Day 7

Friday,
March 9, 2001

The weather broke early this morning, and it cleared off. There was another sundog around the sun. It was pretty neat. I went up on one of the pressure ridges and started glassing for bears. The first thing I saw was a large bear about 200 yards from our camp. It was sitting over the top of a crack waiting for a seal to come up. It was kind of
like watching a cat waiting for a mouse. I asked David and Phil to come up and take a look at it. Again, they said the bear was maybe 7 foot. As the sun got higher in the sky, the wind shifted, I believe the bear caught our scent, and took off. I always thought that polar bears weren't afraid of anything but it seems like some of them know what humans are. I wonder how my Scent Blocker garments would work out here?

A bear sighting

We headed out across the ice today looking for bigger bear tracks. We traveled all day. We covered a lot of rough ice. We couldn't get in next to Garret Island and had to go around it because of the rough ice. I only had to pick myself up out of the snow bank one time today, but there were a couple of times that I felt I should have won a belt buckle for being able to hang on the way I did.

When you're riding on the sled in these subzero temperatures, it's kind of nice to think about something warm, such as my hunt for Coues deer this past January in Mexico with my friends John May, Erik Suhm, and Warren Strickland. Thinking of Warren, he is having his Heart Association Fund Raiser on the weekend of May 5th and 6th, which just happens to be on my birthday. Warren said he's going to throw the biggest birthday party I've ever had. I'm looking forward to it! I'm going to be there and I'm going to sit and eat some bratwurst and drink lots of 7-up with cherry juice in it. That's what I'm going to do--just sit back and relax. I can almost feel the heat from that Alabama sun beating down on me.

Thinking about partying

The sleds got torn up pretty good today. The dogs have eaten their fill of the seal meat and are sleeping sound tonight. They aren't making any noise at all. I can't believe the endurance of these animals. I can see now that there's no way the Inuit's ancestors could have made it in this type of environment without them. The weather conditions tonight are clear and very cold. There's a full moon shining over the ice and the sky is the color of blue fire again. It's very beautiful. My new GPS coordinates are 743817 N 982424 W. I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get into one of those 9 or 10- foot bears.