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 Military Ski-Doos are loaded for the outdoor campsite yesterday. (Sun Media photo) |
KUGLUKTUK , Nunavut — John Avilingak is a living warning of the deadly dangers of an Arctic whiteout.
The seasoned Canadian Ranger and his brother Gordon survived a week in frigid outdoor isolation after getting stranded on what was meant to be a daylong hunting trip. Making their way back to town, the pair got lost in extreme whiteout conditions, when white sky blurs with white land and even closerange visibility becomes nil.
One of the snowmobiles ran out of gas. They abandoned it and doubled up on the other, then the second one ran out of gas.
“We had no sleeping bags, hardly any food, but we survived,” Avilingak recalled.
“We lost quite a bit of weight though.”
The brothers rationed a small piece of bannock (native bread) and a single char fish to survive. They had two small tarps to cut the wind, and dug out holes in the snow for sleeping shelter.
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Walking 80 km in seven days, Avilingak still had 160 km to go when he was finally spotted by search and rescue teams dispatched on the ground and in the air. He escaped major injury, but his fingertips still show deep cracks from the experience almost five years later.
“We were okay, but it was c-o-o-old,” he said. “Every time I’m heading out now, I take everything with me, all my camping gear.”
Avilingak is among a team of mostly Inuit Canadian Rangers teaching the regular troops from Edmonton’s Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry survival skills in the extreme Arctic conditions. The group is setting up outdoor camp to conduct sovereignty operation exercises, but were set back this week due to whiteout conditions. Several of the soldiers, including Commanding Officer Corey Frederickson, have already suffered frostbite from exposure to the bitter cold.
Frederickson said soldiers rely on the Rangers who know the land and harsh conditions to signal when it’s safe to venture out for longer trips.
“They’re the experts. They
say in whiteout conditions ...
it would be very easy to lose
the people in front of you and
behind you, and once you’ve
lost them ... what are your
chances of surviving?” he
said. “These are the guys who
live up here ... If they say no,
I will bow to their expertise.
None of the training we do out
here is worth the risk of some
of our guys dying or losing
their appendages.”