Beyond the Trees Page 4

  We camped just beyond the Arctic Circle sign. Amid the rocks and the clumps of willow, lingonberries, and a few stunted spruces, each of us set up a tent wherever we could find a reasonably level bit of soil. I found a particularly inviting patch of caribou lichens and settled down for a comfortable night’s sleep. Come morning, I’d begin my journey.

  × 3 ×

  THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS

  Frost had settled over the tents in the night. The morning dawned cold and clear, the thermometer hovering around freezing. Still, with daytime temperatures over the past two weeks climbing up to double digits, most of the winter’s snows had melted away, exposing the meadow-like tundra. It was now May 28. Three and a half years of planning, preparing, and visualizing had led to this moment. Or maybe it had been thirty-one years. All my life I’d chased after adventures, and now I was about to embark on the biggest one I was ever likely to attempt.

  I soon had my tent down, rolled up, and put away alongside my sleeping bag, all stuffed into my expedition backpack. My plan was to follow the Dempster through the Richardson Mountains until I reached the banks of the Mackenzie River just over two hundred kilometres away. Chuck and Mark would see to the delivery of my canoe and barrels there, where I could pick them up to begin the water phase of my journey. Meanwhile the film crew intended to record with the drone what they could of my initial progress along the gravel Dempster. They were operating under tight schedules, as they had to make the nearly thousand-kilometre trip over rough roads back to Whitehorse in time to catch their flights to more remunerative jobs.

  With the six of them assembled beside the parked SUVs to see me off bright and early, and the drone hovering overhead like something out of a science fiction movie, I strapped on my backpack, grasped my ultra-light trekking poles, and started walking. Clasped to my belt was a can of bear spray in case I should meet with any bruins that were less than accommodating. Of course, owing to the fierce winds, most of the time bear spray would be of no use. A blast of it would be just as likely to catch the wind and hit me in the face as anything else. So as a secondary measure I’d pocketed three bear bangers—essentially firecrackers that can be screwed onto a pen-sized launcher that when unleashed will scare off any bear getting too close. In theory, anyway.

  I set a quick pace, eager to put behind me as many kilometres as I could. The distance between me and my final goal, Baker Lake, Nunavut, felt daunting to the point of impossibility. What if the weather went against me? The ice, the winds, the snows? I’d never make it. Maybe I should have done that study on moss after all. I struggled to banish these thoughts from my mind. But it was difficult, knowing as I did that this hike would be the easiest part of my journey—the only place on my entire route with any kind of trail to follow. Here, all I needed to do was put one foot in front of another. Nearly everywhere else I’d have to be ever vigilant. Without any trails to follow, navigating thousands of kilometres of often fogbound, serpentine lakes, or endless thickets of chest-high willow, or black spruce bogs, or boulder-strewn tundra would require careful calculation.

  As it was, the breathtaking scenery held me entranced as I hiked silently along. I fixed my gaze on a dreamlike range of bluish mountains, their smooth, pyramidal sides barren of vegetation and culminating in snowy peaks half-hidden in thin, wispy clouds. They seemed enchanted, like a scene from some ancient fairy tale or sword-and-sorcery story—a place where wizards might happily reside. I couldn’t help thinking of the almost inconceivable ancientness of such hills, formed eons ago, older by far than the Rockies. They came from a time when unknown dinosaurs stalked the earth—126 million years ago. In contrast, the environment I most often explored, the vast swamps and pathless bogs of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, were formed a mere eight thousand years ago during the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet.

  These ancient mountains no longer hid dinosaurs, but there were still nearly thousand-pound grizzlies to be reckoned with. When it comes to arctic bears, polar bears normally come to mind. But they’re seldom encountered much more than a hundred kilometres inland from the seacoast, where seals, their main prey, are to be found. Grizzlies, meanwhile, are widespread across Canada’s western and central Arctic. In fact, polar bears are thought to have evolved from these grizzlies some 200,000 years ago, as they spread farther onto the arctic ice. The two species are still closely enough related that in places where their ranges overlap interbreeding can occur, producing adorable little grolars.

