That stuff doesn't work up here

Guest Blogger: ManNorth

I must say that I enter into this “Blog” with a bit of trepidation, as when one begins to voice one’s opinions there often follows a host of counter opinions, and certainly I, over the last two score years and a bit, have made certain observations that have left me not only questioning the opinions of others but their sanity as well, particularly concerning the natural world, which is universal - although, that is just my opinion. But, as Darwin said, “Nature breeds awful doubt”, and I have doubted. So when seemingly reasonable people tell me, with an air of authority, things the like of which could not possibly be true I have to take a step back and question whether it is best to keep my fool mouth shut or wade into the thick of things, offering up my humble opinion for sacrifice. These days I prefer the former to the latter; we choose our battles after all, and nature in the end will win.

None the less, with the coaxing of my wonderful wife, who is perhaps a little tired of me coming home and bemoaning yet another offence to reason which I have encountered, here is my first blog entry.

There are two kinds of people: those who talk and those who know. Those who talk, talk and those who know… well you get the idea. It takes time to really get to know something and longer still before that something can stand up to scientific scrutiny. Some people, on the other hand, are rather impatient and seldom have the time or the inclination to bother with such things as facts, so they prefer to talk instead, and as any salesmen can tell you, it’s not so much what you say as how you say it that counts. People up north tend to be gifted talkers, but I myself can do with a little less talking. And herein begins my rant.

Upon landing a job in the far north one would think that the subject of the weather would eventually enter one’s mind, what with the north’s mythical cold and unendurable darkness, and that any new-comer would be overly concerned with how to deal with such meteorological problems. Indeed, as I write this, it is -30 C with a wind-chill of -43 C (more on this wind-chill stuff later). But then I rode my bike the 5km home from work on Friday, across the lake ice, through the bush and finally down the river, all while facing a stiff wind and still find myself capable of mashing the key pad into legible words. The weather, in fact, was the furthest thing from my mind, and there was no pre-requisite shopping spree at the local sporting goods store for the latest in cold weather haute couture. I have been north before and was well prepared to face what ever the weather threw our way. I don’t mean to sound flippant here; only to state fact: I have been on 6 major self-supported Arctic expeditions, 3 of which were on the sea ice and all were solo. I have covered thousands of km on foot and canoe without seeing another human being. This, I feel, gives me a rather unique set of qualifications, but still I’m no expert. Leave that to the talkers.

During the winter months my job demands that I patrol by snow machine the largest river delta in Canada, and before doing so, I was ordered to buy some “proper” winter gear. When I told my supervisors that I had indeed my own gear which I have been using for 25 years and therefore trusted, their rebuttal was to shake their heads and say “that stuff doesn’t work here”. Of course no one ever elaborated as to why it did not “work here” and I was left rather perplexed thinking that perhaps here the laws of physics were somehow different and that maybe everything I knew about thermodynamics was wrong. So, after lengthy deliberations with said supervisors, I broke down and purchased, (read was told to buy) among other things, a Canada Goose Parka (ask anyone who knows), and a Woods 5 Star sleeping bag (blue in photos below).

Now, Woods has been around for over a century and has made some half decent gear in the form of heavy canvas tents and packs designed for prospectors and other stalwarts of the old school. I even own some of their equipment myself. My Uncle used a 5 Star sleeping bag over 30 years ago. Back then it didn’t even have a zipper; instead it was festooned with snaps to close its rather cumbersome canvas fabric and wool blend blanket liner. Then, as now, it had no hood. When I was in Boy Scouts, the Scout Leaders all had 5 Star sleeping bags too, but like my Uncle their winter camping excursions were limited to heated cabins. In fact, the venerable 5 Star sleeping bag has followed me throughout my life and I will admit that there is a certain rustic charm at rolling out a 25 lb bag and crawling in; the same kind of impractical charm as a chuck wagon or a Commodore 64. So, although I have never owned one myself I have used them on various occasions.

The Woods 5 Star has a temperature rating of -40 C, which at first glance should mean something, but without a hood or drawstring this claim is highly suspect. My sleeping bag (red one in photos) also has a -40 C rating; the same one which I was told does not work here. It was made by The North Face 25 years ago and yet aside from some stains here and there, still retains its 12 inches of loft. It weighs roughly 5 lbs in total; 3.2 lbs of which is 700 fill goose down. I have used it on every one of my winter expeditions (outside, in the Arctic, not in a heated cabin), any one of which lasted 6 months or more with temperatures plummeting to -50 C and below. Therefore I trust it.

My new 5 Star, on the other hand, weighs about 20 lbs, has a reported 3.5 lbs of duck down (fill power conveniently unspecified). It has 5 inches of loft. Minus 40 C? I think not. The only caveat is that I did not have to pay for this with my own money and we wound up with a new quilt for the bed, which is all it seems to be good for. But, then that’s my opinion.




The North Face Inferno



Woods Arctic 5 Star


A final note: since the purchase of my first North Face sleeping bag reviewed here, the company has recently changed hands so many times that it no longer resembles its original incarnation. So, although I have high praise for my old North Face gear, I cannot say the same for the current brand as a whole.

