Aylmer Lake article

Wolves, Wilderness, Wind and Water:  A week on the Arctic Tundra

By Denise Taylor

Wolf!   Mauricio’s shout alerted the rest of the group as we made our way across the arctic tundra back to the boats moored up at the edge of Aylmer Lake.  Everyone stopped walking and dropped to the ground so that we were less visible on the open landscape.  The wolf, a beautiful white female, loped down the side of the esker (a raised area of sand and gravel), and looked across at us as she skirted the edge of the marshy area where we were crouched. She stopped to do a flex-leg urination a little way round, confirming her female status, and continued on her way, keeping us within her field of vision as she climbed up a ridge in the near distance.  Halfway up the ridge, she stopped, turned around a few times, and settled herself down.  Keeping as low as we could, we got out our spotting scopes and binoculars and trained them on the ridge. A running commentary (in very hushed tones) was soon detailing every movement the wolf made.  She had a shaggy coat, and was still moulting late in the season, indicating she was a breeding female and may be nursing pups. There were concerns about her condition as she seemed to have a limp on her rear right leg, and despite her shaggy coat, appeared to be quite thin.  After a while, there were more excited murmurings as another wolf appeared over the top of the ridge.  This time it was a male. After more than 15 years working in wolf conservation, I had finally seen my first wolves in the wild. 

This was the third day into our stay at Aylmer Lake in the Northwest Territories in Canada, and we had made the trip without any expectations of seeing any wolves at all.  Simply being a part of this vast wilderness, one of the last on the planet, was experience enough for me. 

The trip to Aylmer Lake takes place each year in the brief arctic summer and is organised by Cornelia (Neil) Hutt and her colleagues from the International Wolf Centre.  This year, a group of us from different countries joined renowned wolf biologists Dave Mech, Nancy Gibson and Dean Cluff.  There were 17 of us in total staying at Aylmer Lake Lodge, including lodge hosts, Cathy and Alan, who looked after us for the week.  Dean Cluff is the wildlife biologist for the area, and he and others from the International Wolf Centre are regular visitors to Aylmer Lake, and know the surrounding area very well.  Earlier, in June, as part of his work Dean had flown all around Alymer Lake, which is some 80 miles long and 40 miles wide, checking the known den sites.  He had seen some activity at the den where we had seen the female wolf, but he hadn’t seen any signs of pups, so we were still in the dark as to whether she had actually had any that year. 

Night prowling

After spending some time watching the female on the ridge, we returned to the lodge.  Later that evening there was a loud banging on the door of our cabin.  There was a wolf in camp.  Mauricio, who quickly earned the title of wolf and general wildlife spotter, had got up in the night to the urgent call of nature.  In the wildlands of the arctic tundra wandering a few hundred yards to the dunny is not an experience one relishes, especially with barrenground grizzlies potentially in the vicinity and so Mauricio availed himself of a bush at the back of his cabin.  As he turned to go back into the cabin a movement caught his eye, and suddenly he was face to face with the female wolf from earlier in the day. There was a great deal of excitement, and Chris Senior, photographer and a regular travelling companion to wolf projects in eastern Europe with me, managed to get some blurry photos of the wolf by torchlight. 

The next morning, the female was still in camp, and did not seem at all perturbed by our presence.  She came within a few feet of the lodge, and stayed in the area for the rest of the day.  Spotting scopes and binoculars were set up inside the lodge, and we were able to watch wild wolves in comfort.  There was still a great deal of concern about the condition of the wolf, and the photos we had managed to take the previous day at the den site were analysed in some detail.  It was agreed that she was hungry and had come to the lodge because she knew it was a potential food source.  There was still a great deal of speculation about whether or not she was feeding pups. 

