In the Danger Zone

by Stefan Gates

  The town mayor arrives to see us off and tells me more about the effects of global warming: 'It's late October and normally there would be ice forming on the beach, but you don't see that at all. It's very late. People are seeing more and more varieties of animals that we don't usually see up here. Birds that don't normally come up here are starting to show up. The downside is that the ice is too thin in late fall for the hunters to go out and catch the seals that they normally would. People are desperate to go out but they can't.'

  Although the pack ice is gathering in the sea off Igloolik, the Inuit are forced to continue using their boats to hunt (by now they should be hunting caribou on top of the ice using skidoos or dog sleds).

  Theo does everything he can to make me feel barely tolerated. He eyes my cold-weather gear with disdain and treats me like the yellow-bellied southerner I am, reminding me that he and his ancestors have lived and hunted here for 4,500 years.

  'You've never been somewhere as cold as -20 before, have your' he laughs.

  'Well, I did spend a week in Lapland where it was -40.'

  He doesn't like hearing this, and walks off to join his cousin Harry who's standing on the gunwale of the boat. Now, the Inuit are a proud and noble people, consummate hunters and boatsmen. They are also occasionally very cack-handed, and at that exact moment Harry slides off the icy deck and plunges head first into the water. A shiver of schadenfreude compels me to burst out laughing (if only it had been Theo), but, it's actually pretty scary: the water temperature is below freezing (sea water can be liquid down to -2), and Harry's extremely lucky that he fell into only two feet of water. He jumps out, deeply embarrassed at his mistake in front of me, a southerner. He strips off his outer layer and tries to shrug it off as nothing. Theo scowls.

  We are making our expedition in two small boats with very large engines. The one that Marc and I jump into has a tiny cockpit that just fits Harry and John, so Marc and I sit on the back deck, huddled in our voluminous jackets and salopettes.

  My real Arctic expedition finally starts as we head south on a couple of open boats to spend three days hunting and camping in the wild. Theo has said we'll find walrus, maybe beluga whale, and probably lots of seal. Once we're moving, the cold numbs my chin so that I sound drunk when I try to talk.

  The boats speed out towards the hunting grounds at 40-50 km/h, and every now and then we hit a patch of iceberg mixed with slush. With each bang against solid ice the boat shudders and a shiver of fear goes up my spine. The journey will take us a good three hours, but only two hours into the trip our driveshaft goes and to Theo's increasing embarrassment, we have to be towed the remainder of the way by the other boat.

  When we finally arrive at Arvirsiurvik ('place to find bowhead whales'), 100 long km from Igloolik, a blizzard kicks up. This place is isolated, bleak and featureless, and Theo warns me that polar bears often wander the shoreline looking for food. There's a plywood box that serves as a survival hut, and we pitch a tent next to it in the driving snow. John hacks out a berg of sea ice half the size of himself for drinking water – it has been floating for so long that the salt has leached out of it.

  In the hut I set up a small stove and make beef stroganoff for our little team from a huge packet of dehydrated survival rations mixed with melted ice. It looks wonderfully similar to vomit, tastes thoroughly disgusting, but in the circumstances it's very welcome.

  There's a question I can't get out of my head: why do these people live here? It's brutally cold, the food is grim, its supply is precarious and shop-bought goods are poor quality and expensive. Theo tells me that he gets a real sense of pleasure from following a way of life that the Inuit have always led; he also enjoys the isolation of hunting on his own or with one of his brothers.

  Arvirsiurvik might be isolated, but as I sit here in the tiny 2 x 3 m survival hut writing my diary there's precious little peace. My two smelly friends Marc and John are snoring like klaxons next to me; it sounds like two men throwing up every ten seconds, but I smile like a proud parent – at least they're asleep after all that cold. The thing about extreme travel and exploration is that you buy all your fancy kit and expensive flasks, torches, knives and -50°C boots, you hire your satellite phones, your BGAN satellite uplink, and you end up in a shitty little hut surrounded by sweaty gear, snoring friends, junk and damp clothing everywhere – it feels like being back at university.