Hey! It's a lookout!

On Saturday ManNorth and I went on a small adventure that gave me a chance to check a few “firsts” off my list. Here’s a smattering of them, along with some photographic evidence.

1. I travelled the farthest north I’ve ever been.

2. I both melted and added to the ice of a winter ice road. (Hey, when one’s had too much coffee and there isn’t an appropriate facility for hundreds of miles around, what else is one going to do?) No, there’s no photographic evidence of that. Here’s another section of the road instead.
3. I crossed a section of Canada’s northern tree line and was surprised at how abruptly it ended. See the trees on the closest two hills on the right? There’s only one on the next hill and then nothing but tundra. 4. I drove on, walked on, ate and drank the Beaufort Sea (also known as the Arctic Ocean). (Drinking occurred after I hacked off a piece of ice from a pressure ridge, had it freeze to my tongue and then melt. It wasn’t as salty as I thought it would be. Eating was accomplished by chewing some of the ice.) 5. I climbed on a pressure ridge made of sea ice and marvelled at how much it looked like a frozen wave. (The formation of the ridge necessitated relocating a portion of the winter road onto the southern side of the ridge. You can see the old section of the road on the left side of the photo below.)
6. I saw my first pingo 7. ..and then I saw a whole bunch of them. 8. I discovered that although groceries are expensive in Northern Town, prices aren’t bad compared to those of Northern Hamlet. 9. I was asked, quite loudly and enthusiastically, if I was “Spikin?!?” by a happy woman wearing beautifully beaded sealskin boots on our way into the Northern Store in Northern Hamlet. “No,” I answered rather confusedly, although I wondered if perhaps we were or should be.

Big Red even experienced a few firsts, one of which she was quite familiar with, although never this far north:
1. She was the farthest north she’d ever been.
2. She got to drive on the Arctic Ocean. 3. She got stuck the farthest north she’s ever been and for a truck that has been stuck pretty much any where she goes, this wasn’t a particular surprise, although we’d hoped she’d forgo the thrill of it in Northern Hamlet.
(She capitalized on the opportunity to get stuck while making a sharp turn from Northern Hamlet back down a steep and narrow slope onto the ice road. In spite of her winter tires, they wouldn’t grip enough to back out of the snow bank she was close to sliding into, which she’d ended up in because her turning radius was too big, she has only rear wheel drive and the steeply angled road was made of ice. Before we could pull out the tire chains, two friendly and bemused locals helped her & us out, with a friendly tip to ManNorth that the trick of winter driving here is to avoid the snow banks. I completely forgot to take a picture to the very great appreciation of ManNorth who had been the one behind the wheel.)

One of the men helping us out informed us that a local hunter had just taken a polar bear quite close to town a few days ago, making it a total of three bears successfully hunted by the community this winter. He chuckled and said that it was lucky to take a bear so easily without having to go far and that it was good that someone was having fun in the cold. (Not the bear, of course.)

Last but not least, here’s my favourite story from our weekend adventure:
While driving around doing the secretive-touristy thing through Northern Hamlet (which involves looking like lost tourists while wandering around and hiding one’s camera while taking photos on the sly), we found a road that seemed to be taking us to one of the nearby pingos. I was keen to get a closer look and was pleased when the road abruptly ended at the edge of a small pond with a pingo perfectly framed between two low hills. Tourists who come this far north are sure to visit at least one of the nearby pingos and so I wasn’t the least bit surprised to see that the local residents had decided to capitalize on the tourism and create the road and lookout to the nearest pingo for their occasional tourists.

I did wonder though, at the material used to create the barrier, believing for a moment that they’d used whatever scrap metal they had on hand.

Of course, ManNorth was shaking with laughter at my shout of “Hey! It’s a lookout!” and my musing about the barriers for we’d just arrived at Northern Hamlet’s sewage lagoon. “Can’t you smell what you’re standing in?” ManNorth inquired with a huge smile as I took a look under my feet at the brownish ice and a second look at the “lookout barriers”.

Hmm. That explained what the big truck leaving the lookout had been doing just before we drove up and why part of the lagoon was still steaming.

I won't leave you with that lovely image of the lagoon. Here's a favourite photo of the sea ice and another taken on our way back home.

I've got a what?

This weekend the Man and I took our truck, Big Red, out for a spin to do some errands and simply to run the truck as we don’t drive it often. It’s been COLD lately –dipping down into the -40’s (C) before windchill and generally staying in the high -30s and we’ve been impressed with Red’s ability to handle the cold. She needs a few minutes to warm up and is a bit sluggish for the first minute or so of driving, after which, she’s just fine. We do plug in the engine block heater and the battery warmer whenever she’s not in use, but not everything can be plugged in, of course. This is a picture of what she usually looks like while parked in our lot and in our parking space which is on an incline, as the apartment building is on a hill.
After we’d driven her for a few minutes and I’d wondered why the apparently smooth road felt so bumpy, I discovered something new that happens when the mercury drops to the chilly temperatures common in Northern Town in February.

Square Tires!

