Arrival at Nauyuk

Arrivals at Nauyuk tend not to be dull (please see previous entries from 2007 and 2008). This year proved to be no exception. After waiting for good enough weather for 1.5 PAINFUL days, we circled above Nauyuk and I noticed the cabin looked….different. That’s because a bear had ripped the front door out by the frame. There was insulation everywhere, siksik poo everywhere, it smelled like bear pee, the stove was on its side on the floor, 1/3 of the ceiling was down, a bunch of vapour barrier was down, etc etc. Basically, there was a giant mess.

Heidi to Mark: “Well, Mark, looks like we have some fixing to do.”

Mark: “Heh…. yep!”

Pilot to Nancy: “Are you sure you girls are going to be okay here?”

Nancy: “Oh, COME ON! Just because we’re out here in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean we have lost our domestic skills. We’ll have this place fixed up in no time.”

Heidi: “Let’s take stock. Our stash of nails has been stolen. We have no broom. In other news, the windows have fallen out of the door, and the door is a pancake on the tundra. On the bright side, the frame is still in one piece.”

Mark to Nancy: “Nancy, let’s go to Walmart.”

So, Nancy and Mark take off down to the other camps in search of goods. Heidi, in the meantime, takes apart what is left of the freezer outside (see previous entry where she stripped the wiring) and the fridge inside in order to scavenge screws. Mark and Nancy come back grinning. They have found a box of nails, and have taken the middle screw out of every hinge in every door at the other camps. They have also scared up the brooms that Heidi and Marilynn used in previous years.

Two hours later, we had a frame, a door, and the windows were being held by Tuck Tape. The inside still smelled slightly of bear pee, but otherwise we were in good shape. It was time to haul stuff up to the cabin. It turned out, upon inspection, that our plug-in cooler (shipped in its original packaging) had arrived without its cord. This effectively rendered it a box. No matter, we had brought a GIANT stash of icepacks and an Xtreme Cooler for just such an eventuality.

So, the time came to inflate the boat. We had been gloating for the previous 2 days about how we had a boat shipped overnight from Edmonton to camp, to replace the leaky red boat (which had become the extremely leaky red boat). We had tested to make sure that the floor boards fit, and had inflated it half way. Assured that the boat was pressure-tested, we packed it up in the pouring rain and shipped it to Nauyuk.

Ah, fools we be.

After each of us pumping for what seemed like an eternity, Mark started circling the boat. Nancy and Heidi stopped pumping. And listened. It was not so much a hiss they they heard, but a gush. Nancy knelt down near the bow of the boat and pressed on a pontoon. Her face got closer. And closer.

Nancy: “Well!! There’s your problem, Hank!”

There was a 2-inch gash in the seam of our recently-shipped boat. The leak was so bad that the boat wouldn’t even inflate. While Nancy attempted to patch it (we knew this would be unsuccessful, but hey, might as well give it a whirl), Heidi phoned camp.

“Hi Jill, this is Heidi. Ummmm. If you could somehow get us the extremely leaky red boat, that would be great. The thing is, that one at least deflates after inflating, instead of just refusing to inflate in the first place.”

Jill, bless her for all eternity, assured us in extremely comforting tones that the boat would be flown out that night or the next morning. Somewhat deflated (literally) at this point, we decided that the best course of action would be to call it a long day and have some supper.

This, also, turned out to be slightly more difficult than originally anticipated. Surprisingly.

A few weeks earlier, Heidi had asked for some white gas to be shipped to camp. This is a dangerous good and takes some special handling, so folks in Yellowknife had kindly agreed to take care of this. The fuel arrived in its dangerous goods packaging, and thinking that we should leave it in that packaging for the sling to Nauyuk (to prevent leaks), that is exactly what we did.

Ah, fools we be.

It was kerosene, NOT white gas.

Now, kerosene will burn in Heidi’s MSR stoves, but not well, and not unless you change the fuel jets. Being too tired to read the label properly, Heidi did notice that the fuel did not light well and was sootier than all heck. When the stove erupted into a giant fireball and she just about lit the cabin on fire, she deduced that this was NOT white gas. A phone call to Erik later and the digging out of her instruction manuals and stove maintenance kits (which she did have) resulted in a sooty Heidster, changed fuel jets, and stoves that would work…….with a lot of patience.

“Let’s take stock. We have a bear-ravaged cabin, a plug-in cooler that is effectively a box, stoves that smoke like a hot damn, and absolutely no way to float. It is day 9 in the field. RATS AND SQUIRRELS! But the door is back on. And mom’s zucchini casserole is amazing. Even if I may or may not have added some carbon.”

Nauyuk is as beautiful and peaceful as ever. No bears yet! (Only the evidence thereof).