Wk 02 TP... Butter and Blubber!
Date Posted: 2.26.2007
Location: 44º58'N 93º14'W
Education Basecamp, Minnesota, United States
Weather Conditions: Heavy snow, 31° F (0°C)
Sixty roles of toilet paper, 1,800 Ziploc bags, and two dozen pair of latex gloves ... sound like the beginning of a detective show? Well, its not. It's the last three lines on the GoNorth! Chukotka 2007 Food Pack List. And please note, it's not just any toilet paper. Basecamp Manager Tiffany Simonsen, who headed up this year's food pack notes with a smile, "Of all the items on the list, the kind of toilet paper seemed to be what the team was most particular about: double-layered and the softest possible!"
We have to admit that there is a lot of truth to that statement. See, the thing is: If you run out of toilet paper while on the trail... You are out of toilet paper! One cannot just make a quick dash to the nearest store, because there is no nearby store just around the corner. And as for as Chukotka—even if we are in one of the communities along the expedition route where they have a store—they might not have toilet paper, as they have very few supplies—be it food or toilet paper (!) in these communities.
Eight totes of bagels, 25 pounds (11.3 kg) of sugar, 40 pounds (18 kg) of dried fruit, 304 envelopes of soup mix, 846 tea bags, 320 cups of pasta, and almost 1,000 ounces of gorp. Those are just some of the items—besides toilet paper—that were packed during this week's food pack-out event. Gorp is short for "good old raisins and peanuts," but we admit our version is a bit fancier. Plus, it's probably the most fun to pack, getting out the huge bowl to mix bags and bags of roasted almonds, chocolate chips, and splashes of colorful M&Ms. We actually mixed less gorp than normal this year, instead replacing some of the all-important "snack-during-the-day-calories" with some soft candy truffles!
Because of a very uneven bite, Mille has been chipping her teeth biting into the frozen food—butter sticks, Cliff bars, and chunks of cheese during the last four years of expeditions. So, this year, she finally took a bite (!) out of that problem by getting braces. Yes, it just might be a first for a person on a 1,000 mile (1,609 km) dogsled expedition to be wearing braces!? "Anyone out there with braces, when you get tired of them, please just say to yourself, "At least I am not outside at minus 40° F in a windstorm trying to yell commands to my lead dog!'..." says Mille with a smile. "I am very happy and feel very fortunate to have braces, but I admit I am also very nervous about how it will all work out in the cold. Stay tuned!"
Eating enough food is essential to be successful when traveling on an expedition, and that means that packing the right amount of food is obviously a very crucial part of planning for an Arctic dogsled expedition. We really do not want to be carrying too much food when the mighty Polar Huskies have to haul the heavy sleds. At the same time, we cannot be in a situation where we are running out of food, given the danger that would put us in.
Each team member on the expedition should eat 5,000-6,000 calories a day. That's a lot of food! Actually, it is about two to three times the amount recommended for adult human beings. Sleeping in the tent at minus 40° degrees Fahrenheit—then skiing next to the sled for eight hours a day, pushing and lifting, and working in frigid temperatures—makes our bodies require a lot of energy in the form of calories.
The way our bodies function in the cold—like staying warm—is by burning calories. When living outside in the Arctic environment, the best kind of calories are those we can get from fat. The traditional diet of the Native people of Chukotka is very heavy in animal fats such as blubber from seals or other fatty parts of animals. Since we do not hunt while traveling, we do not eat much seal blubber while on the expedition, beyond what the Native Yu'pik or Chukchi might generously share with us. But, we will surely eat a great deal of cheese—and butter. Each team member will eat at minimum a stick of butter a day. Mostly this is eaten as "a-big-chunk-of-butter-in-pretty-much-everything-you-eat," like oatmeal, soup, and with the pasta. "But, at times, some team members can actually be so hungry that they sit and eat it like it is ice cream," says Aaron. He goes on to say, "I know one of Paul's favorite snacks is to sandwich a good slice of butter between two pieces of jerky!"
That means the mound of butter at this year's food pack out amounted to a total of 70 pounds (32 kg)! That equals 280 sticks of the butter you probably use at home; each stick equals four ounces or eight tablespoons, making for a total of 2,240 tablespoons. Get the picture?! Every item going on the expedition has to be carefully measured into the right daily amounts. In total, we each get about 1.5–2 pounds (.68–.91 kg) of food a day. And most of that weight is indeed cheese and butter—not least because these are two items we can share with the Polar Huskies should we start running low on food supplies (perhaps because we are delayed by sitting grounded in the tent through a long snowstorm or because we are having to navigate around open water and thinning ice, thus not making the mileage in the direction as planned).
