by David E. Petzal

If you’d really like to depress yourself some evening, watch “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel. The show details the plans of normal, well adjusted people to cope with the aftermath of fiscal collapse, nuclear holocaust, the eruption of Yellowstone, solar flares, and so on.

The New York Times noted with outrage that many of these people were accumulating guns and ammunition in order to defend their 1,500 pounds of MREs and dried brown rice, but stockpiling guns is fine with me. My concern is that most of them seem pretty inexpert with guns. One prepper was counting on a Ruger Number One single-shot which, despite its many splendid qualities, is not what you’d pick to blast the mob at your door. Another managed to shoot off several fingers during a practice session. Yet a third, a resident of the Oligarchy of Bloomberg, took lessons in knife fighting because he was unable to get a gun, ignoring the fact that everyone in the Oligarchy of Bloomberg who wants a gun has one, or several, and when the pistol-waving mob comes to this fellow’s apartment I don’t think that he and his knife will last long.

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--Chad Love

Remember that scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Han Solo and Luke Skywalker are trapped on Hoth, so Han uses Luke's lightsaber to cut open a dead Tauntaun and hollow out the body cavity to use as an overnight shelter from the freezing temperatures? If not, see below...and since it's kind of a sin to have never seen Empire, you get the dubbed version.

In recent news, a pair of Canadian moose hunters trapped overnight in the freezing wilderness didn't follow the script to the letter, but they came pretty darn close.

From this story on cbcnews.com:
A western Newfoundland couple used the hide of a freshly killed moose overnight Tuesday to keep warm after getting lost in the woods during a hunting trip near Gros Morne National Park. Stephen and Sheila Joyce said they lost their way after wounding a young moose and began following the trail of its blood. Shivering and soaking wet, they eventually caught up with the wounded animal.

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By Jim Baird

It’s the Big Question: How much gas do we need? Too much gas is definitely better than to little gas—to a point. If you carry way too much, you will stress your machine and you are more likely to run into mechanical problems. Good jerry cans are key, or you may have to deal with spillages and leaks, which will definitely knock back the miles you travel. At the end of the day you will have to narrow it down as much as possible until you have to make an educated guess.

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By Jim Baird

Two days before I saw this bird, I got a couple ptarmigans for the pot. My gun worked with out incident. This bird in the video got away because my firing pin was frozen. Once the trip was done, I told the story to my friend Pat in Ulukhaktok, and he showed me what he uses to lube his gun in extreme cold.

He uses a fast-drying graphite spray made for aviation applications that can handle extreme cold. Oil-based lubricants get very slow and sticky at low temperatures. In the deep cold, the heat created from firing your gun creates condensation that can freeze your pin. In these conditions, it’s better to use no lube at all if you don’t have a dry lubricant, wiping all the oil-based lube from your gun. I would also consider putting a stronger spring in my gun in future situations like this.

Moral of the story: If your gun freezes up when your ptarmigan hunting, you’ll go hungry. If your gun is freezes up when you’re being charged by a bear, the bear doesn’t go hungry.

Graphite spray it is. [ Read Full Post ]

By Jim Baird

I like swimming, but it’s more of a summertime thing. I don’t want to do it when I’m trying to cross a pressure ridge in the Arctic. That’s why I listened closely to tips I heard in the community of Delene before venturing out onto Great Bear Lake. Combining those tips with my own ice safety knowledge got me past many nasty pressure ridges safe and sound.

When you drive up to a pressure ridge, land can be miles away on either side. You first have to decide which way to go. You may have to follow it all the way to shore if you can’t find a place to cross. While following the ridge, you constantly get off your snowmobile to walk up to the ridge and check out promising-looking spots. When that spot is no good (and it usually isn't) it always looks like there is a good spot just at the next bend in the ridge.

Most of the time, when you get there you find a pool of slush or a deep crevasse and not a place to cross, so you keep moving. The search goes on like this for a couple miles or more, unless you’re lucky. Every time you check a possible crossing spot it’s important to be safe and keep these tips in mind.
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By Jim Baird

At the beginning of my snowmobile expedition in the communities of Tulita and Delene, Ted and I learned that the tow bars on our Equinox Boggans probably would not last for the duration of the expedition. We saw a graveyard of broken steel tow bars in Tulita. It was recommended that we use ropes to tow our toboggans, because the steel tow bars would have broken when pounding along on the hard packed snowdrifts of Great Bear Lake. So that’s exactly what we did. 

How It’s Done: First, you’ll need to drill holes in the steel brackets on each side of the toboggan —just in front of where the tow bars hook into them. Clip a carabiner to each hole. Next, tie the ends of a 60-foot-long length of rope to each carabiner. Then, tie the middle of the rope to the hitch of your snow machine. Make sure each side of the rope is an equal length (as shown in the video).
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