Our friends, the wolves

Our cache by moonlight, house behind

I started the New Year annoyed at wolves. We’ve spent days working on a trail upriver to Dawson and marking it with wooden stakes in case it blows in with snow.

Stakes on the back of the machine

The bloody wolves have pulled most of our stakes out and chewed them up. God knows why, perhaps they’re using them as tooth picks.

Then they really started fucking with me.

The Forty Mile caribou herd are returning from their winter vacation. All 70,000 are plodding back just now, over the hills, down the river and sometimes right through our yard. America’s gone mental with random border policies so will they even get back into Alaska, I wonder?

Caribou crossing the trail

Maybe we’ll see them plodding back through the yard again, clutching their green cards in their little immigrant hooves and wandering what the fuck happened.

With the caribou come wolves. Their howling is so beautifully wild and lonesome I would love to share it with you. And each time I get the GoPro turned on to record it, the bastards stop. They hear the “beep-beep” of the device switching on, their mouths snap shut and they go back to chewing our stakes. Bloody things.

You’ll just have to imagine some spine-tingling howling in this moonlit scene

But all is forgiven, because they gave us a whole caribou.

Icy stop sign on Top of the World Highway

We found it on our second run to town this winter. Another 160 mile round trip over the mountains as we still haven’t quite finished the river trail. Aside from the obligatory swim in overflow the journey was a dream.

Too dark for a good pic but we managed to reverse/ push the machine back out of its foot deep swim in overflow

Top of the World

We got everything done and stayed over with the marvellous Lou and Gary at Sister Island, a few km downriver from Dawson, (check out Sister Island.) They put us to shame with their incredible hard work raising pigs, cows, chickens, gardens and dogs the size of ponies. 

We ate some of their amazing bacon, all sliced and cured themselves. They can also drink much better than us.

Paddle steamer graveyard near Sister Island

We were still recovering from our excesses of New Year’s Eve. Ploughing our way through a box of Canada’s finest Shiraz, Copper Moon, left me in bed all New Year’s Day with a force 10 migraine and a strategically placed bucket.

Very mean of Neil to take this when I'm at death's door

I’m surprised as it is such good wine. It’s blended from multiple imported and domestic wines, (imagine that?) and lists 6 reasons on the side of the box as to why you should drink it, none of which are about taste. My favourite is- “Spacesaver shape takes up less space on the counter.” You should always choose a wine according to how well it fits on the table, as any good sommelier will tell you. 1967 Chateauneuf du Pape? Not if it comes in an inconvenient round bottly thing, heavens no!

Reason to buy Copper Moon, number 1 is “This is the cheapest wine you can buy at the Liquor Store using an equation of price versus alcoholic volume.”  I’ll write and tell them.

As we left Sisters Island, I asked Lou if I could take a photo for this blog. “I’ll have to get dressed,” she said, and get dressed she did. She reappeared in this incredible Ascot hat! I think everyone in the bush needs such a thing for impromptu photo opportunities, and I’m embarrassed I don’t have anything to match it.

As we drove back through the mountains, we came across this-

Almost a whole caribou killed by wolves. They tore out its throat, chewed it’s haunches a little and left it. Some people say this proves wolves are reckless killers and ought to be controlled. I say, that statement proves people are bloody idiots and ought to be controlled too. Of course they kill everything they can. It’s a survival instinct. Maybe they will need it later?

Fitted surprisingly well on the sled

I have nothing against wolf hunting, I love the beautiful wolf fur ruff on my parka. But “wolf control” is something else. Game numbers are falling, but if wolves and caribou lived happily together for thousands of years before humans became dominant then maybe they’re not the problem? Humans just don’t like to share.

Did well until we got to the yard. Nearly took the old cabin porch out

Read Bob Hayes "Wolves of the Yukon" for a more informed, though less belligerent, opinion. Wolf control is only temporarily effective and rather pointless according to Bob. Check out Bob's book

It’s just like humans ordering an Indian takeaway. You think, I want lamb and a veg side dish and chana masala and a naan bread as well as rice. Maybe some poppadum? Then it comes and you think fuck! This a dumpster load of food! So you put what you don’t eat in the fridge and have it another day. So do wolves. Only we stole their leftovers. No wonder they’re refusing to howl on cue.

One delighted sled dog

The carcass wasn’t gutted before it froze so it will be dog food. Homer will have a field day and I have two hind legs and a chunk of neck dripping blood, hanging from the cabin beam to thaw out beside me as I type (yes, it’s a lovely image, isn’t it?). 

Meat hanging

We will cook some of the meat for him now and leave the rest to freeze for 3 weeks as, apparently, it must be frozen for that long to kill any parasites. 

Cutting the meat with an axe, Homer dreaming of dinner

Homer did his idiotic best to get us a second caribou. He bolted as I tried to take a photo when we were out mushing, tipped me off the back of the sled and went charging through the jumble ice after a bemused band of them, dogsled in tow.

Of course the inevitable happened and the sled got stuck eventually but not for ¾ mile. I watched the ridiculous performance play out along the river as I walked back to the yard to get a snowmachine. 

C'mon Miss Louise, they're getting away!"

The caribou stopped every hundred yards or so to gape at their slow moving, sled-pulling pursuer as if to say, “What the fuck is that, even?”

Trying to get the sled turned round

It’s a case of so near yet so far with our river trail to town. It’s half the distance of the mountain trail, so worth putting in. We heard that a local trapper had made it to the 15 Mile River, which is only 5 miles beyond the end of our current trail. So we headed out, full of optimism, to finish it off. The ice was so bloody rough we called it a day within sight of the bloody 15 Mile River valley.

Chopping ice chunks with maul axe to get the machine through

We were shaken to pieces, and I put a horrid dent in the belly of our machine that jammed into the drive clutch and almost finished us off.

As far as we got, 15 Mile valley in the distance

We made this film on the way back to try to give some idea of riding the jumble ice. We had already run this section coming out, (we didn’t film it then as we were too busy swearing, damaging the machines and arguing about which way to go,) but my point is, we’d already run over this and it’s still rough as hell. I go first on the dented Widetrak then Neil has a go on poor Piccolo, our little 340. He only managed 10 feet. I had to go and help him so the film comes to abrupt end.

Temps are currently creeping towards -40, but when it warms up, we will get the damn trail finished if it’s the last thing we do.  I shouldn’t say that as there are a couple of horrible open leads, bubbling with scary black river water quite close to our path, so we might come to an abrupt end too.

Open lead

Find out whether we make it (or completely destroy our snowmachine) in next week’s blog. If we go into an open lead there won’t be a blog, but our camera can be used underwater apparently, so expect some very exciting photos if they ever find my corpse.

Neil testing the ice with an axe to see if it's safe