  I don't sleep at all during the night. Not because of the freezing cold, quite the opposite: it is sweltering hot. At some point during the night John turned the camping stove to full blast and the hut has transformed into a sweaty, airless sauna. I get out of the sleeping bag and lie on top. It doesn't help. I strip down to my underwear, but I'm still sweating like a pig, and I can't breathe. I endure it for a few hours, tossing and turning, thinking that I'm just having trouble adapting to these ancient Inuit ways. Finally I open the door a crack and let the air flood in. It's like drinking a pint of cold lager on a blazing hot summer's day. I turn the gas down and am just about to fall asleep when everyone else decides it's time to get up.

  Seal Hunt

  My filthy mood evaporates when I stumble out of the hut – the morning looks clear and dawn is just about to break. I watch as the sun floats free from the horizon and the sky explodes into an apocalyptic spectacle of red and orange set against the pure white snow and dark blue, berg-strewn sea. It's mesmerically beautiful. I sit there marvelling at it in silence, and I feel privileged to witness something this gorgeous. I wonder if this is the reason the Inuit don't want to leave.

  Theo and I take a walk to talk about polar bears and chat about hunting. He gives me a lesson in marksmanship (I make mincemeat out of a couple of icebergs) and tells me that he was born just around the corner from this bay in an igloo. His family were traditional nomadic hunters, following migrating animals for food. He learnt to shoot very young and caught his first seal when he was just five – not because hunting was fun, but because it was crucial not to be a burden on the family's food supply and to start contributing to it as soon as possible. Here in the wilderness nothing's easy – you even need a rifle with you when you leave the hut for a pee, although with only a 20-minute rifle-training session from Theo to prepare me, I'm more likely to shoot Marc than I am to shoot a rampaging polar bear.

  It's time to go hunting properly so, having eaten a little preserved whale, we get set to tackle the ultimate cute-but-edible sea mammal, the one creature that gets everyone dewy-eyed: seal. To the outrage of animal lovers around the world 300,000 seals a year are culled in Canada. The Canadian government insists that seals are not endangered and that it is necessary to control their number as commercial fish stocks are vanishing. There are 5 million still in the area and the cull will not stop until the number drops well below 4 million. Theo has no truck with the seal lovers and in any case, he's hunting to eat.

  We putter around the icebergs for a couple of hours and eventually Theo spots a young seal in shallow waters – I can just see the little dark blob of its nose every now and then as it pops up for a breath of air and to see what we're up to. I keep silently wishing it to go away, but that's not really in the spirit of things. We finally get close enough for Theo and Conrad to take a shot at it but they both miss. We wander around an inlet trying to find it; it occasionally surfaces and we give chase. After five or six attempts Theo hits the seal, but it's still alive and swims away. The search continues and after a couple more shots, it's all over. The seal can't swim, but it still seems to be alive. One whack on the head with a boat pole and it's finally dead.

  It isn't a particularly pretty way to go, but at least the seal had lived a free-range life. More importantly for Theo, this one animal will feed four or five families for a couple of days. I try to see it in terms of protein, despite the fact that its huge, sorrowful eyes stare at me, filling me with guilt. We draw up to some nearby pack ice and Conrad drags the seal out. Theo explains that, overall, about 25 per cent of food for Igloolik residents comes from
hunting, although for poorer people it can be as high as 50 per cent. Seal is a great source of iron and vitamin B, but the use of blubber for oil and lighting is becoming irrelevant now that most houses in Igloolik have mains electricity.

  Theo and his nephews skin and butcher the seal, eating pieces still warm and steaming in the cold as they work. It's a gruesomely bloody spectacle. Theo skins it, although he says that after Paul McCartney became associated with seal-protesting, the price for the pelts nosedived, destroying a source of income for them, and stripping away another layer of their culture.

  The guys all cut away at the carcass and eat hunks of it raw – Harry and Conrad are fond of the liver, while Theo prefers ribs. John hacks out an eyeball and eats it whole. He offers one to me, but I decline, opting instead for a chunk of meat. It's strange to eat still-warm seal, and I can't say that I relish the idea, but it tastes like fine, well-hung beef fillet and not at all fishy.

