We had seen signs of polar bears throughout that first day on the pack ice out of Grise Fiord.
There was the black half-consumed walrus carcass, at first thought to be a seal sunning in the distance. Only this time the ”seal” didn`t dive into its breathing hole as we roared within a quarter-mile on our phalanx of snowmobiles and sledges.
Bezal Jesudason, outfitter of numerous polar expeditions, surmised that the half-ton beast had been trapped by a bear, probably after wandering from the safety of open ice last fall, when there still were patches of water on the vastness of Jones Sound.
One bat of a paw would have knocked the walrus senseless. Then the bear could finish it off.
I reached down and spread the fan of a flipper and someone took a picture and we moved on.
A few miles after a lunch of chewy bannock and cookies and homemade garlic sausage, we saw fresh tracks in the snow, larger than a man`s glove.
”We will see bears this trip,” Bezal nodded. ”If not today, then probably tomorrow.”
Our first camp was beside a jagged iceberg some 15 miles off the rocky mesas of the Ellesmere Island coast. We had skirted a spectacular field of icebergs trapped between these northernmost arctic islands. These milky green masses, compressed by centuries of mountain snows and then ”calved” into the salty flowages by awesome forces of nature, can be handy supplies of drinking water. Just harpoon the ice into small slabs and melt it over a camp stove. Then pour it steaming into mugs of coffee, chocolate or tea.
The first time we had sampled a taste of iceberg had been a week earlier in Resolute. Someone had driven a snowmobile nine miles onto Barrow Strait to harvest a bucket of chips from a berg the size of Soldier Field.
The crystal chips had sizzled in our drinks, popping the trapped air from an era that produced life some 100,000 years ago. We rolled the ice tentatively upon our tongues, a sacred meeting of the ages. It was almost a holy moment. Now we were veterans, casually brewing iceberg coffee. One of the Eskimos thoughtfully had stuck an icicle in the snow for nibbling.
We had that day rambled–five snowmobiles towing a like number of 15-foot sledges–some 70 miles through the extremes of an arctic spring. We had sweated through the first jagged shore ice piled along the beaches of Grise Fiord, an Eskimo hamlet of 106 and the northernmost settlement on this continent. We had plied, hoodless and collars open–some of us, at least
–through windless sunshine and light snow in 20 degrees, snug in single wool caps and thin glove liners.
Others were bundled to the teeth, notably three apprehensive fellows from Florida, unsure of these ”warmish” springtime arctic breezes.
”Don`t worry,” they were told. ”In a few days you`ll be used to this. You`ll be running around in sweaters. At least it`s not 70-below with 100-mile winds.”
But by 9 p.m. the skies grew leaden and the temperature slipped toward zero. The chill factor was much lower. I stuffed myself into a bulky down liner beneath the heavy parka and buried my head in wool and fur, my hands in moose hide and beaver. Woolen balaclavas slid across our faces. Our feet were encased in thick pouches of duffel wool. We remained warm and comfy.
We were moving southwester toward Resolute, the second northernmost community and main staging point for arctic expeditions. We made that first camp shortly after midnight, still in the midday of a 24-hour arctic sun.
Time proves meaningless in perpetual sunlight. We`d crawl into our tents after dinner, well past midnight. The day would begin whenever we awoke. We`d resume the trail when we were ready. There was no hurry, no schedule. Our chief concerns were smooth passage through trackless pack ice and among island hills and valleys. Also, to check out the animals along the way.
Ours was a winding, 330-mile route from southern Ellesmere across the five-foot-thick ice of Jones Sound to the rocky sweeps of Devon Island. Then across the brutal ”screw ice” of Wellington Channel past a treacherous open water polynia dubbed ”Hell Gate” by early explorers. We eventually reached hilly Cornwallis Island and, at the far end, Resolute. The weather was generally superb, permitting us to make it in four days.
At times, though, we literally shoved and hammered our sledges through iridescent ridges of blue and green boulder ice that ringed the shores for miles. We boosted each other`s sledges up long, sweeping mountainous slopes. Sometimes we`d hang on for breathless and brakeless descents through snowy crevasses. It was a trip that will stay with us for the rest of our lives, the highlight of an 8,000-mile, 20-day sojourn through the eastern Northwest Territories in search of the most remote arctic wildlife.
At other times and in other places, we would sneak upon seals and walruses, edge close to wolves and foxes and the sprightly arctic hare, hear the calls of eider ducks and nesting swans, snow geese and gray-winged glaucus gulls.
We would feast upon freshly hunted reindeer, seal and artic char. We would sample beluga whale both raw and pickled. Now we would draw as near as safety allows to those powerhouses of the arctic–the polar bear prowling ice cracks for wayward seals and the flocks of shaggy musk oxen guarding calves on windswept, rocky steppes.
Our Eskimo guides paused now and then on our crossings of islands to hunt the grouse-like rock ptarmigan, popping nesting pairs on the snow-dusted gravel with .22-caliber rifles. Those of us from the south didn`t like that form of hunting, but the Eskimos explained that ptarmigan are food sources that migrate to them in the spring. There always are plenty of ptarmigan, they insisted. And on this trip, there were.
We made that first camp in the midnight sun, our ”body clocks”
thoroughly askew. We had begun our trip a little after 2 p.m., but up here time hardly matters. The sun merely changes position, rotating from south to west to north by bedtime, often at 3 a.m. As we slumbered, it slid back through the east and into the south again to greet us for breakfast around 11 a.m.
Jesudason, a dark, sinewy transplanted Indian from Madras, runs two to four of these snowmobile-sledge trips a year through his firm, High Arctic International Explorer Services, Ltd., of Resolute Bay. Only the hardy are encouraged, though not exclusively the young. He has had along men and women in their 70s and 80s. One group will travel from Resolute to Grise Fiord in four to eight days, weather depending. Another will be waiting–ferried by air –to make the trip back. The route always changes, depending upon ice conditions. We turned out to be the 15th group in history–a grand total of 85 souls.
Unless you actually pilot one of the snowmobiles, as I did, the trip requires very little physical effort. Bezal`s clients ride in comfort, give or take a little banging around. They are stuffed into deep boxes tied to the sledges and swaddled among sleeping bags and mattresses. Rarely do they tumble out. Individual dashboards hold cameras and goodies, and windshields cut the chill. A normal 10-hour day on the trail is broken by frequent stops for photos, meals and stretching. Bezal provides more than adequate clothing, including caribou skins should the weather promise to be rough.
Some in the party were amused that first evening when Bezal corralled the snowmobiles and sledges into a protective circle around the tents, then strung a maze of ropes among them.
”Bears are wary,” he explained. ”If you make it look like a trap`s been set, they`ll stay away.”
Sure, we snickered. An obvious ploy to give the tourists a thrill.
”Just be careful,” Bezal warned. ”Bears are curious. They`ll come around a camp. Especially the cubs.”
So Tribune colleague Stan Cook and I slept with a .243 between us, a box of shells nearby.
The morning brought a canvas-flapping, 30-knot wind and everyone crawled out bundled to the teeth. Stan was the first to find the fresh bear tracks just 25 yards from our tent.
