June 30, 2020 Exploring Like a Mad Dog

The Liberty Gazette

June 30, 2020

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Christine Dennison is the president and co-founder of Mad Dog Expeditions, an internationally recognized scuba diving and exploration company. She’s the first woman to dive the dangerous piranha-saturated waters of the Amazon’s Rio Negro and its tributaries. She’s also the first woman to dive and explore beneath the Arctic Sea ice and the ice caves of the Canadian High Arctic. She has logged over 80 dives in the harsh polar environs.

We attended her online lecture where she highlighted her expertise in arctic exploration. We learned that they look for holes in the ice made by seals, enlarge the holes, then brave the 28-degree waters to check out the view of the ice shelf from below. While I have no desire to do what she does, I admire her pioneering adventurousness and cheer her on all the way. I must admit, however, that the thing that got my attention was part of her mode of transportation.

No commercial airline flights will take her and her crew out to the remote areas to dive. For one location, they get as close as they can, then hop aboard a Twin Otter on skis. Many years ago, Mike was flying Twin Otters to deliver freight. He wasn’t flying with skis, but the airplane is otherwise the same great workhorse, made in Canada by the de Havilland company. The highly experienced pilots who fly these airplanes also fly them in Antarctica during the South Pole summer.

Mike: When their chartered Twin Otter lands, the team tosses their belongings onto a Ski-Doo and hums across the ice, single file, looking for a suitable place to stop (yes, they will be camping out there in the frozen tundra) before they move out to explore.

On another trip, they board an Antonov AN-74, a Russian-built airplane that will take them way up to Kaffeklubben Island at the northern-most point in Greenland. At about 84 degrees north latitude, it is the farthest point a heavy plane can land. After spending a couple days in a camp designed to acclimate the team, they set out on cross-country skis towing a sled with no more than 100 pounds of gear and food, all the while listening to the thawing ice pop and crack beneath them, and always on the lookout for polar bears.

Once they’ve completed their dive, they rendezvous with an MI-8, a Russian-made helicopter. The helicopter can get close, but the explorers must ski to where the helicopter lands. If it settled in the wrong spot, the helicopter’s weight could cause it to break through the thinning ice flow. The helicopter lands, the skiers and gear are tossed aboard, and it’s off the ice in just a couple minutes.

While Mad Dog Expeditions won’t promise 5-star luxury, they do promise 5-star adventure.

Linda: No offense, but I’m more into the ice landings. Flying in extreme conditions, cold, white-outs, wind—freezing temperatures have unique effects on aircraft. Now there’s an adventure I can warm up to!

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