Yep. The tire pressure was on the low side and the truck had been parked on an incline, putting a fair bit of the truck’s weight on the back tires. As it was so ridiculously cold (-39C that morning and -41 overnight), the tires had frozen...and kept their frozen shape as I drove off, bouncing the truck every time the flat side of the tires rotated around. ManNorth explained the problem and the moniker as we spent some time trying to inflate the tires after the squareness had worn off, so to speak, during the drive. It’s a problem that will be hard to avoid. Correct tire pressure will help, but only warmer temperatures (or a heated garage) will really do the trick.

New Year's Trip. Day 1. Part I

Before I begin the description of our trip, forgive me for this brief aside as I'm not sure when I'll have occasion to mention this particular topic again: If any of you are ever passing through Prairie Town, be sure to drive through some of the oldest areas of town and in particular through the residential area on the western side, near the government buildings by the lake. The homes are beautiful and many have their original leaded windows which have a curious and tell-tale glint from their uneven panes that adds to the homes' charm. Tall elm trees lining the streets are lovely to drive under, shading the thoroughfares and giving the neighbourhoods a wonderful green lushness in the summer. Of course, if you are a home owner of one of those lovely homes, as are an aunt and uncle of mine, you have a bone or two to pick with those trees who also drop branches frequently, rain a fine mist of sap down on your home and vehicles in the spring and are frequent targets of insects whose worm-like larvae descend on fine silk-like strands in the hundreds and thousands onto everything, to be walked into, stepped on and squished and to munch munch munch away on the greenery. That said, and as a non-home owner, I still love those trees!

My aunt and uncle were good enough to put us up during our brief stay in Prairie Town when we came to get our truck and we bid them a warm farewell after coffee and breakfast, sad to say goodbye but eager to get on the road and to home. We’ll be back again one day, and hopefully they’ll also be able to pay us a visit here.

About a block or two away, I remembered that I wanted to record the trip’s mileage and so took a snapshot of the odometer at the first red light we stopped at. Note the truck already has a few miles on her but we were sure she was up to the task. I'll post our final odometer reading in the last blog post about the trip for comparison. This also reminds me to tell you that with only a few exceptions, the trip photos were all taken from inside the truck while we were driving so the quality is a bit grainy, there is occasional blurring from the motion of the vehicle and odd splotches in strange places due to dirt or snow on the windshield and windows. Of course, you all wanted to imagine what the trip was like from our perspective, so perhaps this isn't too bad a way to show it to you. If the photos are exceptionally blurry, like the one below, you can just imagine that you're tired and in need of more coffee, as we likely found ourselves at the time.



A few hours later, the sun was just about to rise and light up the prairies. Prairie Town was one of the sunniest places I’ve ever lived in and I always did enjoy the bright winter days. Here is a picture of a prairie field along our route at daybreak just before the sun rose above the horizon.


Hours later we were crossing our first provincial border, which curiously, runs through the middle of the city so that each half is governed by two different provinces, one of which has no sales tax. I can't imagine that stores in the other province/half of town are able to compete very well with the stores on the western side. We took a photo of the small sign indicating the provincial border as we passed over it and through an intersection. (The wee green sign in the top right of the photo.)



We also discovered that if you want a clean Canadian loo, this town (or at least one half of it) is the place to, erm, go.


The landscape changed again as we travelled north into aspen parkland. Now the agricultural fields were regularly (and increasingly) interspersed with woodlots and aspen forests, full of usually small, knobby aspen trees, unlike the tall stately aspens that are logged in the transition zones of the boreal forest and which we would see cut and loaded on logging trucks for a few of the following days.


As we chugged our way into one of Canada’s major cities (photo below)


we were dismayed to discover that there were no gas stations lining the highway, which we had expected. A tiny sign indicated a gas station nearby and so joined by a few other vehicles, we ventured off the highway and down a narrow country road to fill up at a small gas station a few kilometres away. An old man in a tiny grey car who had joined the caravan played frogger with the transport trucks and zipped across the highway, his life preserved only by his car obeying exactly his command to accelerate. Knowing Red to be slow but steady, we bided our time and crossed when it was safe, hoping not to encounter a crumpled grey car farther down the road.

As we passed through the city, I was sure that I had spotted an old acquaintance of mine from home in the east. It’s a funny thing that when I travel, I am always prepared to run into people I know, even though I’ve no reason to expect to see them and never do. Perhaps it is just that while travelling (and particularly through airports), one passes so many people, that one is bound to see familiar faces that look similar to people we actually know. Perhaps that was it but knowing that this person had actually moved to this city recently, gave this encounter at least a chance of more than zero on the probability scale!

If you happen upon this blog, Rex, were you driving a white or silver car with the first three digits of your license plate RJB at 4:30 pm on January 3, 2008 in Edmonton? We were in a big old reddish maroon truck. You and I locked eyes for a second and then I watched you merge from the north, briefly join us on #16 and then zip across a few lanes of traffic to exit at a left turn to head south, somewhere just east of 170 St. If it wasn’t you, you have a twin more used to city driving than ManNorth or me!!