Day 1

It’s minus ten degrees Celsius.

I am in the middle of the wild Labrador woods. Behind me is a sparse forest of small black spruce trees and a few birch spaced out here and there. Underneath me is a green army sleeping bag. Underneath it is about 6 inches of balsam and spruce bows and then finally below that – about eight feet of snow. Three feet to the front of me is a fifty-foot long heavy chain with a dozen three-foot-long chains attached to it, about every five feet. On the ends of seven of those smaller chains are leashed up a group of traditional Inuit sled dogs. Up here they call them Labrador Huskies. I’m sleeping with the dogs tonight. My wheel dogs are two big and strong brothers named Jack and Guluk. Next up is a young and powerful male named Chance and along side of him is sweet, aiming-to-please, Heelook. In front of them and on his own is the timid Gus and in front of him are my two leaders. The pale faced Chimo and her daughter Seeyen. Beyond the chain I look out upon an inlet from the Atlantic Ocean they call Lake Melville and the opposite shore is lined with the Mealy Mountains. It’s dark and the dogs are all curled up in that classic sled dog position looking like small mounds of fur that grow out of the ice and snow.

I think in New York they were calling for eighty degrees Fahrenheit today. Here it’s still late winter/early spring and anything can happen weather wise. My safety crew and I are trying to be as ready as we can. The crew is a number of miles away – I don’t know how many – I’ve been driving the dogs all day. I do know that my safety radio system is beyond it’s reach which puts me out of contact with them and therefore out of the safety zone.
At this time of year the weather can be very dangerous. Changing from beautiful and sunny one day to a brutal blizzard the next. From freezing rain to total white out conditions. It’s hard on the human body and though the nights may dip only just below freezing, they remain damp at times like these and there is always a greater threat of hypothermia than even during mid winter.

My goal for this shoot is to simply travel throughout this sub arctic region by dog team. And I have added a twist. By popular request I am taking in a good survival kit. I can show how it helps and how it doesn’t. I can explain what should be in it and how you should carry it.

The dogs will have to pull me many miles beside the ocean and through the Labrador trails that the locals, mostly Inuit, use. I’m out in the middle of nowhere halfway between a small town called North West River and another called Rigolet. The dogs are beautiful, but a lot of work. Running them alone can be exhausting and even dangerous. I’ve only known these dogs for three days while I trained with them (I ran sled dogs for three years some time ago), so they have to get used to a new musher calling the orders and they can be obstinate if they don’t like you. For humans though – they are usually big babies – always rolling over for a tummy rub or looking to snuggle. With each other they are not at all unlike a pack of wolves, even killing their own in a display of dominance and positioning. I have, on many occasions while sledding in my past, had to jump in to the middle of a five dog, dog fight with my fists and boots swinging to break up the fight. If I don’t they can injure each other severely and on occasion kill. I will not hide the fact that all my activities with them begin with butterflies in my stomach. I don’t want to have to tell the owner that one of his dogs died, was killed or simply got loose and ran off into the frozen landscape. So I have been quick to establish my own dominance and they seem to respect me – that’s the key.
They ran well for me today as we traveled alongside the shore of this ocean inlet. But it was sometimes hard for them without an established trail to follow. They can get confused and more than once I had to shove in the anchor (called an ice hook) and run up to the front to turn the leaders around. It can be emotionally exhausting and sweaty work. However at the end of the day I had my greatest challenge with them. Though I bellowed and yelled at the leader, a pale-faced sweetheart named Chimo, I couldn’t get her to run towards the shore. I had to do it twenty feet at a time with her always wanting to turn back towards the safety crew many miles away. And then the worst happened. Chance – the young up and coming male got loose from his neck line, turned behind him and got in a three dog fight with the big brothers, my wheel dogs (closest to the sled – the main pulling position) Jack and Guluk. Guluk is Chances father. While Chimo kept the rest of the line the dogs are attached to tight (thankfully she didn’t turn back on me into the dog team) I was able to jump into the fight before any blood was spilled. By the time I got it all straightened out I was dripping with sweat, late in the day. Not good.

