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FAR FLUNG TRAVEL
STORY
FAR
-
FLUNG
TRAVEL
out. It would take me a good 30 minutes to kill them all before getting
inside my sleeping bag to lie down. They were so dense that, at times,
it sounded like rain outside, but it was mosquitoes pelting my tent.
Sometimes, I would wipe my legs of mosquitoes, and there would be so
many that they would transform into a black, gunky slime.
Just so you know I’m not exaggerating, there are approximately
130,000 caribou in ANWR, and if you took the biomass of mosquitoes
and compared it to the biomass of the caribou, the entire mosquito
population outweighs that of the caribou population. The caribou try to
stand in the rivers and on the thick ice packs to gain some much needed
relief. They even force caribou herds to stampede, as the herbivores
can’t stand the insects caked inside their ears, snouts, and eyes. It’s no
wonder there were more caribou on the coastal plain than anywhere else
in ANWR. Like the caribou, we sought relief on the breezy coastal plain.
Coastal Plain
I’ve never been anywhere so vast and so flat. After a long evening
of paddling, we left the Brooks Range in our wake and stroked into
the expanse of ANWR’s coastal plain. It was time to find a reasonably
dry place to pitch a tent, a challenging task on the carpet of spongy,
moist tundra. We were closing in on the Arctic Ocean – still a full day’s
paddle away – and we could feel a chilly ocean breeze blowing up the
Staines River.
Dry patches were hard to come by. Tussock grasses made finding
a flat patch nearly impossible, but I was fine with lumpy and dry as
opposed to flat and wet. Eventually, my tent was pitched just in time for
the ocean breeze to blow itself out. I was comfortably inside before a
swarm of mosquitoes ruined my only timely entry.
While paddling the coastal plain, we smelled musk ox several times
but saw none. We also smelled death, but couldn’t locate a carcass.
Likely a caribou, but we wondered what was feeding on it. We would
find out later.
We paddled on, staying to the far left. “The bush pilot told me to
stay in the channels to the left of the Staines,” said Donohue. “If we had
paddled to the right we’d run into a massive bog.”
Arctic Ocean
I got out of the raft and mud oozed between my toes. Five caribou –
two females and three calves – were browsing above us at the end of the
Staines River, a mere stone’s throw from the Arctic Ocean.
“Maybe the caribou herds and other wildlife would adjust,” reasoned
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