This story, “The Arctic Nearly Killed Me — Twice,” appeared in the June 1977 issue of Outdoor Life. Tony Dauksza became the first person to traverse the Northwest Passage in anything other than a ship. He completed the 3,200-mile journey over the course of six summers on a solo canoe expedition.
My arctic canoe adventure was going great till I got mixed up with a polar bear. That’s when my luck turned bad. It got so bad that for days it seemed as if I had no chance of escaping death in that bleak spot on the east coast of Somerset Island, some 700 miles northwest of the north shore of Hudson Bay. I’m extremely fortunate my bones aren’t scattered up there near those of the bear.
I had made camp on Batty Bay in mid-afternoon. It was late August, 1972. The sun was shining, the wind was out of the south, the temperature was near 50°, and the enormous ice floes seemed at rest off the gravel beach. After I hauled my canoe above tide 88 line and pitched my pop tent, I decided to take a hike and do a little exploring.
Just as I topped a hill of rock, I heard shuffling sounds and a clatter of stones. I looked up and saw a polar bear pacing away. He 1umbered across snow drifts for 200 yards, then stopped and looked back at me. He seemed more curious than afraid. The idea hit me to go back to my tent, get my camera, and take some pictures of the bear.
I trotted back to camp, picked up my camera, then unzipped the gun case holding my Browning lever-action .308. I packed the rifle along just in case that bear decided I might be good to eat. I did a lot of searching for the bear, but I never saw him again that day. I developed the uneasy feeling that he was hiding somewhere and watching me.
About that time, a dense fog rolled in like a wet blanket of white. It could be plenty dangerous playing games with a bear in that kind of weather, so I went back to camp. I had every intention of heading on down the arctic coast at dawn, but things didn’t work out that way.
I awoke early and was just out of my sleeping bag when a vicious snarling and growling erupted close to my camp. The sounds of the circling bear grew louder every second. As I unzipped my rifle case, there was a sudden swatting on the side of my tent. I guessed what was going on.
The dense fog had condensed on my tent, then when the temperature dropped below freezing during the night, the moisture had turned into a heavy layer of frost. When the bear took a swipe at my tent, I heard his claws rip through the frost. The bear was going to smash my tent down to get at me. I began yelling and screaming like a crazy man. Luckily, the sudden eruption of my high-pitched voice must have caught the bear by surprise. His attack ceased as suddenly as it had begun. I opened the flap and looked outside. The bear was nowhere in sight. I’d actually hollered him away. But before that day was over, I had a strong reason to believe that our encounter was far from finished.
I couldn’t pack and leave because a howling blizzard was coming on fast. Before the swirling snow dropped visibility to near zero, I took my rifle and hiked out to see if I could find the bear. There was a little backwater bay not too far from my camp. As I approached it I saw him again. As I studied what he was doing, my neck began to crawl.
That crazy bear was swimming after eider ducks that he had no chance in the world of catching. If he was trying a stunt like that, he had to be so hungry he wasn’t thinking straight. There was no doubt he would be back after me.
When he returned at dawn he came as before, snarling and growling. I didn’t want to risk being attacked by going outside, so I shouldered my rifle and waited. This time he didn’t slam a paw at the tent, but I knew he was just outside its entrance. I guessed at where his shoulder was and fired.
After the roar of the rifle, I heard no sounds. I stared at the tiny hole the bullet had made in the tent, and I remember noting the pepper-like powder burns around the hole. Minutes passed while I held the rifle in readiness to shoot again. When I finally looked outside into the gray first light there was no sign of the bear, but his tracks showed plainly in the new snow and drops of blood showed that I had scored a hit.
Though it was snowing hard, I decided it was best to track my quarry and kill him before he could cause more trouble. I found him lying under an ice ledge along the shoreline where he had been chasing ducks. A large red blot stained the white fur high on his shoulder. He was in bad shape, but I put three more bullets into him.
Back in camp I appraised my situation. If the temperature didn’t quit dropping, and if the blizzard didn’t let up, the arctic shore would ice-in for the winter. This would mean travel by canoe was out, and I was still more than 200 miles from where I was to be picked up by plane.
I wasn’t too worried because I was in good physical shape. I had several packs of dehydrated foods, some caribou jerky, part of a seal, and the bear. I could make it for a long time. I also had flares to signal passing planes, plus a crash transmitter. These tiny one-way transmitters are powered by two flashlight batteries and are designed to send out special beep signals. The transmission switch is engineered to activate with the impact of a crash. It can also be activated by hand.
The one I had was given to me by Willie Laserick. He’s a German-born pilot, one of the best in the arctic. Willie had insisted that I pack along the transmitter. He said it might save my life. It did. The blizzard lasted three days. When the snow quit falling, the wind switched to the northeast and reached at least 80 miles an hour. It broke up a lot of the ice pack and blew it on shore. I moved my canoe uphill in anticipation of a very high tide. It turned out to be a 12-footer, and when it went out I had hills of icebergs between my camp and the fast-freezing ocean. That was bad. But I figured I could pull my canoe over the mountain of ice, getting it closer to the beach in case the wind went down.
