Base Camp

St. Johns Harbour, Saglek Bay August 12, 2011

Seven days out of Nain and, except for Hannah and the caretaker at Hebron, we hadn’t seen another boat or heard any traffic on the VHF and that included getting the regular VHF weather forecast.

Turning into Saglek Fiord the last thing we expected to see was a cruise ship.

Clipper Adventure was carrying participants in the “Students on Ice” program. The organization takes 14-19 yr old students from around the world on eco trips to the high latitudes. This group had joined the ship in Iceland, made passage to Greenland and were stopping at The Torngat Mountains National Park (TMNP) before concluding their trip in Ungava Bay. It turned out to be great for us.

No sooner had our anchor dug into the mud and sand at the head of St. Johns Bay than a skiff came alongside offering us a ride into the beach. This tent city was the summer home of TMNP. Base camp as its known in the park, houses scientist, park staff, student interns and park visitors. If you’re visiting, you can set up your own tent or rent one of theirs. The tents range from regular pop up tents to yurt style abodes with heat.

Binky, a student intern from Nain, led us on a tour. Dust had barely settled on base camp’s first permanent structure housing the cafeteria, offices, and science labs. They were moving in as we toured.

An electric bear fence envelopes the compound and bear monitors are with anyone who goes outside of the perimeter. It had the feel of a lone outpost on an alien world. The fragile humans protected by technology and guns. During the daytime the fence was off and it was possible to move around a little more. At night, everything tucked inside the protective walls.

Shoreside was a beehive of activity. Students, trip leaders and chaperones from the ship and the dignitaries that’d come to greet them doubled base camp’s usual population. We were getting to tag along on a hike and the big cook out planned for that evening.

That's Debbie and I with John, an Inuit from Baffin Island who's with the Students on Ice program and was doing double duty as a bear guard.

Inuit elders were on hand to talk about this stunning place and their early years spent living and roaming amongst the Torngats. They were also cooking up a storm!

That evening we had arctic char - baked, fried, broiled, in a chowder, dried, and smoked as well as native breads including bannock, grilled vegetables, desserts and on and on. Our eyes piled our plates high and our stomachs tried valiantly to keep up. What a feast!

We dropped in at base camp on our return trip after having spent time sailing in the northern fiords. Our timing wasn’t so good this go ‘round and we missed a hike by ½ hour. They’d been plagued recently, including the night before, by a black bear. He made repeated attempts to get into camp. Escalating deterrents hadn’t worked until they got to rubber bullets. It was assumed he was still in the area and would be back. Figuring he could be around anywhere, they really didn’t want us wandering around without a bear monitor.

If you’re planning a visit, it’s worth understanding the rhythm of base camp. Most groups come in for a week. They may spend part of the time, or all of it, hiking out in the remote areas of the park or mix it up with time spent at base camp. Depending on what’s going on, you can usually tag along with base camp activities maybe a hike with a naturalist, a visit to Rose Island with an archeologist to learn about the Inuit tent rings and burial sites, or the little tour boat for a trip to Hebron. There’s also a helicopter that can be used. Activities are planned out the night before but if you’re in base camp around 8am you can figure out what’s going on and what you can join. It’s possible to pay for a bear monitor, boat ride, etc. Scheduling with the limited resources could make this problematic. Contact the park if you’re interested. Since Saturdays are transition days, base camp is busy shuttling visitors to the landing strip and all the bear monitors are keeping the bears off the runway!

The Friday we were there, a group from The Chewonki Foundation in Maine hiked for several days and spent time in base camp learning about the management of the park and learning from the Inuit student interns. Also a group of writers had been brought in to celebrate Parks Canada’s 100^th anniversary and put into words Torngat Mountains National Park. Friday was their chance to show us their stuff.

The Chewonki kids and interns put on a show with throat singing, drumming, and dancing. Very spirited performances by all the kids!