I fed the dogs, now all secure on their night chain, with most of my clothes off in an effort to dry the sweat before it got dark.

The sky on the other shore is very dark and I am fearful that it may come on to freezing rain tonight and I have no shelter.

This is a very rugged landscape with old worn down mountains, many rock outcroppings and only enough trees to be able to call it a forest. But by no means a thick one. I am not really traveling any different than would a trapper, except that a trapper would have had food, and a tarp or tent, and pots and ….did I mention food. I’m not sure how the added exercise of running the dogs will affect my body as I search for food either by hunting or fishing. The sled is full of caribou meet for the dogs and my camera gear.

My stomach is rumbling.

Day 2

6pm

The day itself entered like a lion but is going out like a lamb. I was fairly warm through last night thanks to the army sleeping bag and the spruce bows but the wind picked up in the morning and by the time I had the dogs all hitched up to the sled and ready for travel, it had brought with it a total white out blizzard. I decided to take my chances anyway and headed the dogs further into the landscape by following the ocean shoreline around a big point of land. After a day of traveling I rounded the point and headed into the bush and on to the established snowmobile trail that links the distant towns. It goes for hundreds and hundreds of miles cutting through the Labrador bush. It is the only ‘road’ in this remote region. The day was getting late and a biting wind had continued. I rounded one bushy corner and up a steep hill and there stood salvation!!
They have recently built a small 10 X 10 ‘survival’ cabin for people in need of shelter. I figure I qualify! No food, no pots, no water – just a shell and a wood stove. I tied up and fed the dogs and headed off to see if I could spot any signs of snowshoe hare or ptarmigan. Because the snow melts during the day and freezes at night the surface is a hard crust now and impossible to find tracks. But there are no other signs anywhere either – no droppings or chewings. I did see a few grey jays and they could make an easy meal. I also found some reindeer moss and Labrador tea on an exposed rock outcropping so I’ve gathered it up for a meal. To light the fire I’ve used my flint striker and a small dab of hand sanitizer I found in the cabin. Outside the wind is howling. Leaving here tomorrow will be a test of will.

Day 3

9pm

Ok then. I gave in. The wind howled all day with a biting chill. I’m staying here for one more night. I did get busy though. I set up a ‘pole squirrel snare’ as there is a little bit of red squirrel activity around and spent the day hunting. This time as part of my survival kit, I have a .22 rifle. It’s sort of the peashooter of rifles but many in the north consider it, or any rifle, the ultimate survival kit itself. I spent hours walking and did not find one sign of small game. I found some garbage around the cabin though. Two old naphtha gas tins that I can use when I am back on the trail. I turned them into a small ‘hobo’ wood stove.

After too many hours walking on top of the crusted snow I gave up and came back to the cabin to feed the dogs. I even hiked back down to the ocean, which I am still not that far from, to try fishing. The ocean surface is dotted with seal holes and even fishing holes left by the Inuit. I found one and fished for a few hours with gear from my survival kit without luck. Fishing and hunting. That’s just the way it goes. You can spend many hours or days trying during camping trips or at the cottage without any luck. It’s just that when you are doing it to survive it’s a lot more heartbreaking.
So, although I swore I wouldn’t do it, I decided to steal from the dogs. I grabbed a filthy hunk of caribou rib away from one of the dogs and here I sit, after washing off the dog poo, boiling up little pieces of caribou ‘stew’ in my little survival pot. I have no idea how old the meat is or where it came from. It was just in the bucket of food for the dogs. I really think that I don’t want to know the answer to those two questions.

Day 4

9am

I’ve awoken to a blizzard that has just turned into pouring rain. I am soooooo not looking forward to moving on today! Still in the cabin right now – hoping the rain will stop. If I am to move it will have to be soon. My stomach, after eating the dog food, is still ok – so far.
8:30 pm

What a day!

