Gone without a trace

Canadian explorer Adam Shoalts, author of a half-dozen books about his northern adventures, expands his range in this new volume by combining wilderness trips, biography and cold-case detective work in an intriguing tale of little-known but well-respected solo early 20th-century explorer Hubert Darrell.

It was while reading historical records in 2011 that Shoalts first encountered a reference to Darrell, who disappeared in the uncharted wilds of the Northwest Territories in 1910; he became enchanted by the life of the solo prospector, guide and explorer, and drawn to solving the mystery of how he died.

“I often felt as if I were chasing a ghost,” Shoalts writes. “He’d vanished not only literally, but from the pages of history.”

A cold case in a cold, cold land, if you will.

The British-born Darrell immigrated to Canada in 1890 at age 16 to a farmstead just outside Birtle, where his older brother Charles was trying to eke out a living. He spent seven years there in a relentless battle he and Charles waged to support themselves before joining the Klondike gold rush, hoping to strike it rich and return to pay off the farm debts.

The gold rush was a bust for Darrell, as it was for so many others, but he found something more permanent, something dear to his heart: a love of the wilderness, of exploring and of facing its hardships alone.

While Darrell was a loner, and many of his exploits were solo adventures, he nonetheless won the admiration of residents in the Far North who recognized his stamina and abilities. He made friends with many Inuit and Métis hunters and guides who enjoyed his company socially and on far-flung hunting trips.

He was not afraid to travel to uncharted areas, beyond the map; in fact, he enjoyed the challenge, the uncertainty, the solitary exploration. In one unprecedented trip he travelled 1,800 kilometres over four months carrying mail on a sled he pulled on foot through the snow, a round-trip feat that saved the lives of hundreds of whalers whose ships were frozen in the Beaufort Sea and who needed to get word to the south to send life-saving provisions.

Not only did he deliver the plea for provisions, he returned to the icebound ships to tell the crews that help was on the way and to deliver the mail. Two of the world’s most famous polar explorers — Roald Amundsen and Vilhjalmur Stefansson — were in the area at the time, and Amundsen described Darrell as a “remarkable man, possessed of rare vigour, courage and perseverance,” adding later that if he had a few men like Darrell, he could mount an expedition to the moon.

Darrell wound up penniless and unemployed after an epic journey that was remarkable in many ways, but mostly for his making it on foot pulling a sled rather than by the more common dogsled.

The lone explorer did travel back to Birtle once, for 18 months in 1903-1905, and fell in love with a schoolteacher whose family wasn’t keen on her marrying someone like Darrell. He decided to head back north again to make enough money to return, buy a farm and get married. She later married brother Charles so she could take the surname Darrell, but they lived separate lives.

There are many examples of Darrell’s skill and fearless explorations, and Shoalts travelled those same routes, as best as could be determined, in search of clues to Darrell’s last adventure and the location and cause of his death.

Shoalts, as he has done throughout his career as an explorer and author, captures the exceptional beauty and sometimes sheer danger of the northern wilderness as he traces Darrell’s route. Vanished Beyond the Map is delivered as a mystery — that Darrell is dead is known from the start, but Shoalts searches for clues in correspondence with family in England and with his brother in Birtle, from contemporary newspaper reports, church records, a trip to Birtle and from talking to a few people who knew someone who knew Darrell.

Shoalts has crafted a hybrid adventure book that combines his forte of taking readers on his wilderness explorations with a new investigative angle as he discovers and then rules out clues, as in any cold case, to come to a best guess of how Darrell died.

No one will ever know for sure, but the odds favour a polar bear attacking Darrell as he was alone on foot collecting wood for a fire at his camp — or maybe not.

Chris Smith is a Winnipeg writer.

Adam Shoalts launches Vanished Beyond the Map at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location tonight at 7 p.m.