Winter Diary Extract 2004 - 2005

Woke at 7am. My stove was out and it was cold. Fed Blitz and Spoons. Twizzle is six months old today. From now on he’ll get one feed a day. The last Christmas I experienced alone was during a journey from Alaska to the Northwest Territories in 2001. I’d forgotten how hard it hits. Funny but I thought about my first bike, the independence it gave me and the huge distances I covered. Not once did I feel held back as a kid. I thank my folks forever for that.

I thought about my great uncle Jack. He was the youngest company sergeant major in the British army during World War 1. He was only 18. I thought of the millions of others who’d endured atrocities of war and sacrificed so much for future generations to be free.
The moon is in the sky all day and night. A parhelion ring wrapped itself around the moon. Christmas is no time to be on your own especially meal times.

Twizzle has been thinking a great deal of himself lately. I paired him with Saxon. Submissive, Twizzle soon buckled down not daring to look Saxon in the eye. Warm still. Snowed a little this afternoon.

Looked over maps planning spring trip. Lots of choices. Essentially I want to cover at least four hundred miles in about a month. Where shall I head for? West under the Yukon North Slope and into Alaska or east into Liverpool Bay. Both options will have lots of ice with possible open water and polar bears creating situations I want to have my dogs experience before the snow season is over and the mosquitoes return. Thule breaks through her third collar this winter. I told her there’s no prize for this.

Saxon won’t use his kennel at all. It’s turned out to be his piss post. I dig down into packed snow to create a deep nest of straw for him.

Olav’s freightliner broke down with my dog food on board yesterday on the other side of the Yukon border. He’s a full day’s travel away from Inuvik but hitched a lift. Everybody stops on the Dempster Highway where there’s a vehicle breakdown. Lives could be at stake.

The plan is he’ll order new engine parts and we’ll go back to rescue what we can with another truck and trailer tomorrow. Apparently the ravens have already found the kibbles. Rest day for all, except me. Ran morning and night on the river.

Up at 6am. Ran by moonlight for an hour on the river. I couldn’t believe two riders on snowmobiles letting off fireworks. Throwing them and setting them off horizontally, they careered off snow and ice. Drugged up, drunk or stupid snowmobilers I didn’t think a lot to the performance.

Drove 230 miles in five hours down the Dempster Highway with Carl and Olav. Crossed 58 miles down over the Arctic Circle, crossed a time zone (Mountain to Pacific) into Yukon Territory heading for Eagle Plains to fix Olav’s freightliner. 60mph winds made haste off the Richardson Mountains, the furthest appendage of the Canadian Rockies. We stopped and shovelled snow into the empty trailer. We wanted to keep the thing on its wheels else it would have gone airborne.

Eagle Plains is the midway point between Inuvik and Dawson City. There’s a vital complex of self-contained maintenance shops, a motel, a diner and gas station here. They’ve no outside supply for power, water or sewage. It’s a remote location. Behind the gas station pay counter is a wheel rim; a very worn one. I asked how it got like that. Apparently some tourists burst a tyre on the Dempster Highway. Basically the Dempster is nothing more than a wide dirt track through wilderness. So here were tourists who apparently wouldn’t get out of their vehicle to change their tyre for fear of bears. They drove and shredded their tyre and proceeded to wear down their wheel rim.

In these temperatures if you want to drive you connect your vehicle into electricity with a power cable capable of withstanding brutal cold. Plugged in cars here warm the engine’s cylinder head. Else it freezes solid. Not so long ago bush pilots drained their planes of oil and warmed it overnight in their cabins while sleeping. Both Carl and Olav are qualified pilots. Carl lived here for a month flying biologists around during a caribou survey. He plugged his plane in outside his motel room to keep the oil warm. I bought my running gear and ran while Olav and Carl worked on the freightliner.

Ran alone this morning on the river. Rested my dogs today while I unloaded six tons of my dog food and supplies by hand. I ran on the river this evening and ate well.

Fresh snowfall and warm temperatures have created pockets of overflow on the river. The weight of snow bows the ice creates cracks and river water rushes to the surface. It can have a brutal effect on the dogs’ feet when it balls up in between their toes. This time no-ones’ performance was hampered. Fed tripe for the first time with Nutrience kibbles. Devoured in seconds. We won’t see the sun rise for another week. Hence the reason for lack of pictures.

I ran the dogs late afternoon for an hour. I bought Thule inside and she slept on my bed.