19th February
To fall through while moving over the river ice would see my immediate future revolving around what's directly on top of my sled. In an emergency I want shelter, heat and food. My tent and sleeping bag system, a Wiggy's Antarctica zipped into an oversized lighter Ultima Thule, is all zipped into my bivi bag. A valuable addition is my roomy RAB 100% polyester sleeping bag liner.

These are all new smells for youngsters Kimik, Larvik, Denali and Hummer. They're learning not to fuss and to keep moving. Then this afternoon, all of a sudden the lone track converged into one flattened area of converging tracks. This was a wolf pack kill site. A moose will outrun any wolf so a pack splits. One team will manoeuvre the prey into the other team's striking distance as they lay in ambush. That's what it looked like here. The same fate happens to ailing caribou a little way north on the tundra.

We passed two more kill sights later on in the day. All that remained were bone splinters and frozen red current beads of blood. Bones in crap and urine marker posts littered the biggest site.

Up here in the summer a warning sign for a grizzly, black bear or a wolf kill is to spot the migratory bald eagles circling overhead. For now we learn from what we see. Piper couldn't take his eyes off the shoreline for about 20 minutes this afternoon. We kept moving.

There's a new moon tonight. On the Arctic Ocean this change in tides brings unnerving bashes and booms when I try to sleep. The Mackenzie has been pretty quiet but every now and then it rockets off a cracking boom as it reminds me the river ice is always in a state of flux. We're travelling and sleeping on nothing more than a frozen crust separating the dogs and me from a forever flowing river. It's a learning process for the youngsters and they're doing well.