  The arctic grizzlies around here hibernate in the mountains during the winter, but now they’d be coming down from the hills, hungry after a long winter fast. It wasn’t long into my lonely trek before I came across tracks of an unsettling size, sunk deep into the gravel roadway. Their sheer size was heart-stopping. As I bent down to inspect them I fidgeted with the bear spray clasped onto my belt. Just now the wind was blowing hard from the northeast, making the spray of uncertain application. The tracks were fresh. That much was obvious, for nearby were unmistakably fresh bear droppings—also enormous. The bear, evidently, had been feeding on grasses and last year’s mountain cranberries, which remain on the plants over winter. I could also see in the scat some half-digested crowberries and bearberries. The tracks continued along the narrow road for about a hundred metres before veering off and disappearing into a thicket of willows.

  I decided, just in case, to screw a bear banger onto the pen launcher and keep it in my pocket, ready to go. Then I walked on, scanning the open meadows on either side of the roadway for any hint of grizzlies. The road felt very quiet, and very empty. Hardy motorists will drive the unserviced Dempster in the summer, but in May there’s little traffic at all, particularly if the river ferries aren’t yet operating, as was the case this spring, given the late thaw.

  The road eventually took me into flatter territory, the mountains declining into merely large hills set back several hundred metres from either side of the road, with open meadowlands in between. Arctic ground squirrels, looking rather plump and playful, appeared and disappeared, scurrying from burrow to burrow—they’re one of the arctic grizzly’s favourite foods. An occasional bald eagle soared high overhead. Later I glimpsed a snowy owl as it glided elegantly over the grassy tundra, perhaps hunting a snowshoe hare that appeared briefly on a slight hill. But most of all there were more and more grizzly tracks and fresh droppings. Evidently the bears were numerous here.

  At one point, scanning to the right of the road, my eyes were greeted by the sight of what had left some of the tracks: a large, magnificent-looking grizzly bear about three hundred metres away, with a big hump crowning its broad shoulders and a wide, almost heart-shaped, face. Its back was to me as it crossed the meadows toward the encircling hills. Instinctively I unclipped the bear spray from my belt. But with the bear upwind from me, and with the wind as strong as it was, the spray would be of little use—other than to add flavour to myself. So I also took the bear banger out of my pocket. Meanwhile, the grizzly must have either heard me or caught my scent. It suddenly turned, rose on its hind legs—towering some nine feet tall—and seemed to be sniffing the wind, scanning the horizon. It was certainly a big, fully grown grizzly; it didn’t look at all famished, as one might expect in the spring, when bears have typically shed weight from their winter slumbers. The grizzly remained standing on its hind legs for what seemed an amazingly long time—until, that is, it spotted me, a lone figure on a long, empty stretch of gravel.

  Then it dropped to all fours and charged.

  It came barrelling across the meadow straight at me. Three hundred metres separated us, a matter of perhaps thirty seconds. I begin shouting hoarsely at it, waving my trekking poles about, and even jumping in the air—all in an effort to appear as large and menacing as possible, hoping to deter the bear’s charge. I wasn’t sure it was going to work. I’d had polar bears and black bears come at me before and had always driven them off, but this was my first grizzly charge, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. But I knew this: I had only three bear b
angers, and I couldn’t afford to use them all up on the morning of the first day of my journey. So I held off on firing a banger and instead kept waving my trekking poles, shouting at the grizzly as it approached. I also knew this: when a bear charges, never run. At least, that’s my philosophy. You can’t outrun a grizzly anyway, and north of the treeline as I was, there are no trees to climb. Some people advise playing dead, but that’s not a tactic I’d recommend unless the grizzly in question is a mother with cubs, and it’s clearly a case of having startled her.

  At about two hundred metres, with me still waving my poles and shouting, the oncoming grizzly suddenly halted its charge, wheeled around, and began running back in the direction it had come. As it ran back toward the hills, it glanced over its broad shoulder in my direction several times. For a long while it remained in sight as I cautiously resumed hiking along the road. The grizzly, it seemed, had lost interest in me. It skirted along the edge of the hills, apparently searching for berries. Eventually it disappeared from view.