It can easily take almost a week for a few people to pack all the food. But bringing together friends and family for a grand "food pack out," it was done in a day! Education Basecamp Manager, Tiffany, had purchased most of the food online and had it delivered to her home where it arrived in a big truck spread out over 57 totes—yes ,really that is not a typo and, yes, the store did call her to make sure the order was not a spoof. On the day that Paul and the crew prepared "food-pack-out-headquarters" by getting tables and other "food-pack-out-essentials" all set up and ready for action, Mille and Aaron finished all of the last touches, like hunting for just the right size ketchup bottles. At noon, the food pack-out officially began. Lists were handed out to each designated "table leader," detailing how each item needed be packed: the exact amount (in pounds, cups, or spoons) to put into Ziploc bags (of varying sizes and quantities), whether it should be "double-bagged" (in two Ziploc bags), if it had to be assorted by flavor, and how every bag should be labeled. Each table would grab an item (candy bars, Kool-Aid, oatmeal, rice...) and start unwrapping, sorting, and packing it into rations per the "food list" instruction sheet.
All the food is then re-packed into Ziploc bags to make sure the team carries the exact amount of food necessary. It is also re-packaged so that we can get rid of as much unnecessary packaging as possible. We try to limit the amount of bulky trash we accumulate while on the expedition since the team must carry all its trash in the sled, not leaving anything behind as they travel on the land.
About eight hours later, most the food was packed out. Once again, team work got the job done. We owe a huge "thank you" to the pack-out crew of Tom, Mary, Molly and Thomas Henderson, friends of Molly, Judy Leibold, Jeff Abbuzahab, Tiffany Simonsen, and Mike and Lynn Pregont, as well as Teacher Explorer Jeff Sipper and his daughter Kelly for a job well done! As we set off out over the ice with perfectly-loaded sleds and just the right amount of pancake mix, we will thankfully be thinking about you all.
This year, those loads on the sleds will be extra-large. That is because we cannot rely on shipping the food ahead to have re-supplies in the communities like we normally do. Unlike any other Arctic location, we have not been able to ship anything out to the communities via mail. There simply is no guaranteed mail delivery in Chukotka!
Planning the logistics—putting it together—for a long dogsled expedition anywhere in the Arctic is daunting. The location of this year's expedition was expected to make the logistics even more challenging, and this challenge, unfortunately, proved to live up to all expectations. Chukotka is considered the most remote region in the Arctic. Now, if you look at a map, it may not be totally obvious why. One might think, for example, it would be more difficult to plan an expedition in the northern-most corner of Greenland! Well, whereas the weather in Greenland can certainly throw any planning for a loop, the shipping, transportation, and air service—what is known as infrastructure—is and has, for a long time, been terrific in Greenland. Chukotka, on the other hand, is not nearly as developed as Greenland or any other Arctic location. There is little or no industry and, because the region was entirely closed to visitors for 50 years or more, there is not much tourism. As mentioned in last week's report, there are airports, but really no scheduled air service beyond some helicopters that can be chartered, which cost something in the neighborhood of $83,000 rubles (about $3,000 USD) per hour! Cost is only part of the challenge; since there are only about eight helicopters for the entire region, you cannot exactly count on them being available when needed. So, instead, the Polar Huskies will be showing their muster pulling some serious loads of 1,400 pounds (635 kg) r more on each sled.
On the expedition, the Polar Huskies eat about as much on a daily basis as their two-legged team members: 5,00-6,000 calories a day. They each eat one to two pounds (.45–.91 kg) of dog kibble and fats. Most often this fat is chicken or lard, but this year we will be trying something new... Actually, there is nothing new about it, as it is exactly what the Arctic people have been doing for thousands of years: we will be feeding the Polar Huskies walrus blubber! We will buy this from the locals along the expedition route and it should be tremendous feed for the Polar Huskies to keep them strong, charged to pull, and ready for more food!
This week's first Polar Husky Superstar is Lipton, who just loves to eat. When Lipton was born, he was by far the smallest puppy in his litter. But today, Lipton is the biggest dog in the kennel! At first, Lipton was sort of lazy about eating. That all changed once he figured out what a bottle was and, pretty soon, we would find him sleeping in the food pan and, later, as he grew bigger, he would lie down and have the pan between his front legs, eating unti he fall asleep with his giant head in the pan! The only other thing Lipton seems to love quite as much as food is hanging out with kids and crowds of people. Despite his enormous strength, Lipton is still pretty much a lazy kind of guy.
Loving to eat even when the going gets tough is an important characteristic for a Polar Husky. With a stocky build and every pound strong, this week's second Polar Husky Superstar, Buttra, is heavier but not as tall as his sister Xena. This actually makes him the smallest dog in the kennel. But Buttra knows how to make every ounce of his body weight count. He often joins his sister, Rubi, in being the ones to get the sled going, digging in with his awesome technique. That takes a lot of energy, so Buttra is, indeed, always ready to eat—and he loves butter (and we bet blubber, too)!
(left) Charged with energy and a healthy appetite, Buttra is this week's second Polar Husky Superstar.
