A kite-skier in action (from on Flickr)
At the end of the Trans-Canada Highway in the small town of Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, on Saturday, siblings Eric and Sarah McNair-Landry made their final preparations and began to navigate the Northwest passage—by kite-ski.
According the , Eric, 26, and Sarah, 24, plan to follow the route Roald Amundsen first sailed in 1906, a distance of nearly 3,000 km (1,864 miles). The Iqaluit, Nunavut, residents are no strangers to adventure. reports that Sarah and Eric, at ages 18 and 20, respectively, became the youngest people to ski to from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole. The siblings have also been kite-skiing in Greenland, buggy-kiting in the Gobi Desert and kayaking in Mongolia-Russia. Last year Sarah guided a ski expedition to the Geographic North Pole, and Eric set a 24-hour kite-ski distance world record.
“Our goals are similar to our previous expeditions,” Eric and Sarah say on their . “We want to inspire youth to get active and get outside.”
From Tuktoyaktuk, the siblings will head east to the communities of Kugluktuk, Cambridge Bay, Gjoa Haven, Taloyoak, and Arctic Bay. Their final destination is Pond Inlet on Baffin Island. You can follow their progress on their blog at .
Below, Sarah talks about her involvement in National Geographic's 2008 .
–Michael Webster