  This was only the first day of my journey, and I knew I’d have to face more bears before it was over—likely many more. I took heart in the fact that most bears when left alone are generally harmless. The majority seek to avoid human contact whenever possible. And the behaviour I’d just witnessed, a so-called “bluff charge,” was a well-known characteristic of these arctic grizzlies. They are, it seems, wonderful practical jokers who delight in seeing whether they can scare hikers or paddlers with one of their bluffs.

  As part of my academic research I’d spent years studying bear attacks, compiling a database involving hundreds of fatal attacks on humans stretching back over several centuries. What emerged were some clear patterns. It was obvious that bears were intelligent creatures that seldom attacked a human blindly; rather, they seemed to calculate carefully before attacking, weighing their chances of success. When attacks on groups happened, bears would consistently single out the smallest member of the party for attack. In almost all cases, it seemed clear that grizzlies would avoid a fight if they could—since for any wild animal the mere possibility of an injury is often enough to deter an attack, as any injury is likely to bring fatal consequences if it impedes hunting or food gathering. That’s why playing dead with a grizzly makes sense only when the bear is clearly acting defensively (such as a mother bear with cubs or a bear defending a fresh kill), and not when the bear is acting aggressively. In those cases, playing dead, running away, or attempting to hide might simply trigger the bear’s predator instinct to see you as easy prey. In one of these scenarios, the best thing to do is to look big, make noise, and not flinch.

  On my first day, I hiked forty-one kilometres along the Dempster. The second day the winds were bad, knocking me around on the road, and I covered only thirty-nine. The third day I increased the time I spent hiking and upped my distance to fifty-nine. The fourth day, my best, I managed sixty-two kilometres over thirteen hours of hiking.

  The film crew had departed on the second day in order to make their long drive back to Whitehorse. The filming, they reported, had gone well. Other than when the drone had crashed into a mountain and was destroyed. Meanwhile Chuck and Mark had been investigating with a fishing rod some of the streams the Dempster passed over. Chuck reported that they were completely devoid of fish. This I could well believe, for if there were fish in those streams, Chuck would surely find them.

  As my lonely trek continued, the landscape varied. Mostly it was treeless tundra framed by majestic mountains, with quilt-like patches of snow on their slopes interspersed with exposed rocks and meadows. However, in places where the road crossed rivers and creeks, black spruces and aspens reappeared, as the trees were able to take root in these sheltered valleys. It was in one of these valleys, in 1932, that the Mad Trapper had met his violent end after a prolonged firefight with a posse of RCMP officers and hired guns. It’d taken no less than seven bullets—one of which struck spare ammo stuffed in the Trapper’s pocket, causing an explosion that blew off part of his thigh—to finally bring him down (may that be a good lesson for us all not to store spare ammo in our pant pockets). The mystery of his true identity, and his motives, was never satisfactorily solved. A drifter who’d come north some years earlier, he’d given the name Albert Johnson, but that seemed to have been a made-up alias, as others knew him by different names. On his corpse was found a considerable quantity of cash and gold, including gold teeth that weren’t his own. That’s never a good sign, in my experience. Perhaps he’d been a dentist before taking up fur trapping, a common enough career transition. But there were alarming rumours that in places he’d drifted through—the Nahanni Valley, for instance—unsolved murders and headless corpses had a tendency to show up.

  That first night I camped in one of those sheltered patches of black spruce, where there was ample wood for a fire—and perhaps, I liked to think as I lay in my tent and watched through the screen door the flames flicker and the shadows dance, the ghost of Albert Johnson. I soon drifted off to sleep to these cheering thoughts.

  * * *

  My trek along the Dempster continued early the next morning. The weather was colder, and rain fell intermittently. I’d switched into my warmer blue waterproof jacket. Fierce winds knocked me around as I marched. The gusts were so strong that I had to lean into them to maintain my footing, making full use of my trekking poles to keep me upright. Even so, my progress was significantly slower. I spotted another grizzly on a mountain slope, but it seemed to pay me no attention. Then, as the route began to steeply ascend, I felt the burn in my legs. Crossing now from the Yukon into the Northwest Territories, the Dempster climbed through the windswept McDougall Pass, one of only two passes across the Richardson Mountains.

