In Arctic Bay, however, August 9th was an awesomely sunny and beautiful day so I borrowed my crewmate Nick's weathered sneakers (which were about one size and a half too big for me) and struck out with a pen launcher and two explosive caps as my only polar bear deterrents. Running with a 12 gauge shotgun is impractical. A polar bear had been sighted near the airport earlier in the day so my palms were sweaty as I clung to my micro-ammunition.
The first kilometer was dead uphill from the wharf to the 150 meter pass that leads to Victor bay across the isthmus to the North. It is a lovely run though the gravel road is a little coarse for low profile shoes. Mercifully I got to Victor Bay without seeing any bears (perhaps due to the reasonably regular ATV traffic). Victor bay is 4 km over the isthmus and appears to be Inuit cottage country for those trying to escape the hustle in 900 inhabitant arctic bay. There are tent camps on the beach and an Arctic golf course that hosts friendly competitions on Thursday evening (I regret not trying to participate into that one). Did a lap of the peninsula in Victor Bay and came back over the isthmus, running down to the cemetary on the West side of the village and all the way around to the fuel terminal on the other. It was very windy running Northbound and hard to keep any kind of a pace going though I thought I did OK running on borrowed shoes with a lot of vertical carrying bear deterrents.
This is the most northerly run I have done in my life (at a few kilometers North of latitude 73 degrees N) which I will not likely ever be able to top unless in some fit of madness I visit Qaanaaq in Greenland or Longyearbyen on Svalbard. Cool to record it on my Garmin Forerunner watch:
http://connect.garmin.com/
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