Just as he was ready to start a blizzard set in with a northeast gale, and smash! went the ice.  This put an end to dog travel.  There was but one alternative, and that was by boat.  Traveling along the coast in a small boat is pretty exciting and sometimes perilous when you have to navigate the boat through narrow lanes of water, with land ice on one side and the big Arctic ice pack on the other, and a shift of wind is likely to send the pack driving in upon you before you can get out of the way.  And if the ice pack catches you, that’s the end of it, for your boat will be ground up like a grain of wheat between mill stones, and there you are, stranded upon the ice, and as like as not cut off from land, too.

But there was no other way to get to that meeting in New York, and Grenfell was determined to get there.  And so, when the blizzard had passed he got out a small motor boat, and made ready for the journey.  If he could reach a point several days’ journey by boat to the southward, he could leave the boat and travel one hundred miles on foot overland to the railroad.

This hike of one hundred miles, with provisions and equipment on his back, was a tremendous journey in itself.  It would not be on a beaten road, but through an unpopulated wilderness still lying deep under winter snows.  To Grenfell, however, it would be but an incident in his active life.  He was accustomed to following a dog team, and that hardens a man for nearly any physical effort.  It requires that a man keep at a trot the livelong day, and it demands a good heart and good lungs and staying powers and plenty of grit, and Grenfell was well equipped with all of these.

The menacing Arctic ice pack lay a mile or so seaward when Grenfell and one companion turned their backs on St. Anthony, and the motor boat chugged southward, out of the harbor and along the coast.  For a time all went well, and then an easterly wind sprang up and there followed a touch-and-go game between Dr. Grenfell and the ice.

In an attempt to dodge the ice the boat struck upon rocks.  This caused some damage to her bottom, but not sufficient to incapacitate her, as it was found the hole could be plugged.  The weather turned bitterly cold, and the circulating pipes of the motor froze and burst.  This was a more serious accident, but it was temporarily repaired while Grenfell bivouaced ashore, sleeping at night under the stars with a bed of juniper boughs for a mattress and an open fire to keep him warm.

Ice now blocked the way to the southward, though open leads of water to the northward offered opportunity to retreat, and, with the motor boat in a crippled condition, it was decided to return to St. Anthony and make an attempt, with fresh equipment, to try a route through the Straits of Belle Isle.

They were still some miles from St. Anthony when they found it necessary to abandon the motor boat in one of the small harbor settlements.  Leaving it in charge of the people, Grenfell borrowed a small rowboat.  Rowing the small boat through open lanes and hauling it over obstructing ice pans they made slow progress and the month of May was nearing its close when one day the pack suddenly drove in upon them.