Fish Supper

Being 230 miles north of Yellowknife, Alymer Lake Lodge is cut off from the rest of the world, and can only be accessed by float plane.  Everything at the lodge has to be flown in, and all the rubbish has to be flown back out.  To minimise this, food scraps are recycled by taking them down to the beach head.  There, the gulls, ravens and other creatures are able to enjoy an easy meal in what is an unforgiving landscape for much of the year.  The wolf was no exception, and she very quickly established that there was a food source available.  There was a lot of debate about the ethics of “feeding” wild animals in this wilderness, but if she did indeed have pups, then at least this food would give them a fighting chance.  The following evening, the food scraps comprised the fish head and guts from a very large lake trout that my partner Gary caught that afternoon.  As he made his way back up towards the lodge from the beach, proudly holding his catch, he was unaware of the female trotting closely behind him, sniffing the air for the scent of the fish.  Later, as she wolfed down her fish dinner, our entertainment from the cabin window was to watch a bold raven as it hopped in behind her, grabbed a morsel of fish in its beak, and quickly darted out of her way.  It did this several times.  Debbie Hinchcliffe, a volunteer from the IWC who had made this trip several times with her partner Gerry, stood at her spotting scope, with her own supper in her hand, giving us a running commentary on everything that was happening down at the beach head, between mouthfuls of food.  All our visions of the trials of wildlife watching, involving many hours of discomfort in unforgiving conditions, were quickly dissipated by this surreal experience of being out in the wilderness watching one of wildlife’s most wonderful spectacles of wolves and ravens, from the comfort of a cabin, and whilst eating our own delicious supper which had been lovingly prepared by Cathy.  (It is difficult to see how Neil and her colleagues can top this experience for the next trip!!).

An Outing for Elmer

The rest of the week at Aylmer Lake largely revolved around the movements of the wolves.  The male we had seen at the den site was assumed to be her offspring from the previous year.  He was a cautious wolf and was very anxious whenever the female was around the camp.  He would hang back and wait for her on the ridge behind the lodge, howling mournfully until she returned. Not surprisingly, he earned the nickname   ‘Howler’. A couple of days later, another wolf showed up.  This was another male, who was not so cautious and joined the female at the beach head for a meal.  The conclusion reached by the biologists was that this was her mate, who had previously been away hunting and had now returned.  This behaviour also pointed to the possibility of pups at the den site.

At this juncture, Dean and Dave decided that Elmer ought to make his debut appearance at Aylmer Lake.  Elmer is a stuffed wolf, which has been modified to Dean’s specification to have detachable legs so that the wolf can be easily transported.  Elmer’s last outing was at Ellesmere Island where Dave has studied the wolves there for decades.  Dean and Dave wanted to see how the wolves at Ellesmere Island would react to Elmer, and this was duly documented by video, with the result that the wolves were at first suspicious of Elmer.  Plucking up the courage to check this new creature out, they then showed great interest in his tail gland area rather than his anal glands, and, having established the wolf posed no threat, and probably wondering why it wasn’t moving, decided to play with it by pulling it over and dragging it along the ground.

Each evening at Aylmer Lake the female wolf had taken a specific route down to the beach head, and so Elmer was set up along this route.  We all set up our scopes, binoculars and cameras a distance away to see what would happen.  The female showed some interest in Elmer, walked around him a couple of times, and then wandered a short distance away from him before defecating and then carrying on with the business of sourcing her evening meal, seemingly unimpressed by the non-moving interloper.

The following day, half the group decided to check out the den site again. The other half decided to hike to Bread Loaf, a rocky outcrop that provides excellent views out of over the lake.  The boat trip to the den site is exhilarating.  The wind in this open terrain is an overriding factor of daily life.  The slightest breeze whips up the waves on the lake, and even on a warm day, going out on the boat can be very chilly.  Layers upon layers of clothing is the key, and we must have looked a very odd site as we bounced across the waves in convoy clad in a variety of rain gear, hats, scarves, buffs and gloves.  Dave Mech, who had by now become renowned for his itinerant dress code, looked particularly fetching in his orange bobby hat with a large safety pin through it.   The musk ox have probably got used to this spectacle in the past ten years, and so we were able to approach a large male bull, grazing by the side of the lake.  He raised his huge head briefly, before ignoring us to carry on grazing.  This was a wonderful opportunity to get close enough to get photographs.  I was glad we were in a boat rather than on land, where it would have been too dangerous for us to approach, not to mention being too intrusive for the musk ox.

As we approached the inlet where the wolf den is situated, we cut the engines, and checked the esker for signs of wolf activity through our binoculars. The female and Howler were watching us from the top of the ridge behind the den site.  We landed the boats, pulled them up on to the beach, and set off for one of the ridges that provides the best vantage point for wolf spotting.  Whilst we were hiking over the rough terrain, the wolves were spotted in the distance heading away from the den, and soon disappeared out of site.  We reached the top of the ridge and were just about to set up the spotting scopes, when someone spotted two wolverines running up a ridge in the distance.  Wolverines are difficult to see the in wild, and like the wolves, we weren’t expecting to see any at all.  We had all been pretty excited just to see wolverine tracks in the sand near the lodge.  Again, this trip was exceeding our expectations and beyond. 

