Newsletter - Winter 2000

Puppy News

The Puppies have arrived! On September 26th Ruby delivered five beautiful Alaskan husky puppies! There are three female and two males. It was Ruby’s second litter and she handled it like a pro. This was another planned breeding, the father being "Buma" one of our famous leaders who won the Wyoming Stage stop race with our friend Hans Gatt two years in a row as well as running the Iditarod with Hans. Ruby is the daughter of Princess and Percy both of who have completed the Yukon Quest as leaders. With parents like this these puppies should be turbo-charged! The puppies were born in our bathroom, all very healthy and active from the very first moment of birth. The relatively small size of the litter has ensured that all of the pups have had lots of milk, particularly the first two days when the mother’s milk is so rich with important antibodies. On week four they were transferred to the puppy pen where they will stay until about five months of age. They are named B.J. (for Buma Junior) Buster, Casey, Tyson, and Harley. They are a very bright bunch and appear somewhat fearless for their age! On their first daily foray from the puppy pen they immediately raced up to Zach, our big Inuit dog and started to harass him. In the past Zach has responded to puppies like a wolf by regurgitating his dinner for them. (Interestingly, the Alaskan huskies in the yard have had this instinct bred out of them.) We will see if the puppies figure out that they have a veritable vending machine living next door. If they do, for the next couple months Uncle Zach may need to be moved to another area of the dog yard!

The Alpine Lager Greenland Crossing Expedition

It was a busy summer and fall for our guides between leading trips for Uncommon clients and going on their own expeditions. The early summer saw Rod attempting to retrace Fridolf Nansen’s epic ski crossing of the Greenland Ice Cap with two friends from the Pole to Pole expedition (North Pole and South Pole in 2000). After enduring some brutal storms of 170 km winds and heavy "cement" snow Rod experienced a sublingual hernia and had to be evacuated by helicopter off the Ice Cap. Fortunately the expedition had purchased evacuation insurance so the flight was covered. Although the hernia was strangulated at one point, it was not nearly the life and death struggle depicted by the major Canadian newspapers! The other two members took the total amount of food for three people and used it all as they took almost 40 days to complete the 30 day trip due to the bad weather and snow conditions. The trip was also a reconnaissance for an Uncommon client trip across part of the Ice Cap by Inuit dog team next year. Keep watching this section for news of the trip details!

Construction News

Great news for our guests visiting us this winter…the sauna/shower house at the yurts is finished! It is a beautiful little sauna that seats six people and has a gravity feed shower in it. We built it in seven days this September with the project being overseen by our good friend Eric Ruffino, the same friend who helped with the building of the yurt platforms so long ago. The sauna is fired by a classic Blaze King woodstove which gets the sauna cooking pretty fast and keeps it hot for several groups to enjoy the sensation of hot water on a cold night. Walking into the meadow after a sauna to gaze up at the Northern Lights has already become one of our favorite pastimes!

Our Guests

The highlight of the season for us is inevitably the people we are fortunate enough to have shared the trail with, and 1999 was no exception. We had educators, lawyers, engineers, chefs, executives, movie producers and politicians visit us this season and every one of them enriched our lives in a special way. Kerry Moore and Tom Harrison came from Vancouver to heli-hike the Ingram Ridge with us and paddle the Takini River. Kerry looked absolutely serene in the bow of her boat as her guide Kate Moylan steered them through the infamous "Jaws of Death" rapid! Both Kerry and Tom are longtime writers for the Vancouver Province newspaper and Kerry promises that she will share any articles with us that she publishes about her "Uncommon" experience.

Some people never get enough! Marianne and Ueli Zumker joined us from Switzerland for a two-week fly-in trip on the remote Wind River. Neither of them had paddled much prior to their Yukon adventure but they enjoyed themselves so much that they signed up for our dogsledding week during the Millennium celebration. Our apologies for all of you who we had to turn down for that particular week….we had twenty-two guests attempt to register for the five spots available!

Many thanks to Lenore Persky for the beautiful photographs she sent us from her "Uncommon 60th Birthday" trip this past season. The pictures are framed and hanging on the wall of Rod’s parents’ home in Southern Ontario. In fact thank you to all of our past guests who have been so generous in the past to send slides, photos and gifts from their homeland. The Swiss and Belgian chocolates go pretty quickly but the crafts which people have sent from all over the world have all become permanent decorations in our home.

Tomy Wigand was one of the movie directors who visited us this year and he is coming back in February to shoot a full feature film. The story revolves around a German woman who emigrates to Canada and lives her life in the Yukon "bush". The lead actor and actress are scheduled to come to the yurts and to be taught how to mush. As well, Rod is apparently going to be hired for the second camera unit to help with the dogsledding stunts…. could this possibly the big break that Percy our alpha male has been waiting for?! We also had Charles Martin Smith join us this past year. Charles is best remembered for his roles as a nerd in American Graffiti and as the star of "Never Cry Wolf". He regaled us with stories of Hollywood and reinforced our view that it must be safer living in the Yukon wilderness than the Big City!