The writers were part of a project called Northwords. CBC commentator Shelagh Rogers was putting the event together in a radio show to be aired in October and a documentary for release in 2012. Gotta admit we were glad we weren’t there as part of the film crew. Many times we’ve been setting up shots, lining up interviews, recording sound during excursions like this and not able to just enjoy it!

As Shelagh put it, the writers were there to give us words beyond, “Awesome!” to describe this place. Writers Noah Richler, Alyssa York, Rabindranath Maharaj, Sara Leavitt, and Joseph Boyden did a stunning job of it. Their stories were poignant and funny and brought to life the feel of being here. It made me think about the difference easing into a place via a sailboat vs. being plunked down via plane has on you. We’ve witnessed the terrain changing, been able to look ahead and see peaks reaching to the sky. I think it makes it a more subtle but deeper experience and feel grateful that we’ve seen Labrador at five knots from the deck of a sailboat.

Here's an article that appeared in the Labradorian: "Every Canadian should see this."

Basecamp is not technically in the park. The boundary is the northern side of Saglek Bay. This side, and most of the lands we’d traveled in since Nain, is managed by the Nunatsiavut government. The park is only a few years old and is the first Canadian park run cooperatively with a first peoples government.

Parks Canada is looking at this as a model for how to make these high latitude parks more accessible. The hope is that by establishing a base camp some economies of scale will come to bear and it’ll make it less expensive to travel within the park. Still once you get to base camp, you have to hire either a boat or helicopter to take you somewhere within the park.

We stopped in the park office back in Nain to say thanks and learned Andante and Hannah were two of 7 boats to visit the park as of August 25.

Bear Count!

Torngat Mountains National Park

August 2011

OK. OK. Everyone wants to know about the polar bears. Did we see any? How close? Did one try to get on the boat?

In planning this trip we were hoping to make it as far north as The Torngat Mountains National Park. We were told it’s not a question of if you’ll see a bear there but how many. Still, we figured we’d be lucky to see one even if he wasn’t sipping a Coke.

The park has a Polar Bear Safety Video that does a good job of showing different bear behavior from merely curious to aggressive and some things you can do if you encounter a polar bear. Guns aren’t allowed in the park but bear “deterrents” are. They’re basically noise-makers you fire from a small starter gun and bear spray. The alternative is to hire a “bear monitor” to escort you. A bear monitor is an Inuit with a gun that knows polar bear behavior and how to use the gun. The practicalities of having a bear monitor on board weren’t possible on a small sailboat so we loaded up with deterrents and figured we’d be really, really careful.

After picking up my sister-in-law, Debbie, in Nain we headed out Port Manvers Run, a great inside passage. Debbie was glued to the binoculars hoping to see at least one bear. Well we saw 5 black bears before lunch!

Our next bear encounter was at Perry’s Gulch. Debbie and I were washing our hair in the stream when Russ and Bee showed us all of the bear prints. They were everywhere once you started looking. All appeared to be black bears.

This is the only tundra dwelling population of black bears and they’re reportedly a little more carnivorous than their berry-eating kin to the south. We weren’t too anxious to run into one of them either.

No more sightings, black or white, until Hebron. (More on Hebron in a later post.) Our first Polar Bear and we had to give him a name! “Eddie” for Eddie Haskell on “Leave it to Beaver” walked into the caretaker’s camp. He and his kids were in their speedboat chasing Eddie when we saw him.

We saw the bear’s white head in the water and then his powerful body leapt onto land. Shots fired in the air and he loped up the hill. I admit I found it a little sad . . . this huge creature, the largest land carnivore in the world, in his natural element, being chased. But a bear that becomes a nuisance usually gets himself shot so, better to scare him away now.

Knowing we were definitely in polar bear country our eyes scanned every nook and cranny straining for the site of a white blob. The scale of everything here is so huge, we weren’t sure how big a blob we were looking for. Entering Ramah Fiord, we had our answer. This mother and little cub agilely jogged through boulders big and small.

Further in, these 3 napped on a headland.