Wolf Rocks

Scanning the horizon, and the valleys and ridges, for signs of wolf activity is like a session of Where’s Wally.  The landscape is littered with white and grey rocks and boulders, and each one looks like a wolf sleeping.  Heat haze gives the impression of movement, and you have to sit very still for a long period to confirm that the shape you think is a wolf is actually a rock, mainly due to the fact that the rock hasn’t moved at all in the last hour!  More by sheer luck, I spotted movement down in one of the far valleys, and the rock did indeed suddenly become a wolf.  It was the female again. Her mate was a short distance away from her, and the young male, Howler, off to their left.  They were looking in the direction of the ridge where we were sat looking for wolves, begging the obvious question of who was watching who?

Dave, Neil and Michelle decided to set up scopes below our ridge, whilst Dean, Gary, Carina and myself remained at the top of the ridge.  After a while the wolves started to move, to the top of the distant ridge, and suddenly they were joined by another wolf who had a pure white coat, and was simply magnificent.  All four greeted each other for a while, before the latest white wolf broke away from the group and started to lope across the top of the ridge.  Hardly believing our eyes, the wolf continued along the ridge, and headed towards Dave’s group.  From our vantage point we could see this happening through our scopes, but Dave and his team were completely unaware of the wolf because of their low lying position.  Suddenly the wolf appeared a few metres away from them, walked towards them with purpose, passed them by and continued on up over the next ridge.  Throughout the whole week, I never ceased to be amazed by how much ground the wolves covered in a short space of time, loping over the rugged terrain like it was running track.  The wolf soon put some distance between himself and his human observers, but it wasn’t long before Dave was off in pursuit. Again, our group had the better vantage point and could see the wolf disappearing off into the distance, so Dave really had no chance of catching up with it, but we had to admit being impressed by how much ground he also covered in a short space of time.

So much happened at Aylmer Lake that it would take too much space in this magazine to document it all.  And far from being barren, for that brief arctic summer period, life is in abundance.  The ground hugging flora springs to life with an array of berry shrubs (cloudberries, blueberries, logan berries, cranberries), wild rosemary, a variety of mosses and lichens, and the pungent smelling Labrador tea. Walking on this spongy carpet of wild plants and flowers releases an incredibly heady scent that lingers in one’s senses for a long time afterwards. Debbie Reynolds, another IWC volunteer worker, had produced two sheets documenting the flora around the lodge and onto which she had stuck samples of each plant, helping us to identify the different species

Darting in and out of the rocks, and their shallow burrows, are the sik siks; ground squirrels that are named after their screeching call.  These delightful little creatures were very bold, and the ones around the lodge were quite tame and entertained us all week with their skittish antics and calls.  Having a predator in their midst, when the wolf trotted through the camp, provoked lots of screeching, and head bobbing behaviour, before all the squirrels disappeared underground.

We didn’t see any barrenground grizzlies, but Dean was able to regale us with some of his hair-raising experiences with these large bears, and on previous trips bears had come into camp.  Although absent from view, the presence of bears was always a potential and one that heightened your sense of awareness. Hiking to various places, and particularly when walking through low growing willow and birch stands, always meant looking out for bears that could be sleeping or hiding from view.   On the last day, putting out all the bear boards, comprising large sheets of plywood studded with long, sharp nails to deter the grizzlies from breaking into the lodge, reminded us again that we were in bear country.  It was enough for me to simply share their territory.  I wasn’t going to go out of my way to come face to face with one.   

Leaving Aylmer Lake was bittersweet.  The enormously vast landscape is difficult to comprehend, even when one is in the midst of it.  It is a wild and unforgiving place and inhospitable for most humans for a large part of the year.  But for a very brief period, the arctic summer sun was kind to us, the ever constant winds not too harsh, and the wildlife was spectacular beyond compare.  One can only marvel and be in awe of nature at its most beautiful and incredible.  As for the she-wolf, a potent symbol of wilderness in the human psyche, her grace and potent beauty will remain with me for a very long time.

And the Aurora Borealis?   Well, that’s another story, but needless to say it was an incredible spectacle.  Given everything else that happened that week, it was almost like the show had been put on just for us….. 

Aylmer Lake

Aylmer Lake is in the Northwest Territories in Canada, 230 miles north of Yellowstone.  The International Wolf Centre has organised trips to Aylmer Lake for the past ten years.  Check the IWC’s website at www.wolf.org for further information or log on to: www.aylmerlake.com.

For more photos of this year’s trip log on to www.pbase.com/pawsforthought and www.flickr.com/photos/luperca