  I don't feel guilty any more, and it would have been a far greater tragedy to let any of the animal go to waste.

  Walrus

  The following day we head out in search of walrus. Theo says that he had seen hundreds of them a few days ago, so he's hopeful that we'll find something. However, the trip isn't a great success. After hours of searching around, we finally find a dead one floating in the sea. Theo thinks it may have been shot the day before, but escaped its hunter. He decides to take it back to our base to use as bear bait – the idea is that it'll stop the bears from attacking us.

  We drag the walrus into shallow water. He's enormous and must weigh nearly a tonne. His tusks are only 30 cm long, unlike those of fully grown males, but he's still a marvellous sight. Most extraordinary are his whiskers, which look like they are made out of thick plastic. Theo says that these used to be sold as opium-pipe cleaners, but the bottom's fallen out of the market.

  We drag the walrus onto the beach using pulleys, and then I help to hack it apart. It's strange butchering a vast mammal whose bone structure I don't understand, and it has an immensely strong hide, slightly furry and tough as hell to cut into. Once you get through the hide, there are several centimetres of fat until you get to the meat, which lies in huge, amorphous deposits in places I don't understand. I cut into it to separate it into manageable hunks as Harry sets his sights on its penis bone – a huge 60-cm-long club that sits mainly inside the boar. It has to be stripped of skins and sinews, but when it's done, the penis bone is eye-wateringly large. Theo goes for the skull, an even more difficult and gruesome task, but one that will reward him to the tune of $44 per kilo.

  After the effort of such large-scale butchery we sit down to snack on some muqtuk that the guys have brought with them. There's beluga meat and some raw frozen caribou meat which is utterly delicious, like strong, well-hung beef. I'm definitely beginning to feel a bit queasy – not from the strangeness, but from a lack of fruit and vegetables. I think my breath is beginning to smell a little, and possibly my skin is too.

  Back in the hut we roll out our caribou skins and our massive sleeping bags, known as Big Agnes, with an inflatable bottom and -20 insulation. I'm hoping to God that I'll be able to sleep tonight.

  Stranded

  I sleep briefly, until John's snoring really picks up steam and wakes me up again. I'm starting the day with a pounding headache and a deep sense of resentment, but I hope this will pass.

  At first light, we look outside. The good news is that the boats are still there. The bad news is that it's blowing a crushing, lip-shattering gale, with a bit of snow thrown in for good measure. We're not going anywhere. The walrus meat hasn't been touched by the polar bears. I had promised Daisy that I'd see bears and bring one back for her – I hoped that a picture would suffice –but it doesn't look like it is going to happen. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, we all go back to bed, but John's still honking and spluttering so I still can't sleep.

  My heart goes out to his poor wife. She must be overjoyed every time he goes out hunting. 'Off you pop, love,' she must say. 'Of course I'll miss you. Yeah, bye. Thank Christ for that, I'm going back to bed.'

  We're well and truly stuck here for the day, and the ice seems to be building up around the boats in the bay. Help! I really don't fancy being here until spring.

  • • • • •

  Oh shit! We're trapped. It seems no one was listening to my plea last night. When we wake up in the morning and look outside we find that three icebergs weighing around 4 tonnes each have jammed the boats in during the night, and they are now stranded halfway up the shore. Added to that, the winter ice seems to have arrived en masse, piling up in the bay around us, and it's on the verge of cutting us off completely. The only gap is a couple of times the width of the boat, but the ice is shifting and building up all the time. And if that isn't bad enough, there's a terrible fog that would make the journey back to Igloolik treacherous. It all adds up to big trouble. I really don't want to spend the winter here.

  We have only one option: we start attacking the icebergs with axes, harpoons and anything else we can lay our hands on. Slowly, slowly, chunk by chunk we break apart the ice, Marc showing a particular aptitude for the task. By lunchtime we've made little headway and in any case the tide is going out so even if we do get through the ice we still have to get the boat to the water. The weather remains a big problem, though, and as a reminder of the danger, just up the hill from our hut there's a monument to a group of seven people who died nearby while trying to get home in the fog.

