Day 7: April 9, 2026
Will encounters a group of 19 caribou in the middle of another 12-hour day, which causes him to reflect on these creatures and their … motivational … effects on teams of dogs.
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Will here. Day 7. April 9th, 2026. Made a little bit of mileage today. The river kind of elongated to the north, north northwest. And that picked up some of the prevailing winds. And so the crust was a little better travel. Not a real hard crust, but made it much easier to travel on, and it wasn't winding and bending. It was a nice day, clear, real cold, making camp here this evening. Like last night, it gets really cold fast here. And setting up camp, I've been doing another 12-hour day here. It's 10:30, I think, which is daylight savings Mountain time -- is what I'm on.
On one of my return trips, I rounded a bend in the river, and came upon a little group of caribou, 19 of them, I counted. And I kind of came up by them by surprise. And at first I was a little distance away, and I just kept skiing towards them. They ... they're very curious animals. They don't spook real easy. They spook for a little bit. They run, and then they stop. And a lot of times they'll do that, they'll run away, stop, and then they'll all look ahead. Then they start heading in your direction again. So I got pretty close to them, you know, within about 40 yards. I spent about 20 minutes with them there. There was a ... again, stopped and moved back, moved forward. And once they split one to my side, one... in front of me, it was like I was part of the herd, the 20th caribou, kind of. And they're beautiful animals. There's three young ones within the group. And then finally I just kept skiing and they went around me and to my back, and then herded up again. And then they had another run ... heading in my direction again, trying to figure out what, where I was. And so a head ... a lot of caribou are not as numerous as they used to be, but they're still, you know, a part of the Arctic landscape. Certain areas there is a lot of caribou, especially when they're migrating.
Dogsledding, you know, for... I dogsledded for 20 years in the north. And I always came up with caribou. For the dogs, the greatest thing in their life is to come upon a herd of caribou. And caribou react really strange to a team of... a long team of dogs. They're not sure what they think. They probably think it's wolves in harnesses or something, but probably not a wolf because they're real curious. Sometimes with, you know, a regular expedition, we're traveling with three dog teams. And then they'll stop. The dogs start going crazy. And you have all you can do to, you know, keep them from chasing. If they chase, it's going to be quite dangerous because they're running full steam ahead. Back in '82, I crossed the Barrens with Bob Mantell. We had nine dogs at that time. It was my first real major expedition. And we left Baker Lake. All the Inuit people said we were too early in the season. We went anyways because we had to get up cross land, Lancaster Sound. We were heading for Ellesmere. Lancaster was way far north, and we had to get across that before May or else we'd be stuck. So we left. We ran out of food, which was quite serious, and lost at the same time. We did hunt at that time, back in the day. You don't hunt anymore if you're a white person. And ... but at that time we had ... a couple times the dogs got away from us. And we had a thousand pound sled. And in the usual caribou country, it's open, you know, open areas. So it's hard crusted, not like the snow it is here. And a couple times they just got the whole team running over the horizon, pulling a thousand pound sled, which is quite dangerous, especially if you're a ... you're ... usually one of us would ski ahead of the dogs, to keep them interested. And so it's dangerous that way, but it's also dangerous because if the sled breaks loose or the chain breaks loose, and your team can continue, you're in big trouble in that situation. So caribou ... caribou and terrible chases we ... dog sled chases with caribou. A lot of great stories around that.
And so that lightened up the day a little bit. It didn't have to be lightened up. I'm pretty inspired up here. You know, it's just beautiful. It's hard, but you know, it's just getting in shape and that. It's good for you. And that, but it's ... really a wonderful place right now. Still a touch of winter. Not a real winter here. Winter gets down to 40 below, but I'm still a little crisp on the fingers. So I will check in again tomorrow. Looks like a little bit of a hint of a warm front coming in. You never know here. Usually it will just pass. And this is Will here then on Day 7. April 9th. Over and out.
Will’s location at the end of Day 7. Visit Will’s interactive map for complete control of magnification and orientation.
Will’s dispatch today describes an encounter with a small group of caribou, and he muses on the effects of such herds on dogsled teams — which is captured neatly in this video from his 2004 Arctic Transect expedition.