Everything worked fine till I was going down one of the ice hills. I slipped, falling with a whirling lurch. Pain stabbed through my back. I tried to stand up, but couldn’t. I tried again after a while and got upright, but I knew I was in trouble.
As the day wore on, I found I could stand for no more than five minutes, then the pain would force me to lie down. It was pure torture getting back to camp. Now, all I could do was wait. I prayed a plane would pass close enough to pick up my crash transmitter signals or see my flares.
I lived in agony for 10 days before my luck changed. Winter set in with swirling snow and below-zero temperatures. I learned later that the same vicious weather had locked a seismographic vessel in an ice pack 80 miles south of me. When the weather cleared on the 11th day, a plane was sent from Resolute to advise the vessel how to escape the locked-up ice.
By great fortune, that plane passed close to me. The crash transmitter did its job. I knew I was found when the pilot circled my position and waggled his wings. But being found wasn’t being rescued. There was no way a plane could land in the hills of ice and rock.
Two days later a helicopter got me out. A few days after that, I checked into a hospital in Calgary. Doctors told me that I had a severely pinched nerve in my back. I finally wound up in traction for 12 days in a hospital near my home in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Though I had come quite close to dying in one of the remotest parts of the earth, I didn’t come nearly as close as I did four years later, in 1976. That trip found me slowly starving to death with almost no hope for rescue.
Why does a man get himself into such situations? In my case it’s an almost uncontrollable urge to seek the ultimate in hunting and fishing adventures. It all began as far back as I can remember.
I was born 64 years ago in Grand Rapids. My dad and my brother and most of our friends had an intense love for the outdoors. I shot my first whitetail buck in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula when I was 14, and I’ve scored on 42 more Michigan bucks since then. Our outdoor adventures were usually tied in with camping. I fell absolutely in love with camping the first time I tried it.
I’ve always been just as crazy about canoeing. Going any place with a canoe opened new worlds for me. As a boy, I saved my nickels and dimes till I had enough money to rent a canoe and explore the Grand River, which flows through Grand Rapids. Though the city has a population of nearly 200,000, I never had trouble paddling into backwaters and sloughs where civilization seemed far away. It was during those boyhood times that I developed my ambitions of exploring the Far North.
During the next few years, I made several trips into Ontario with companions. But, I never found anyone who loved the northwoods as I did, so I began planning my trips as a loner. I reasoned that if I had a canoe, motor, tent, and supplies, I could go anywhere.
I began canoeing a lot of northern Ontario. During those early years I earned my living by working for my dad in his restaurant. Later, I got a job in a machine shop. By 1940, I had saved enough money to make a down payment on the Anchor Bar, which I still own and operate. In the late 1940’s and early ’50s, I explored several rivers that flow into the Manitoba section of Hudson Bay. On one of those trips, I realized I had canoed farther north than some parts of Alaska. So, Alaska became my next goal.
I didn’t make it up there till 1957. I hunted Dall sheep in the Chugach Mountains, caribou in the Talkeetna Mountains, moose on the Kenai Peninsula, and brown bear on the Alaska Peninsula. At that time a nonresident didn’t need a guide, so I hunted where I pleased.
My involvement with canoeing the arctic coast began in 1964 when I made my first trip into the Northwest Territories. I wanted to explore the wildest area in North America. I left Fort Providence on Great Slave Lake on July 2. I canoed all the way down the Mackenzie River to Mackenzie Bay in the Beaufort Sea, but it took me till early September to get there. I got into trouble because I gambled on winter being late.
My 2½-horsepower outboard motor didn’t push me back upstream as fast as it did downstream, but I made it back to Aklavik. There, I boarded a bush plane that flew me and my outfit over mountains to a small lake which was the headwaters of the Little Bell River. I had hoped to canoe down the Little Bell, Big Bell, and Porcupine rivers to Fort Yukon, but I froze in at a small Athabasca Indian settlement.
My intention was to walk the 180 miles to Fort Yukon after the river ice became safe for hiking, but it turned out that I got home with much less effort. I flew out of the settlement on a bush plane that brought in a school teacher.
After having seen the immense remoteness of the area, I developed an intense desire to canoe along the Arctic coast. At the time I had no intention of canoeing the fabled Northwest Passage, but I did want to start at Point Barrow, Alaska, the beginning of the 3,200-mile passage that has claimed many lives.
I probably planned my trip as well as anybody could. I’ve always been fascinated with maps, so I got detailed maps showing every mile of my route and I studied them till I almost knew the coastline by heart. My equipment consisted of a 16-foot square-stern canoe, a new 3-h.p. outboard motor, a new pop tent — the only type that won’t be ripped to shreds in the fierce arctic winds — stove, rifle, spinning tackle, gas, oil, spare motor parts, versatarps, ice pole, and other gear including dehydrated foods. I was well aware that this trip would be the most risky of my life.
But I wasn’t about to quit. One of my main worries had been getting gas along the way. Then Max Bruer, manager of the navy’s arctic research lab at Point Barrow, told me about gas caches along the coast. He pinpointed their locations on my maps. I also knew the locations of several manned DewLine Stations.
