Living the Dream: Expedition Plan

This 100 day expedition will begin on Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The expedition team will be solo.

I will be traveling in a 16-foot motorized boat. My resupply points are sometimes over a thousand miles apart. This platform should have the range and payload to safely transport me to these points.

I will depart from Hay River a couple of weeks after the ice breaks up on the Mackenzie River. Upon entering the Beaufort Sea, I will explore the pack ice for polar bears of the Beaufort Sea sub-group. I will photograph and capture video footage of the bears and collect data pertaining to their icy environment. I will spend about 20 days on the pack ice and in the ice leads that separate the ice platforms. I plan on paying particular attention to the issue of global warming and any habitat changes I observe.

Upon completion of this phase, I will stop in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. While hiking for about a week in this incredible wilderness, I will document the current wildlife and environmental conditions. I will then continue along the Arctic coast for another 500 miles, pass Prudhoe Bay and stop in Barrow for a complete resupply and a day or two of rest.

After leaving Barrow, I will cruise the 900 grueling miles to Kotzebue. Along this long and foreboding coast I will stop to hike, observe, explore, document and photograph this vast wilderness shoreline. After arriving in Kotzebue, the expedition will resupply again and take a couple of well-deserved rest days.

For the next segment of the expedition, I will be crossing into the Bering Sea heading for my next resupply point in Nome, Alaska. This short 500 mile section should be exceedingly sporty and challenging. The Bering Sea is a rather awesome and dangerous body of water. During this section I will stop to collect more data and shoot more video and still images. I will also try to cruise out to Little Diomede and Big Diomede Islands if the weather and sea state cooperates and if the Russians have no problems with a visit to their territory.

After a few more days of rest and resupply in Nome, I will continue through Norton Sound to the Yukon River Delta. At this point I will cruise up the Yukon River for another 2,500 miles to the expedition’s terminus in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. This will be one incredible Arctic adventure.

The photography I will capture will include approximately 10,000 still digital images plus hundreds of hours of digital video. Much of this footage will be edited and produced into television quality programming as well as DVD segments. I hope to share this awesome adventure with America and the world. I will also record in journals my detailed research and observational notes. This expedition will be extremely sporty, rugged, wild and risky. But the reward will be helping to advance our knowledge of polar bears and the arctic regions. All in all this expedition will be an adventure of a lifetime!