“The guy’s had more unexpected bivouacs than anyone I’ve ever talked to,” Boomer said. “And I’m a little bit jealous of that.”

Raised in American Falls, Idaho, Boomer maintains no permanent address; a 1994 Honda Accord station wagon with more than 270,000 miles suffices. Nicknamed Honey Badger by paddling friends, Boomer has logged six descents of the Grand Canyon of the Stikine, a multiday excursion in northern British Columbia regarded as the most treacherous run in North American expedition kayaking. (Once, he paddled it in a day.)

Boomer has dropped 90-foot waterfalls, and completed at least 40 first descents. But he had not been on an expedition longer than 12 or 13 days. And only once had he been in a less maneuverable and buoyant sea kayak, paddling 90 miles of big whitewater on Idaho’s Salmon River in one day.

Turk and Boomer started with 25 days’ worth of food. Each kayak weighed 220 pounds. The first mandatory stop was Eureka, a manned weather station on the west coast and site of the first of their three arranged food caches. After another cache at the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the kayaks weighed more than 300 pounds, with 60 days of food. The two ate a lot of beans and other calorie-laden items that required little stove fuel. All gear had to serve multiple purposes, so one pair of boots did the duty of three.

Turk and Boomer, whose trip was financed by grants from Eddie Bauer/First Ascent and Polartec, have since been nominated as adventurers of the year by National Geographic. On the island, the weather they experienced approximated that of winter in the Rockies: midday temperatures into the mid-50s, down to single digits when the sun dipped behind the mountains. At its worst, the wind chill was minus-35.

While waiting 17 days for the ocean to calm at Cape Union at the mouth of the Robeson Channel, they once paddled offshore and climbed atop an ice floe the size of two baseball infields that looked to them like a promising raft.