  This lonely pass, over bleak and icy mountains, was a scene of desolation. Scant vegetation grew amid the tumbled heaps of grey boulders and barren slopes, while large patches of snow remained in the shadows cast by the peaks. The wind howled violently as I trekked along. Somewhere to the north, I knew, the Richardson Mountains reached their apex, with the highest peaks exceeding 1,700 metres.

  The Yukon’s mountain passes have seen their share of mysteries, murders, and adventures, none more famous than the Mounties’ doomed “Lost Patrol.” On December 21, 1910, a dogsled patrol consisting of four Mounties set off from the outpost of Fort McPherson to make the long, perilous journey south to Dawson. The weather was a balmy minus twenty-nine Celsius, so the Mounties, under the lead of Inspector Francis Joseph Fitzgerald, were optimistic, carrying food for only thirty days. With Inspector Fitzgerald were Constables Richard Taylor and George Kinney and Special Constable Sam Carter, as well as fifteen sled dogs divided between three sleds. To break a trail through the deep snows, the men took turns snowshoeing ahead on foot.

  The elements soon turned against the Mounties. Blizzards blinded them and temperatures plunged to a mind-numbing fifty below, the wind chill sometimes making it seventy below. The human body cannot long survive such extreme temperatures. The only thing to be done in such conditions is hunker down, take shelter, and stay warm. The Mounties, however, pushed on, battling frostbite and deep snows that slowed their progress. Given such conditions, they failed to find the frozen creek that pointed the way to Dawson. Unknown to them, they’d overshot the mark. When they realized their error, they couldn’t locate the correct creek to follow, losing valuable time and food as they searched.

  On January 18, with their food supply dwindling, they made the desperate decision to turn back to Fort McPherson, giving up any hope of reaching Dawson. That night they butchered one of their own dogs for meat, but the other sled dogs refused to eat it. Without food, there was little hope. But desperation drove them on. The dogs, starving, now began to eat their own when offered it. One by one they killed and ate their dogs, until by February they had only five left. This kept them grimly going for a time. But frostbite and starvation closed in on them—and there was to be no escape from winter’s icy grip. Taylor, Carter, and Fitzgerald perish
ed from starvation and hypothermia, while Kinney, surrendering to despair, shot himself with a carbine. Fitzgerald was the last to die—having used a piece of charcoal to scribble out his will on a scrap of paper, leaving all he owned to his mother in Halifax. His body was later found just forty kilometres outside Fort McPherson by Sergeant Dempster, for whom the highway was subsequently named.

  I kept hiking. Below the windswept McDougall Pass were narrow canyons the road cut through, mountainous walls rising high on either side. There was barely any vegetation, altogether the impression was of a moonscape. Yet there was life in these desolate mountains. Dall’s sheep, a type of hardy mountain sheep native to the northern Yukon, range among these precipitous peaks. The rams weigh several hundred pounds, with big, fantastically curved horns up to three feet long. They favour lonely crags and cliffs, bounding up seemingly impossible slopes with ease. When the opportunity presents itself, grizzlies and wolves are known to make meals of them—and even the great golden eagles that live in these mountains, with their huge wingspans, carry off the little lambs occasionally. I was hoping to spot a Dall’s sheep bounding among the stony slopes, since in my mental checklist of animals I most wanted to see, they were in the top three (along with a giant squid, and a sasquatch).

  As I came out of the barren, treeless Richardson Mountains, I found myself hiking past forests of dwarf tamarack and black spruce. Then, from a small prominence where the road rose up, I took in a vast panorama. To the north were imposing walls of snowy mountain ranges; to the south endless wild land cloaked in stunted forest stretching to a far distant horizon, broken only here and there by placid blue lakes. To the east I could see glimpses of the twisting course of the Peel River, and could just barely spot a scattered collection of white rooftops that made up the tiny hamlet of Fort McPherson (population 785). It had been founded as a fur trading post back in 1840. The town, however, wasn’t on my route, as it lay just a little north of the main road I was following.