“Tourists would rave over this scenery.”
-- Douglas Robertson, 1931, while visiting Ellesmere by ship
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February 12
Finally joining the 21st century, only a few years late, I've uploaded an Ellesmere video to YouTube and put it on this site. A weatherman from Eureka filmed me beginning a two-month solo trek, trudging over Eureka Sound with a sled weighing about 310 pounds. What a pig of a load! With that weight, even Eureka Sound's usually marvellous snow couldn't make the going easy. There is a qualitative difference between a sled that weighs 280 pounds and one that weighs over 290 pounds.
In the background 10 kilometers away loom the peaks of Axel Heiberg Island, hazy in the spring sunshine.
Alexandra and I haven't done much video, and what we've done is quite amateur. Years ago, I made a commitment not to do video seriously, because combining writing, photography and hard travel is difficult enough, and I didn't want to spread myself any thinner. But video is a powerful medium, and even casual stuff adds flavor. Anyway, consider this an experiment.
February 4
More Google search phrases from readers who've found their way to this site and were surely disappointed:
1. Can you drive from Grise Fiord to Alert Ellesmere Island?
By snowmobile, yes. Inuit Rangers and military did it during a recent sovereignty patrol. In a Toyota Prius, 'fraid not.
2. What guy was cool when he explored the arctic in 1909?
Peary was on Ellesmere in 1909, but he was uncool.
3. How did Tim Burton get his arctic self?
What?!? Pop references are not my forte. I did like Batman and Beetlejuice, though.
4. Best goggles for arctic travel
The best goggles for arctic travel are no goggles at all. It's not very windy up on Ellesmere, and I brought goggles without using them for so many years that I rarely bother to bring them any more. Labrador is another story.
5. Rain gear for outdoor reporters weather channel
It rains little in the High Arctic, but don't let the polar desert reputation fool you: It does rain in summer, and rain jackets are necessary on backpack trips. Any old one will do. This is Jerry Kobalenko reporting from Ellesmere Island.
January 16
So far, industry has had little impact on the High Arctic. Sure, lots of mining companies have poked around, and you occasionally find garbage left over from camps in the 1970s, when the first oil crisis had geologists from Panarctic and others poking around. But the cost of mining the stuff and transporting it south made no economic sense, so Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg continued untouched.
That may be changing. A news story here reports that Weststar Resources of British Columbia is applying for a permit to mine coal on Ellesmere's Strathcona Fiord and the Fosheim Peninsula near Eureka. The Fosheim Peninsula is one of the best wildlife spots in the High Arctic, if not the best. It abounds in hares, muskoxen and arctic wolves. Planes often have to buzz the airstrip at Eureka to chase the muskoxen away before landing. Meanwhile, Strathcona Fiord has yielded important fossils, including Richard Harington's 4-million-year-old paleobeaver.
The presence of coal is well-known on Ellesmere. The Nares expedition discovered the first deposit in 1875 in Lady Franklin Bay, near what Adolphus Greely later called Fort Conger. The ready presence of fuel is why both Greely and Nares based themselves there. Strathcona Fiord has such obvious deposits that the explorer Sverdrup called a nearby fiord Stenkul, meaning Coal in Norwegian.
Now and then, I run into one of those old-time Panarctic geologists from the 1970s. Some of them speak of their time on Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg as the glory days of their lives. For some of us, the islands have that appeal.
Garbage from a 1970s mining camp on Axel Heiberg.
Strathcona Fiord area.
Richard Harington at work on his Paleobeaver site near Strathcona Fiord.
January 3, 2010
The Nunavut Planning Commission sounds like a site for policy wonks, but it includes a series of great maps showing the concentration of arctic wildlife and archaeology sites. The red cross-hatching below, for example, shows polar bear concentrations in the lower half of Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg Islands. It certainly jives with my experience: you don't get many bears north of Eureka, and sure enough, the green polar bear range coloration ends just north of Slidre Fiord. Bears are traditionally also rare along the west coast of Axel Heiberg, except for the southernmost part.
As for the denning areas/hotspots, I've traveled all of them extensively, and that's pretty well where you find the most bears. Of course, polar bears are such great wanderers that individuals can turn up anywhere, even outside the green range.
