Stalked By A Polar Bear!

After crash landing in the frigid waters of the Davis Strait, Russian helicopter pilot Sergey Ananov must battle severe hypothermia, crushing fear and one very persistent predator.

- Justin Nobel

THE POUNDING NOISE shatters the silence of Davis Strait, a frigid finger of ocean separating Canada and Greenland. Thwick-thwack, thwickthwack. The noise comes from above the helicopter, its pilot realizes, and it’s getting louder. THWICK-THWACK, THWICK-THWACK.

That pilot, Sergey Ananov, wears an old red neoprene survival suit. But the bulky outfit is hot and its mittens make it difficult to operate the cyclic stick. After flying for 42 days over 33,000 kilometres and two continents (Eurasia and North America), he sometimes relaxes a little and unzips down to his waist. That’s why he’s barechested when the sound begins.

The helicopter is not big: a plucky 400-kilogram Robinson R22. Ananov knows every centimetre, every bolt. And he knows what the sputtering means: a belt transferring power from the engine to the rudder blades has snapped. He also knows what comes next. The helicopter is going down.

Ananov switches to autorotation, a safety mode that allows the craft to glide downward. From a height of 900 metres, it falls at roughly 15 metres per second. The marine fog is thick, so it isn’t until 215 metres above the partially frozen sea that the helicopter pierces it. With little time to manoeuvre, Ananov aims for an ice floe, realizes he won’t make it, tilts the craft for safest impact and lands the skids smoothly on the water.

Ananov knows the blades could chop off his head when he climbs out, so he leans the helicopter to the left so that they smash to pieces against the sea. This kills the engine and the machine starts to sink—tail first and fast.