Definitely Not The Tour de France
Last year it was a herd of caribou blocking the trail that stopped some teams at the end of the Quest and this year the Daily News Miner reports that Wolves and Moose are being annoying.
Note, the wolves are not attacking anyone, they are just stealing the trail markers.
They are probably not as dangerous as the media cars on the Tour.
Michael Telpin is bringing up the rear for a lot of reasons, but a big one is that neither he, nor his dogs have any experience moving through trees. He and they are from the high Arctic, and there are no trees up there. There are grasses and reeds in the summer, but lichens are the main plant life.
He makes his own harnesses using the traditional Chukchi pattern which distributes weight differently that the diamond web pattern that most teams use. You can’t change the harness design without training the dogs to accept it, and to ‘grow into it’ from puppies.
It isn’t stated in any of the interviews [he doesn’t speak English, so there haven’t been many] but he probably took the animals that provided the skins for his outer gear, as he is a subsistence hunter at home. People who live in the Arctic don’t waste anything, because there isn’t a lot to begin with.
2 comments
I’m not certain, but I don’t believe that, in most recent classification systems, either component of a lichen is a plant… one is a fungus and one is usually a green alga. But if I lived that far north, I probably wouldn’t be in a position to quibble.
I can’t say about quibbling, but if you are interested in nibbling that’s what there is. There are many different types, that are eaten by different creatures, but the various forms are the only ‘non-animal’ life. I’m not sure how you would classify the tundra growths that are the zone below because that is a complex mass that is interwoven. It is dangerous to walk on because it will eventually span crevices and holes. Some of the holes are big enough for an International Harvester Travelall [an early SUV] to fall into. [One of my fond memories of Alaska]. The tundra is the reason they wait for the snow and ice before sending trucks North. It looks like a smooth carpet of green in the warmer months, but you don’t have a hint as to the actual land surface.