On the 20th day of their trek across the tundra of northern Canada, those intrepid explorers on the SnowSTAR 2007: Barrenlands Traverse have reached the remote village of Deline and entered the vast frozen expanse of one of the world’s seventh largest freshwater lake.
Great Bear Lake — Canada’s largest lake and North America’s fourth largest — stretches horizon to horizon, appearing as vast as a frozen sea. Natives have long called it Sahtu, a Dene Athabascan name for the North Slavey people who have lived along the lake for thousands of years.
“They will make a major ice crossing (April 5) into the Dease Arm,” reports basecamp manager Dave Andersen, in a new dispatch. “Looking Northeast from their hillside camp to tomorrow’s track, it is Great Bear Lake ice as far as you can see.”
With nightly temperatures often breaking Minus 20 F, the members of the expedition must struggle to make a satellite phone connection to upload their latest dispatches. Imagine the journey the bytes and bits must take — from a camp on Far North late winter tundra, via satellite, to a computer in Fairbanks and then into fiber optic and DSL lines to the world.
So how do you surf the Internet while afoot in the Arctic Wilderness?
First we set up camp. Then we start the wood stove in the big tent. We then bring in the computer and hang it on a clothes line to warm. Sometimes we remove the hard drive and warm it up against our stomachs.
Once the computer is warm, we write the dispatch. We chose the photos we want to use as illustrations. These we download. But then we have to shrink them. …
Now comes the hard part. We now fire up the satellite phone and fiddle with the antennae until we have a strong signal. We then connect the phone to the computer using a USB-to-serial adapter. … If the signal wavers at all during the transmission, its back to the start. Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 tries to get it through.
Paradox: unfrozen Great Bear River
On April 2, they arrived at Deline, the only community on Great Bear Lake and one of the most isolated villages on the continent. “Imagine a lake larger than Lake Erie with only one tiny town on its shores!,” they wrote in that day’s dispatch, which included photos of animal tracks in the snow.
The expedition is spending 45 days on a 3,000-kilometer (1,864-mile) snowmachine journey across the tundra of Alaska and Canada, from Fairbanks to Baker Lake in the far reaches of Nunavut.
Along the way, the five Americans and three Canadians will visit dozens of historic Arctic sites, 11 villages and two diamond mines. They will stop to take detailed measurements of snow and climate, visit schools, gather traditional knowledge — and then share their insights with students and teachers across the world through daily on-line dispatches. Children from around the world have been sending in comments and questions.