ELLESMERE ISLAND, Nunavut - Seven tundra wolves yawned and stretched, slowly rising from their snowbank bed near CFB Alert at the top of Ellesmere Island.
For a while, they watched us -- a patrol of Canadian Rangers preparing for Operation Nunalivut, another epic trek across some of the world's most remote and rugged country in defence of Canada's Arctic sovereignty. Then they trotted off on their own wolfish business.
Soldiers at this most northerly post on earth are told not to feed or even approach the potentially dangerous pack, but this morning the magnificent animals seemed almost friendly as we readied our snow machines and packed our Inuit sleds, or komatiks.
I hoped that was some kind of sign.
I was joining the seven-member patrol for the first 220 kilometres of its journey across the top of the continent, from Alert to Ward Hunt Island in Quttinirpaaq National Park. The Arctic has sharp teeth and strong jaws, but it can be benign and beautiful and this was the side I wanted during the next five days.
Either way, I was with the right people.
The Rangers are a largely aboriginal group of reservists who are the military's northern eyes and ears, and those chosen for sovereignty patrols have exceptional land skills. Our group came from Trout Lake in the southern N.W.T. to Cambridge Bay along the Northwest Passage to Arctic Bay in the eastern High Arctic and ranged in age from young men in their 20s to elders.
"The guys that we've got are the best from their community,'' said Warrant Officer Dave Dunn, the rugged, hard-driving ex-paratrooper commanding the patrol. "These are the guys you want looking out for you on the land.''
Samson Ejanqiaq, a 35-year-old grandfather, hunter and construction worker from Arctic Bay, Nunavut, would scout.
"He knows the ice, he knows the weather,'' said Dunn.
Adam Ukunqtunnaq, 27, a burly, affable Inuk from Gjoa Haven who liked to sing cheerful Inuktitut church songs, was our mechanic.
"If anything breaks down on the machine, all those Rangers will have that engine out, stripped apart, new piston in it and back on the road within an hour -- guaranteed,'' Dunn promised. "In 40-below weather, with their hands bare.''
Our "grandfather,'' as Samson called him, was David Issigaitok of Hall Beach, a smiling, unilingual elder valued for his long experience.
"He's a guy to listen to,'' Dunn said. "He'll be able to tell you by changes in the wind, moisture in the air, if there's a storm coming on.''
Arctic bares its fangs
On March 28, the eight of us roared off on snow machines towing three-metre komatiks loaded with hundreds of kilograms of rations, tents, spare parts, fuel, scientific equipment and even a generator. The sky was a calm, unclouded blue, the temperature in the -20s, and our view of Ellesmere's mountains and glaciers seemed to stretch forever in the crystalline air.
But it didn't take long for the Arctic to bare its fangs.
Within kilometres, we were caught in a vast boulder-field of rough sea ice. Samson and David did their best to pick through the car-sized ice chunks, but before long I had been bounced off my snow machine, got it stuck, rolled it twice and flipped my komatik a half-dozen times.
I ran with sweat under my heavy Arctic gear as we righted the machines and muscled them out of tight spots, and I wondered how long I could keep this up.
Finally, Sgt. Derek Dunn, a Ranger instructor who has led patrols across the Arctic, suggested that the shoreline might be smoother. Samson, guiding his machine and komatik through the rubble like a cowboy cutting cattle, found a path and, sure enough, a highway opened up -- narrow, but blissfully smooth.
Ten hours we zoomed over the trail, pausing only for smoke breaks and lunch -- soup, trail mix, caribou jerky and raw frozen muskox heart. Once, we stopped for an hour while Adam took apart an ignition right on the tundra to fix a stalling machine.
"There's glue all around those wires, eh?'' he said. "It was all chipped from the cold and motion so I figured it was broke.''
We paused again along the shoreline of a bay. Untouched mountains surrounded us, knuckles of ice stood aquamarine in the flooding sunlight and the Arctic stillness shouted silence.
Someone said, "It's beautiful,'' and that's all there was to say.
By 8 o'clock, we were snug in our doubled-walled tents, cocooned in heavy, army-issue sleeping bags. The ice beneath me was cold, but I slept anyway.
Good weather returned the next morning and we kept moving to Ward Hunt Island, our backs taking a pounding as we bounced over the hard-packed drifts. Although it seemed as if we were the first who ever burst across these seamless snows, we were anything but.
Royal Navy sailors travelled this route in 1875, towing sleds by hand. Robert Peary followed in 1906, and we visited the last point of land he saw before heading to the North Pole.
"(The route) is totally historical,'' said Ranger Doug Stern, a Parks Canada employee from Cambridge Bay. "Because we're limited so much by the Arctic ice pack and the mountainous terrain, we're following just that little bit of smooth ice at the bottom of the mountains.''
Some predecessors remain mysterious.
We rode by a series of weathered old tents that Stern said were erected years ago by an Italian count. About 100 Greenland Inuit are said to have lived there once, but Stern said nobody knows what the count was up to.
Reaching our destination
By late afternoon, we reached our destination -- a Parks Canada camp of insulated and heated tents on the north shore of Ward Hunt Island where we spent the next few days. The doorstep view was a white expanse of sea ice -- a perfect canvas for the blues, pinks and oranges of a sun that never quite set but slid along a horizon so empty you could see the curvature of the earth.
We set into a routine of gathering scientific data, worthy work but a bit dull for Rangers eager to resume travelling.
"I came for the adventure,'' said Samson. "I want to shoot a muskox.''
Samson would have to wait until we left the park, but animal signs were few anyway: ptarmigan, a week-old polar bear track and a small herd of muskox. We did, however, have other visitors.
One morning, four of us from two different tents reported hearing footsteps that night. Samson even got out of his sleeping bag to check, but found nothing. Nor were there any tracks the next morning.
"It was the Innugaguligajuk -- the little people,'' said Samson.
The little people are said to stand about knee high and dress entirely in caribou skins. Nobody knows where they came from or what they do.
"If you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone,'' Samson said. "But if you attack them, they'll grow tall as a man right away. They're all over the Arctic.''
The days passed taking measurements on the ice, and the evenings in hands of cribbage, bannock-baking and movie-watching on Derek's laptop. Eventually, the Twin Otter slated to take me back landed on the ice.
At the Eureka weather station, halfway down the Ellesmere coast, I towelled off from my first shower in a week, looked at the frostbite marks on my face and sifted through memories of five days in that icy vastness. I may never return, but my thoughts often will.
Outside, far in the distance, I could hear wolves howling.
