UGH!

This is the second part of a three-part series, which details the efforts to retrieve a radio-collared wolf that died in the fall of 2010.  The first attempt is covered in the most recent blog post.

Humbled after our unsuccessful attempt to retrieve wolf 989 (See previous blog post.) my wife, Molly, and I decided to try it again a week later.  This time we would be prepared with backcountry skis with proper bindings, a real pulk (sled) and we would give ourselves more time to find the wolf.

The night before our next attempt six inches of snow fell.  It was beautiful, but not great for an ambitious schedule that still required us to pick our kids up by 5:30 pm.  The new snow would mean we had to break trail the entire way instead of relying on the dog teams who use the trail to do the hard work.  It would slow us down tremendously.

Where bitterly cold temperatures and slush had foiled us the week before, this week’s culprits would be the slush and the new snow.  The temperature was in the teens and only a slight breeze was blowing.

Molly broke trail most of the way while I skied behind her with the loaded pulk.  It was absolutely beautiful out and we enjoyed the time in the wilderness.  Unfortunately, it was slow going.  Along with the snow, we repeatedly had to stop and scrape the ice off our skis when we hit slush.  We left the truck at about 8:45 in the morning and didn’t reach the edge of the lake—where we would actually start looking for the wolf—until 12:30.

With our limited time, and the GPS coordinates for the wolf appearing to be right on the edge of a steep drop off, we had to decide if we were going to look on the high ground or the low lying area.  The vegetation in the cut between the cliffs was extremely thick, so I chose the high ground.  Molly stayed with the skis and gear so she could bring any equipment we needed when I located the wolf.

I was greeted by thigh-deep snow and thick vegetation.  The vegetation made snowshoes impractical, so I went without. 

More Slow Going

Twenty-five minutes after leaving the lake, I was within about 50 feet of the wolf, according to the GPS.  I switched on the radio telemetry unit, and the signal was strong and clear.  I was close.  The signal brought me right to the edge of the cliff.  I looked around in the deep snow, but saw nothing that would indicate a dead wolf was lying nearby.  Forty-five minutes had gone by since I left the lake.  We were out of time.  (Just wait until you read where the wolf was finally found.)

I would like to say I reacted to another failed attempt with grace and aplomb.  That would not be honest.  More than a couple inappropriate words were let fly into the quiet wilderness air.  My frustration was extreme, but we had to get moving back.

We had a long, hard and nearly silent ski back to the truck.  We had pushed our time limit and had to move as fast as we could.  When we got back to the truck, we were once again spent.  Besides the fact we didn’t find the wolf, it had been a wonderful excursion into the woods.  I noted in a log later that night that maybe someone else would have to get Wolf 989.

Maybe Dog Teams are the Answer

Then, I spoke with someone at Voyageur Outward Bound (OB).  We wanted to get out into the BWCA, they had dog teams that could get us there faster.  Sweet.  That’s how we found ourselves two weeks later loaded up and moving towards the wolf’s location.

It was another cold day, -29 degrees, but with a brilliant blue sky.  As we were walking to the dog yard, a staff person at OB who had been feeding the dogs walked past us with frostbite on his nose.  Not a great start.

This was my first real experience with sled dogs, and I was extremely excited.  I have wanted to try dog sledding for years, and this would be my chance.  Besides myself there were three Outward Bound staff and Camdilla Wirth, an educator at the Center, on this trip.  It was a good group to travel with.

We got off to a bit of a slow start, and once again pushed out into new snow.  A couple of dog teams had come through since the last significant snow, but the trails were still slow going for the dogs and the slush problem had not gone away.

We made steady progress from our drop off point until we reached Gabbro Lake.  As we dropped onto the lake the teams were faced with drifted snow and deep, narrow channels that had been cut by the few teams who had gone through.  The dogs were skittish and acted somewhat stressed by the situation.

An Outward Bound staff person asked Camdilla and I to widen the trail by walking in snowshoes ahead of the teams.  This seemed to work, but the dogs were still edgy and a couple of scraps broke out inside the teams.  Progress came nearly to a halt.  Then, a significant fight broke out and two dogs were slightly injured.

Though we looked at every option, the decision to turn around and get the dogs back to be treated was an easy one.  Outward Bound safety procedures prevented any of their staff continuing on without specific equipment, of which we had only one set, so we all headed back together, one more unsuccessful trip.  We had only made it about three miles towards our destination.

Outward Bound offered one more time to use a dog team to help in the effort.  A week later Camdilla joined students who were in the middle of a course in a last-ditch effort to find Wolf 989.  They made it to the site, searched for two hours, both on the high ground and the low area below the cliff and had no luck.  They came to the conclusion that it was in a large crack in the rock or below the cliff face buried in ice.  (Would they be correct when the wolf was actually found?)

At this point I truly expected that to be our last trip.  I spoke with the USGS staff who had asked us to get the wolf and was told to leave it be. But now the challenge had hold of me, and I wanted to find the wolf and bring it back.

In the next entry, the final trips and the successful conclusion to this retrieval effort.

It seemed so straightforward...

It all started with an e-mail from Lori Schmidt, our wolf curator.  There were three collared wolves that died in late fall last year, and the USGS wolf and deer study staff wanted to examine them for their research.  They did not have the personnel to retrieve them.  “Does anyone want to help?”

Sure.  One was down a minimum maintenance road, one was near a small lake easily accessible by road, and one was near the portage between Bald Eagle Lake and Turtle Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. (BWCA) (See Map). 

