canada. In January, Bushby found himself trapped on bad ice in Norton Sound while trying to cross from Shaktoolik to Koyuk. He used his satellite phone to call the Alaska State Troopers for help, but the ice drifted closer to shore and he was able to get himself out of trouble before rescuers arrived.
The Bering Strait crossing has worried Bushby since his trek began, his father said.
"Even when he was crossing deserts, he was thinking about how he was going to do it," Keith Bushby said.
Bushby and Kieffer next plan to make their way to Providenya on the Siberian coast. From there, they will catch flights back to Alaska. Bushby plans to restock with gear and provisions on this side of the strait, then fly back to Russia to continue his long walk home. Kieffer probably won't accompany him on that leg, Keith Bushby said.
Keith Bushby said he has not heard from his son since his arrival in Siberia, when Karl called on the fading satellite phone to report he had made it: "Terra Firma! Terra Firma!" the jubilant younger Bushby told his father.
"I'm just extremely relieved for him it's over," Keith Bushby said, answering his phone in Hereford at about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday his time.
"But it's not really over, it's just the start of another adventure."
Daily News reporter Megan Holland can be reached at mrholland@adn.com.
