Brief encounter with a polar bear
Puppies hitch a ride
Hi, this is Glenn; it’s very early Sunday morning here in the Arctic. We’re about twenty kilometres short of Arctic Bay now, and we’re just going to get some food ready for the dogs and get them fed up and then we’re going to set off. Twenty kilometres is not too bad for us; we should make that I only a few hours I think.
Yesterday we had a very long day; sixteen hours on the trail, and Simon and I were pretty tired at the end of it, and so indeed were the dogs. We had a lot of rough ice and a lot of zig-zagging. So we covered about eighty kilometres, but I think that was by a GPS reading so, in real terms, I think we covered considerably more than that; most of it was zig-zagging through extremely rough ice.
It was quite an exciting and a sad day yesterday; the exciting bit was that had our first and possibly only, polar bear encounter; we were travelling along and Simon spotted some tracks on our left so we were eagerly looking to the left to see if we could see it; we turned to the right and there it was. We hadn’t realised, or I hadn’t realised, that it had crossed the tracks further back. It was about a hundred and fifty metres away; perhaps something like that, and Simon though it was a big female without any cubs and it wandered around and we had the guns but we didn’t want to use them but, they were at the ready.
Eventually it caught our smell and disappeared of into the distance; I think it was probably a bit nervous of the smell of two men and the dogs; especially two men after a few weeks on the trail!
Later in the evening, the dogs were getting very tired and one of the little puppies that was along with us was struggling a bit and tended to be lagging behind a bit which, for a little dog like that can be quite dangerous. So we chivvied it on a bit and then within a few minutes it got caught up in the traces and lost its footing and went under one of the runners; and for a few minutes it valiantly tried to sort of walk on and then it literally just fell over and lay on its side and we stopped the sledge and put it on the sledge and basically it gave a few last gasps and it was dead.
It was very sad, I wanted to sort of stroke its head in the last few minutes of its life, and I couldn’t quite reach it and I began to wonder; I remember putting the harness on that little puppy in the mornings and it was eager to go and ready for action and; it had quite a short life but I think that for a sledge-dog that is a risk.
Later that evening, we saw the Northern Lights flashing up into the sky; we travelled ‘til late into the night, and I watched the Northern Lights and thought, “Well, some people might say that’s that little puppy’s spirit going up into heaven.” And I think if any little puppy deserved to be in heaven, that one did; it worked really hard for us.
Anyway, the dogs have had a good rest tonight, and as I say we’re going to get them fed and away and we’ll report in when we get to Arctic Bay. Love to everyone.
(If you want to trace Glenn’s progress take a look at the map on the Expedition page, under Phase 3 of the expedition.)