I’ve traveled through some beautiful landscapes. Tree studded, rocky hills and frozen lakes. The dogs pulled me fantastically…. until the moment I stepped off the sled and they kept going!

Ok – truth be told – I knew it was coming. I cut them loose along the trail and they will keep going until they meet up with their owner somewhere. This was a planned happening to illustrate what pretty much every musher that ever lived has had happen to them at least once. You make one small mistake and the dogs take off and you are left stranded in the middle of nowhere. There are stories of dogs traveling a hundred miles into town from where they got away from their master.

So now. I am alone again. I’ve tucked into a little snowy knoll close to the edge of the ocean and beside a small, frozen yet slushy brook. I’ve spent the afternoon building a small snow trench to sleep in and I am hoping it will keep me warm for the night. I pulled off all my gear from the sled before I let the dogs go…except for my snowshoes!!!!
This is going to be a long night.

Day 5

My night was long and cold. The small snow trench is only big enough to slither in and out like a snake. A snake covered in five layers of winter clothing. There is an obvious comparison here. It is very much like a grave. I dug down about three feet into the side of a hill covered with about eight feet of snow. I stopped digging when I hit the tops of some small trees. Then I layered the bottom with about a foot of spruce bows, put ‘ribs’ over the top of the trench and covered it with my emergency blanket. Then I covered all of that with a bunch more bows, which would take the weight of any snowfall. There is a small hole the size of my body at the low end to slide into. Once your inside, rolling over or turning on your side is accomplished only with movements similar to that of a caterpillar in its cocoon. It is highly claustrophobic. But, the smaller it is the less air to heat up and the warmer you will be. I lay there, feeling cold patches here and there on my body through all my clothing. My face three inches from the thick snow wall in front of it and the back of my head three inches from the thick snow wall behind it. It is not ‘warm’. It is bearable. Barely. It is also very damp. That’s something they never tell you in the books on survival; that the inside of these various snow shelters are always damp. Never comfortable and never ‘warm’. Every now and then I would pull my hand up with difficulty and take a small piece of snow to melt in my mouth and give me some moisture. On many occasions I had to psych myself into handling the claustrophobia and convince myself that there is plenty of good oxygen inside with me. These types of shelters are emergency get-you-through-the-night types of shelters. And of course it is all made worse by the fact that I drank a big pot of spruce and willow tea before bed.

As I lay there in the dark I could here the beginning sounds of light ticking on my shelter. The unmistakable sound of snow falling. Through the night at least three inches fell but by the time I decided to face it all and get out of the shelter it had turned to pouring rain. This is the absolute worst possible scenario. No real shelter. Late winter. Pouring rain. Hypothermia potential at it’s very best.

Later that day…..

Well now there’s a switch!!! I spent the better part of the afternoon working on improving my shelter to make for a better night. Suddenly I heard the sound of snowmobiles coming in fast towards me along the slushy trail. It was my crew! All the rain has devastated the ocean. The safety camp is a five-hour trek by snow machine from the last small village outpost. Between that village and the camp – the ocean has become nothing but – what they call up here – slob. A mixture of slush, ice and water six feet deep over top of the frozen ocean. One of the crew members was attempting a trip back to the village by snowmachine and nearly lost his life in the process when the sled went down. They are stranded. I am another one-hour ride from them and am equally stranded from them. The crew took the chance on one last ride to come and get me skirting around the slush – or my seven days will have turned to much….much longer. In one last mad dash out before I was stuck for good we made the trek back to the safety camp. From there a helicopter came in and long lined three snowmobiles, all the gear and us out from our stranding and back to the village. So basically I was doing just fine thank you – we had to rescue the rescue crew!! Well, it does show just how far we go to make these Survivorman ordeals possible. I always knew it was only a matter of time before the crew itself might need rescuing. This was good preparation for my next adventure; Alaska!