I offered to get the one in the BWCA.  It turned out to be Wolf 989, an eleven year-old male from the Pike Pack and whose mortality signal was first picked up on December 13, 2010. (More information on 989)

I figured my wife, Molly, and I could ski out to it, locate it using the GPS coordinates I received from the USGS staff and use the radio telemetry unit to find the dead wolf.  We would then haul it back on a ski pulk and bring it to the Kawishiwi  Field Lab.  Simple.

If only things were ever that simple.  What follows, broken into three entries, is the story of our attempts (yes, attempts) and what I learned about the nature of field work that many of us who are not biologists may believe to be glamorous and alluring.

Two by Ski

Both my wife and I are good skiers and quite comfortable in winter conditions.  It’s one of the reasons I volunteered to get the wolf in the BWCA.  The wolf was about 6 miles from the nearest access point, and we thought we could make it there and back in a day.  Our first incorrect assumption.

It’s important to remember that vehicles with motors are not allowed in this part of the BWCA, so taking a snow machine across the frozen lakes was not an option.

We started off just after dropping the kids at school and daycare, about 9:00 AM.  We packed all of our gear into two backpacks, brought a sled to haul the wolf once we found it and drove down Spruce Road to the winter trailhead. We had not taken the time to get backcountry skis with Berwin bindings, thinking our regular cross country ski equipment would work fine for this short ski.  This was a bad decision and had a major impact later in the day.

Wind Chills -40

It was a cold, but seemingly manageable -1 degree Fahrenheit when we left the truck. However, wind chills were predicted to be nearly -40° F.  As we skied through the woods it felt quite comfortable with no hint of the predicted wind.  We followed trails used mainly by dog teams in the winter making slow but steady progress.

Then we hit Gabbro Lake.   Skiing out into the wind on the lake it became obvious the predicted wind chills would be reached. No matter, we were dressed properly, had plenty of water and food, and appropriate first aid and survival gear.  Success still seemed possible.

The wind was at our back much of the trip out and although we hit slushy spots on the lake several times, we were able to scrape off the ice and keep going.

A note about lake slush:  If you are not from a northern area, you may not be familiar with it.  The slush does not mean the ice isn’t safe.  It is created by the weight of snow pressing down on newly formed ice and pressing water out of cracks in the ice.  The water is then insulated by the snow and stays liquid.  Once it is disturbed and exposed it freezes very quickly to whatever it touches. It can make winter lake travel difficult or impossible in bad slush seasons no matter what form of transportation one is using.

By just before noon, we were within about a mile of the wolf’s location and were looking for an obscure winter trail when the trouble started.  We skied into a bay and knew the trail was somewhere on the other side.  While stopping to look around I realized I was standing in a slushy mess.  Molly figured it out quickly and skied to the edge of the bay and escaped the slush.  I was stuck.  I removed my ski to try and scrape it, lost my balance and stepped into the slush. I now had ice on my ski and boot.

I had had enough

Normally, that’s not a huge deal.  Unfortunately for me, ice got into the binding and kept if from locking onto my ski boot.  I messed with it for quite some time with no success.  Molly was yelling to me from across the bay—a distance of about 50 yards—I couldn’t hear what she was saying due to the wind.  Finally after what I thought was about ten minutes, I had had enough.  I gave up and decided to keep one ski on and hobble over to Molly.  When I stepped onto the snow again, my foot went all the way through the snow and the slush went over the top of my boot, soaking my foot.  Definitely not good.

When I made it to Molly, I asked, “What were you yelling?”

“I wanted to know what you were doing.  You were stuck there almost 20 minutes,” she replied.

In my effort to fix the binding I had not realized that I had been standing out in the full brunt of the wind in my light ski clothes for that long. Between that and the wet foot, I suddenly realized just how cold I was.  This was still not a life threatening situation, but it was time to start making good decisions or we might find ourselves in real trouble.

We decided to seek shelter behind the only thing available, a large boulder on the other side of the bay.  Molly skied and I hobbled over to it, avoiding the slush in the bay.  When we got there we realized it didn’t offer as much shelter from the wind as we had hoped.  As we sat there considering our options we realized the possibility of retrieving the wolf was diminishing by the second.

It was time to move

We put on our heavy coats and dry hats and tried to figure out how to fix the binding.  First, we tried cleaning it out with a knife.  Then, we tried knocking it against the rock to break the ice loose.  Finally, we tried melting the ice with the flame from a candle in our pack, but we couldn’t keep the flame lit, even with the protection of the boulder.  We spent about twenty minutes working on the binding and even with our warmer clothes on, we continued to get colder.  It was time to move, and unfortunately the direction had to be back to the truck, not towards the wolf.

We made the decision that continued work on the binding made no sense.  I took off my ski boots (The other boot had frozen into the binding and remained attached to the ski.) put on dry socks and slipped my feet into my Steger Camuks for a long, slow walk home.

What had been a pretty slow pace on the way out ebbed to almost a crawl.  It had taken about two and a half hours to ski to the bay before being foiled by the slush.  The return trip, mostly into the wind, took more than three grueling hours.  It was an extremely challenging effort for both Molly and I, and we consider ourselves to be in fairly good shape.  We had to rest and swap the load numerous times on the trip back, but after our fingers and toes warmed up from the extended stop, we could once again focus solely on the effort.  When we made it off the lake, we stopped to rest and snack in the relative warmth of the woods. (See pictures.)

We made it safely back to the truck and enjoyed some warm coffee we had left in a thermos before speeding off to pick up our kids.  Although it was frustrating not to get the wolf we had set out for, both Molly and I felt strongly then and still do that turning around was the right choice.  This trip was a good reminder that although we were only about five miles from our vehicle, in harsh winter conditions that can be a really long way.

Next installment:  One more trip by ski and two with dog teams…