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Hunted in the Arctic | Edge of the Unknown on Disney+


2m read
·Nov 10, 2024

I was 8 and my brother was about 10. We really wanted to go camping without any adults. My parents agreed as long as we trained. We were living in the Arctic, so it was cold temperatures and storms and blizzards and bears. But we wanted them to succeed in their little mini first outing. We wanted to raise the kids, giving them the confidence to do impossible things.

You learn to do things yourself because we need to be able to deal with the worst case scenarios. The reality is if it's blowing 100 kilometers an hour and it's a storm, we're out in the middle of nowhere. Nobody's coming out to get you. My parents knew that as well. There's no rescue operation if something bad happens. There's no Hollywood grand finale. We'll be frozen. We'll be dead. We'll be eaten by a polar bear. Go.

So this ice behind us is quite impressive to look at, but it's not very impressive when we're traveling through it. We weren't that far out when I remember my brother had this, like, shock. What do you see from up there? Mostly more ice. We wanted to cross the Boothia Strait. Looking out at it, it seemed like a really bad idea. But we knew if we pushed across, which was the quickest way, there's the risk that somebody would fall through the water and just disappear out there.

So we're going to camp the night and see if it solidifies. A detour would add about 500 kilometers to our total trip, which would put us in jeopardy of running out of snow and ice. So we started the day in good hopes that we could get to the other side. See, that's a fox. There's something out there. Birds don't make that [BLEEP] sound.

Which would be neat to see an Arctic fox, but at the same time, foxes tend to follow polar bears. Polar bears are a huge risk anywhere in the Arctic, especially around open water 'cause that's where they hunt seals. Our biggest fear was having a polar bear encounter in camp. We had a bear fence-- basically, a tripwire, which would hopefully wake us up. They're so quiet, they can sneak up on anything.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

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