By Jim Baird

The adventure has begun! Well, kind of…

My brother Ted and I are stuck in Deline.

First, we were waiting on the auger to arrive. When that got here, we thought we’d be ready to hit Great Bear Lake, but then we had a slight glitch with one of our snow machines during the first leg of the trip. Now we’re just waiting for the mechanic to make the repair and then, fingers crossed, we’ll be on our way.

This delayed start gives me a chance to show you the route Ted and I will be taking. We’ll travel across a few different landscapes: spruce forests, massive Great Bear Lake, mountainous northern shield country, treeless barren lands, and the frozen Beaufort Sea ice finishing the trip in the stark but beautiful landscape of the Arctic Islands.

Here’s a breakdown of our trip, stop by stop:

By Chad Love

A half-century after its discovery, DEET is still the unquestioned king of mosquito repellants. But researchers have discovered that under the right circumstances the mosquitoes can fight back...
 
From this story on Wired.com: 

There's already been a  boatload of bloviation expressed on the recent reversal of the ban on loaded firearms in our national parks, some of it sensible but most of it (predictably) bordering on  hysterics.

This column from the Huffington Post is a perfect example:
 
"In fact,  the new rule is likely to make national park visitors less safe around  wildlife. Packing heat could give some people a false sense of security and  make them more likely to approach bison, elk, moose, and grizzly bears,  rather than keep a safe distance which is better for both people and  animals."

But the most certain outcome of this congressional action is  that it will promote poaching. The National Park Service warned in its fiscal 2006 budget submission each year for the past several years ... The data  suggests that there is a significant domestic as well as international trade  for illegally taken plant and animal parts." Poaching, the agency said, "is suspected to be a factor in the decline of at least 29 species of wildlife  and could cause the extirpation of 19 species from the parks." 

By Joe Cermele

When I was about 11 years old my family had a big boat at the beach. On the next dock over there was a smaller boat, about 25 feet long, and one day they went out on a trip to the canyon and never returned. The weather had turned on them, and all the Coast Guard ever found were the fuel bladders they had strapped to the bow, floating 80 miles out.