  By early afternoon I'm exhausted, but if we persevere it might just be possible to break through enough ice to make a dash for Igloolik before dark – as long as the floating icebergs in the bay don't block us in.

  Finally we clear two of the icebergs, and after some vein-throbbing yanking on a rope and pulley blocks attached to a nearby rock, we inch the boat across the shore into the water. Just as my strength gives out, the boat lurches into the shallows and floats, to cheers from all of us. I'm ready to collapse, but we still have to drag our kit down to the boats. Eventually we're ready to go, and luckily the gap in the ice is just clear enough, so we squeeze through and say goodbye to our little hunting station.

  The fog clears to let us out, but as soon as we get into open sea it returns, along with a snowstorm. It's too late now – we can't turn back, so we float through field after field of slush and bergs and it seems as if the sea has completely changed its nature since we left Igloolik; it now feels hostile.

  Eventually I can see Igloolik as a dark smudge on the skyline, but there's a problem: the pack ice has made it to Igloolik before us. I'm gutted, after all that; to be stuck out here doesn't bear thinking about. John thinks he might be able to force a way through, so we inch forward, bumping and grinding the boat against ice and rock, shoving them aside with our feet and hands, until finally we make it to a small jetty. I've never been so elated to arrive at a bunch of huts in my life.

  Rotten Walrus

  By the next day the miserable weather and the ice in the bay clogs the shore and traps all the boats. Wind is blasting across Igloolik, so we have to stay inside watching terrible Canadian TV and snapping at each other. Everybody's in a foul mood. To alleviate the boredom I decide to tag along with the world's most northerly pizza delivery boy.

  A few years back the Tujormivik Hotel bought a pizza oven and now the chef, Charlie, makes up to 6,000 pizzas per year. They are expensive at $35 for two, but they are, after all, delivered by snowmobile. You just call Charlie and he'll make you a pepperoni, Hawaiian or Arctic char confection. It's your basic Dominos-style, thick-crust number, laden with cheap cheese and swimming in fat, but the good people of Igloolik love them.

  Charlie packs us off with pizzas to deliver, and we hop onto a couple of snowmobiles – one for me and one for Marc. Our destination is apartment 43C, which houses three gorgeous little kids, three sweet ladies and the largest television I have ever seen in my life. Pizza is a once-a-week treat for them, and the kids all say it's their favourite food. Syl
via, their mother, says that although traditional country food (like seal, walrus and caribou) is still important to her and to Inuit culture as a whole, fast food is also an important part of their life.

  'It's not really healthy, but it's a real treat and this summer animals seem to be even more scarce, so we've been having more store-bought food then usual.'

  Her kids say they don't like igunak, although they are keen on caribou, seal and walrus – and Coca-Cola. Sylvia sighs. 'Back when our parents were trying to survive it was a constant struggle from day to day not knowing if they would have enough food or enough heat, and now it's like, "We live in a house, we're already warm, we've got food on our shelves and everything else. What else is there to worry about?" Nowadays I see kids into computers, or watching TV or playing games; they're not really paying attention to our culture any more. And because of that, trying to keep the traditional skills is getting harder and harder.'

  Sylvia works as a nurse at the local clinic, and she's glad for the opportunity and the money, yet healthcare is one of the main reasons the Inuit began to abandon their nomadic lifestyle to gather together in static communities. She voices the confusion I've sensed since I got here: she doesn't want to lose her culture and traditions, yet she and her kids are busy embracing a shabby simulacrum of the modern world in an isolated, remote community where only a small proportion of its benefits are realistically attainable.

  The bad weather continues into the next day so hunting is impossible again. Instead, Harry invites me to his house to try some igunak, a unique local delicacy. Harry lives at home with his mum and dad and various younger members of his extended family. The house is similar to all the others in Igloolik – a Terrapin Hut-like construction on stilts.

  When I arrive there's no sense of ceremony and they don't get up or say hello. The TV stays on, and there are a couple of squeaking UHF radios – one for emergencies and keeping tabs on their family in boats and another for town gossip. His parents are unilingual – they speak only Inuktitut, the local Inuit language full of clucks and clicks – but they are sweet and friendly.