One evening after our 10 PM dinners we had a curious grizzly bear approach our camp so we all came out to yell and scream it away.

After waiting 3 days the weather cleared enough to fly me and my gear out from ANWR to Prudhoe Bay, where I spent a night before eventually getting home on a Saturday afternoon.  I flew from the east end of ANWR all the way across it to  beyond the west end into Deadhorse along the north shore.  Parts of the flight reminded me of the movie “Out of Africa” as we looked down on many flocks of migrating birds and saw the trampled grasses from huge herds of caribou.  I enjoyed flying over the many remote rivers that I hope to someday float and fish as soon as Ben is old enough.  ANWR was an awesome experience…so loaded with wildlife!  Those who call it a waste land obviously have a different perspective on life.

I recently returned from two weeks of working in the NE corner of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).  There were 7 of us stuck together working long days, eating, and commuting and swatting annoying mosquitoes together for the duration.  Fortunately we all got along very well!  We flew in from Anchorage to Deadhorse, then special charter across all of ANWR along the shore to our camp.  We could see lots of ice bergs and broken ice as the sea here just recently melted free enough for us to boat through it.  No camp cook, we had to bring in all of our own food and fend for our selves.  All of the camp, its generators, the boat, heavy equipment to remove PCB contaminated soil from a Cold War era landfill was cat trained in during the winter over the sea ice then parked until we could fly into it for summer field work.  Overland transportation by cat train isnt allowed across the tundra in ANWR during the winter.  Our contractors have to wait until the sea ice is thick enough before they travel from Deadhorse across the ice for a couple hundred miles before dropping off our gear.  Once at the site only one windshield of a track hoe wash smashed due to bears as their huge paw prints were all over the rig.  Our camp was set up on a gravel pad which was a remnant of a Cold War era DEW Line Site station, Novagapak, already demolished and cleaned up.  We had to utilize a small inflatable motor boat (like the one Jacques Cousteau used) to commute to/from the job site daily across part of the Beaufort Lagoon.  We saw tons of flowers only found in the Arctic tundra and lots of wildlife including numerous migrating water fowl, bearded seals, Snowey owls, Arctic or parka squirrels, and of course lots caribou.  The bugs were bad enough to cause the caribou to break out into running and fits which made them appear to be dancing at times.  Very funny looking!  We even had a Grizzly bear approach our camp until we all stood outside and started yelling to scare it away.  Our shower water was brackish water where the Kogotpak R entered the ocean, close to our job site.  All of our cooking and drinking water had to be cat trained or flown in.

We were very fortunate to have lots of great sunny weather with endless views all around us.  We always wanted the wind to blow as it would keep the bugs down.  Otherwise we were completely covered in Deet, or in my case just constantly swatting/donating blood as I refuse to wear deet and havent for 12 years.  On Aug 1st the weather changed as we were finishing up, then we were stuck for a few days before anyone to fly in to extract us.  We were low on fuel, food and drinking water anyways.