Shoreline ice cleared enough to permit beginning my journey on July 25, 1966. I canoed 600 miles to Barter Island by September 1. I stored my gear and flew home.
By now, I had visions of canoeing the entire Northwest Passage. Each year I made part of the trip, except for 1973 and ’74. In ’73, the year after I hurt my back, doctors told me I’d be crazy to head north with my injury still not completely healed. So I stayed home. In ’74, I got back to Batty Bay and found out that the bear I’d shot wasn’t the only one in the area. My canoe and gear, which I had to leave behind when I was rescued by helicopter, had been smashed by other polar bears. I spent the rest of that vacation fishing at Pond Inlet.
In 1975, I re-equipped and spent most of the summer exploring huge Creswell Bay on Somerset Island. The area was a wildlife haven. Food was seldom a problem, until my fateful trip in 1976.
I left home in mid-July by car and drove to Montreal. From there I took a 2,000-mile commercial flight to Resolute. Then I flew to the Eskimo settlement on Creswell Bay where I had left my canoe and outfit the year before. The trip started going sour right from there.
The Eskimos figured they’d never see me again, so some of my possessions had been scattered among seven families. I had a hard time getting my things back. Then I had to wait two weeks for the ice pack to break up along the shore. I didn’t shove off till Friday, August 13.
I had a lot of trouble with ice floes, but I got to Whaler Point on August 24. The 200-mile trip meant that I’d finally conquered the Northwest Passage by canoe, and I thereby became the only man to do it.
Whaler Point is on the extreme northeast corner of Somerset Island. The elements can be vicious, and they got to me in a hurry. That night, the wind must have reached 100 miles an hour. I had to sit up all night with my back against the wall of the tent to keep it from blowing away. The storm produced an unusually high tide that wiped out most of my fuel.
It continued brutally cold. Gale-driven snow packed against my tent, and I had to chop it away with my paddle before it collapsed my tent.
The storm didn’t die out till August 29. I was just about out of food, and there was no game in the area. I dismantled my camp and headed my canoe for the old Hudson Bay post on Port Leopold Bay. I hadn’t traveled more than a mile when I heard a plane. It flew right over me, circled and then, to my great surprise, landed on the snow-covered beach at Whaler Point. I had expected the plane to pick me up at the post where there’s a landing strip.
No matter. I was positive the pilot had spotted me. As I continued on toward the post the plane suddenly took off and flew straightaway. It was almost impossible that the pilot hadn’t spotted me. I assumed that he would be back later.
I continued on to the post where I found a rock cairn — a cache of supplies laid in by Canadian officials for emergencies. Such cairns are sponsored by the Order of St. John in London, England. They are scattered along the arctic coast, and are built with mortar and rocks.
I pitched camp by the cairn, but, I didn’t open it for several days during which I became the most frustrated and flabbergasted man in this world. It was incredible, but I had to accept the fact that the pilot had not seen me. Later, I learned the flying service had sold out to another concern while I was on my trip. My pick-up instructions had been misunderstood. The pilot, when he landed at Whaler Point and didn’t find me, assumed that I was lost and probably dead.
I spent eight more terrible days in camp. I had been rationing my food for over 10 days. All I had left was a few chunks of compressed emergency food from the cairn. I was growing very weak. I normally lose about 35 pounds on each of my arctic trips, and I knew I was well past that. It was now obvious that waiting for a rescue plane was futile. I had to try using my last strength to head north. Farther north I’d have more chance of being closer to a plane route.
On September 6 I tried to break camp, but I was too weak to get my gear together. I rested all day, then tried again next morning. I finally got under way, just in time. There was very little open water left. I knew my chances of survival were about zero. Winter was setting in, my food supply was almost gone, I had two gallons of gas, and I was so weak I could hardly steer through the ice floes.
Finally, I came to a gravel beach. I got ashore, pitched what I figured was my last camp in this world, then fell asleep completely exhausted. Each morning for four days, I went outside and used all my energy in the normally simple task of clearing snow off the 8 x 10-foot blaze-orange signal tarp I had spread on the ground near my tent.
On the fifth morning, I awoke and wondered if I was looking at the same depressing tent walls for my last day on earth. I had no desire to get up, but I had to urinate. I cleaned off the tarp, then saw what I thought was a seagull flying toward me. I blinked my eyes, then knew it was a low-flying plane. I grabbed my tarp and waved it frantically.
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The plane flew past, banked, then came in to land on the snow-covered beach. In moments, pilot Timmy Lee, constable John Drisdelle, and I were exchanging bear hugs. I repeated over and over, “Thank God I’m alive.” Tears of relief ran from my eyes.
It turned out that the Bradley Air Service plane was on a fuel run to an island nearby. Even so, Lee and Drisdelle had been looking for me on the odd chance I was still alive. We couldn’t take my canoe out. It’s still up there, and It may be there forever. I’ve since promised mv wife Anne that I’m all finished with that part of the world. It’s time: it almost killed me twice.
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