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The monument where the Arctic Circle crosses the Dempster Highway, about 100 miles south of Fort McPherson. |
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Here is my snowmobile and sled that I made the trip with. The location is on Stony Creek. |
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This is at the James Creek highway maintenance camp, where we started from in early April. |
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We camped near the Bell river. I got a new tent to use on this trip, and this is my sled and snowmobile. |
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Here is Georgie Moses dog team at our Bell river camp. |
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This is the kind of Toboggan that they use in the North. It is the best type of sled for using in this country. I need to make one of these. |
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Our second camp was by Lydia Thomas cabin on the Porcupine River. This shows her cache and Georgie's dog sled. |
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Ernie Vitraqua from Fort McPherson in his tent, with the moose meat on the stove. I made part of the return trip with Ernie and his son. |
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One of Georgie's dogs, anxious to start the day. The dogs love to go. |
I left here in March to make an Outreach trip into Old Crow, Yukon, by snowmobile. The purpose of this trip was in regard to our plans to establish our base of operations back in the Arctic. I wasn't able to accomplish the part of our plan that included cutting logs for constructing a house, but the other goals were met and exceeded that I hoped to accomplish. Old Crow is very isolated and there are no roads into the village. The nearest road is the Dempster Highway, nearly 200 miles away. My plan was to meet a friend from Old Crow who was traveling by dog team, at Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, and travel with him as guide back to Old Crow. In the next 4 days, with 2 nights sleep, I finally made it into Old Crow, and put 200 miles on my Snowmobile. I ran into some very unexpected difficulties, beyond the scope of this report, and certainly had enough adventure to write a book. After spending some time in Old Crow with my friend Dick Nukon, I returned to Fort McPherson, but going a different way part of trip which made the return somewhat over 200 miles. I traveled part of the way back with a friend, Ernest Vitraqua and his son Ryan. I had a very good reception in Old Crow, and we have a lot of grass roots support there. We were even asked to help in starting a new village, which was an idea I had thought about for years, but didn't know anyone else was interested in. We still can't implement plans to move until we are replaced here at Sunchild, so that is the first need to be met.