Meet Prof. Popsicle (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine January 2003

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Meet Prof. Popsicle (Cont.)

SCIENTISTS ARE BY definition highly rational beings who pursue truths supported by hard data. But Giesbrecht's headlong rush into the mysteries of the deep freeze is motivated by something very rarely found in science: God. Giesbrecht, his wife, Debra, and the couple's two teenage daughters are devout born-again Christians, members of the Immanuel Pentecostal Church. Some ten million Americans call themselves Pentecostals of one kind or another, and the faith is best known for promoting the practice of speaking in tongues. Pentecostals also believe in divine healing, but Giesbrecht understands that God is not prone to miraculously saving some schmo in a snowbank. Miracles are, by their nature, rare, he says. "For instance, there are a few hypothermia cases—like that girl in Regina who went down to 13 degrees [Celsius] and lived—that people say are miracles," he says. "I'm not convinced." As an exercise in balancing the scientific side of his brain with his faith, Giesbrecht is collaborating with a minister to write, over the next couple of years, a book about miraculous healing. His aim is to determine which cases cannot be scientifically explained and to debunk the others. "I plan to play devil's advocate," he says.

Giesbrecht is happy to talk about religion, though he worries about being portrayed as a freak. "It's not like we're throwing snakes on the ground like they might in Texas," he says. Sitting with Debra, a peppy 40-year-old blonde, at a grill table in their favorite Japanese steak house, he debates the theory that Christ was a vegetarian.

"It's not like he's alive today for us to ask him," concludes Gordon, between bites of beef. Debra looks surprised.

"Gord, remember, Jesus lives," she chides gently.

"Of course!" Giesbrecht sputters. He may keep Christ on the front burner—posted on the wall of his lab is a sign that reads, THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE BEGINNING OF KNOWLEDGE—but adventure and experiments-cum-stunts are also important, and can be distracting at times. His wife isn't worried, though. "I know he's careful," she says. Her friends, however, aren't so sure. "They say, 'Don't you think he's crazy?' "

"I hate it when people say that," Giesbrecht announces.

"But Gord," says Debra, "it's not what normal people do, is it?"

It isn't. But Giesbrecht is not about to give up his research or his crusade. In the future he hopes to turn his attention to "tree wells," pits that form in deep snowpack beneath evergreens. These holes have been killing snowboarders, who can ride into them and suffocate. And he's fixated on "ice masks," which quickly form over the faces of buried avalanche victims, cutting off access to the precious oxygen suspended in the snow around them. Someday he hopes to collaborate with Utah-based researcher Colin Grissom, who helped develop the AvaLung, an under-snow breathing device made by Salt Lake CityÐbased Black Diamond Equipment for backcountry snow mavens.

Giesbrecht's to-do list is endless, because the war against cold is dangerous and protracted, and human beings are frail. His dream experiment is a 65-day crossing of either the North or the South Pole, with full metabolic tests throughout. "I would want to get to the point where the body is well and truly falling apart," he says. "When we did 19 days [on Lake Winnipeg], we could have turned around and done it again. After 65 days you're not so chipper."

But for now, he's focusing on a 400-mile trek across the Canadian high Arctic with a to-be-determined colleague. He will start, perhaps, in the village of Resolute, about 400 miles shy of the magnetic pole, and wander onto the frozen Arctic Ocean in the general direction of Baffin Island. It will assuredly be colder than any trip Giesbrecht has done before. So what is he going to test?

"Us," he says.

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