They slept on, only waking as we got closer. Mom, massive paws hanging limply in the air, spread out with her back resting against this huge rock. Someone later told us that maybe they’d had a long swim and were in rest mode from that.

The 3 came down to the anchorage that night and strolled the beach.

The fast northern twilight descended and still we watched from the safety of Andante. Bee, aboard Hannah, thought she saw the Mom limping so we called them Gimpy and the twins. They slept all the next day in sight of us and repeated the nighttime stroll & swim routine.

Russ and I kayaked a bit in Ramah. “Oh look at the caribou up on the ridge,” I said. “Uh, I’m looking at the bear chasing the caribou,” Russ. Well gee! We dubbed this one The Lion King. His massive body loped up the ridge’s knife edge moving with the speed and agility of a mountain goat. He still couldn’t get the faster caribou.

I did not go kayaking again. Sorry no picture of that one. We were too busy paddling!

Next sightings were in Nachvak Fiord. Anchoring in Schooner Cove I saw a polar bear in the boulder strewn slope. We called him Fatso! I’m totally happy to see a fat bear.

Next day, Russ went kayaking while we did a bear watch from Andante. Coast looks clear . . . all clear. “OK, there’s a bear on the point,” said Debbie (very calmly I thought). Russ was paddling towards the opposite point. I stood on the bow waving my jacket trying to get his attention. We didn’t want to make a noise that would make the bear take off swimming towards him. But Russ didn’t see me and started paddling towards the bear’s point so we tooted our air horn to get his attention.

With Russ safely aboard we sat back and enjoyed Yogi Bear. His massive body cruised along under the surface with only the crown of his head showing at times. He seemed to be looking under water for something and either feeding on kelp or on mussels attached to the kelp. When he found something, he’d do a handstand much like a kid in a pool on a hot summer day with his huge rear paws sticking up out of the water. “Look Mom!” Yogi looked our way every so often keenly aware that we were there but totally unconcerned that’d we bother him. He was right.

Drift to the beach completed, he strolled out. Flying beads of water captured sunlight as his massive body shook off the water, just like our dog used to do. Yogi rolled in the grass stretching his massive limbs, flipping onto his back

South of Saglek we’d see a black bear in almost every anchorage. They’d come wandering down to the beach as if on their evening stroll.

We started calling Bee on Hannah the “bear whisperer”. Glued to binoculars, Hannah saw around 18 polar bears. 3 of them were swimming around their boat, usually around 4am ish. They were probably around us too we just didn’t get up! They saw 2 swimming about 3 miles off shore and the crowning glory was this guy in Mugford Tickle. Kipping (that’s Brit for napping) on a rock, they got closer and he woke up a tad grumpy. They backed off. (Thanks for sharing the photo Bee!)

In total we saw 10 polar bears and 18 black bears. Watching them from the boat was incredible. They were just going about their business, doing their thing. It felt like we were on safari. Definitely an adrenalin rush and a highlight of the trip

Parks Canada is reviewing their gun policy in parks where wildlife may pose a threat to humans. It would extend the carrying of weapons to scientists in remote areas and beyond just Inuit bear monitors. It still wouldn’t cover us if we were to go ashore. There’s not a marine component to the park so you can have a weapon on board, just not take it ashore. They're taking comments through the end of the year. Here's an article: Parks Canada to Permit Guns

If you’re heading this way and want to learn about bears in the park and visiting, contact Torngat Mountains National Park. They're very helpful about bear information and the park in general. They have a packet of info they can e-mail including a cruising permit for the park.

If you’re shopping for bear deterrents, we were very happy with Margo Supplies. They’re a Canadian company that works with wildlife officials. The bear spray is considered a hazardous material and cannot be sent via air. There are also problems if you ship it from Canada to the States or try to bring in bear spray from the States. We had our order shipped to Baddeck Marine and they kindly held it for us.

In the end our biggest bear deterrent was not getting off the boat!

Will hopefully get some video uploaded when we have a faster connection!