I owe you a story…
More than a year ago I came back from Ellesmere Island, Canada's northernmost island. Ellesmere Island is a location I dreamed about for many years, debating with myself whether I should go there or not considering the high costs and level of difficulty. During the late winter of 2022 the window of opportunity opened and I decided to go for it. The Island is so remote that it took 6 domestic flights inside Canada just to get to Grise Fjord, the northernmost civilian community in Canada on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island. Grise Fjord was the starting point of our trip and from there we traveled north on land and sea ice with our Inuit guides using snow machines and traditional Inuit sleds. This trip had a very specific goal, to find and photograph the white Arctic Wolves who live on this island. The Arctic Wolves of Ellesmere Island were professionally photographed by no more than 50 people in the history, most of these people have worked for films productions with tremendous financial and time resources. The estimate is that there are only about 200 wolves living on Ellesmere Island, the tenth largest in the world, slightly smaller than Great Britain, this is the difficulty level we are talking about here, far above anything I have done in the past, there is no tourist infrastructure on the island, very few people have ever been there.
So why did I decide to go to literally the end of the world for it? Because this is maybe the only place on earth where some of the wolves are completely naive to the presence of people since they have never been persecuted or encountered by man. Finding these White Arctic Wolves and standing face to face meters away from them on the ground is my biggest dream in wildlife photography, to be privileged to experience something like this is not an experience that can be described in words. However, in order to find these "naive" wolves you must travel far way north on the Island and get away from the local hunters pressure which has already caused a change in the behavior of the wolves living in the south to the mid part of the island, these wolves are no longer "naive" and behave like "normal" wolves - very beware of the presence of people. Therefore we knew we will have to travel very far north on land just to have a chance to meet Wolves that are not afraid of people. This was a very tough trip, it was very cold with temperatures dropped below minus 35 degrees Celsius + wind chill. The ride on the traditional sleds was extremely bumpy and back breaking, it was very tough physically and mentally. Despite the difficulties, after 4 very long days of travel we managed to reach to the area of the island where we wanted to be, this point was way farther north than our wonderful Inuit guides have ever been before. That area looked very promising with many Wolves tracks, big Musk Ox herds and we even found 2 Musk Ox remains that were recently killed by Wolves. At that point things started to get complicated and we suddenly realized that because of the long and difficult journey we went through due to unexpected difficult terrain conditions we did not have enough fuel left in order to spend a few days in the core area and search as we planed.
At that point we had just enough fuel left for the long way back to Grise Fjord. This was the moment we realized that our chances of meeting the wolves Wolves are fading away rapidly. During the long way back to Grise Fjord while camping along the way I have done everything I could in order to have a chance to meet the wolves, I have hardly slept and spent most of the hours of the nights (midnight sun) outside hoping the Wolves will miraculously appear near hour camp, unfortunately it did not happen... Ellesmere Island is by far the most beautiful and the most remote place I have visited, I came back home with a lot of good memories and insights, a couple of nice shots of other arctic wildlife but to be honest I'm devastated, this was the trip I gambled on everything, financially, the physical and mental price, the fact that I left a wife and baby at home who really need me, just to comeback empty handed... On social media it is customary to show only the bright side of things usually, well this was not the case here, I was licking my wounds for a while and I see no reason to hide these feelings. However, I feel so lucky just to be able to be there and I learned so much from the experience, I had to try and make a dream come true and I now know what need to be done in order to have a much better chance to succeed next time. Huge thanks to our wonderful Inuit guides and to Eric and Loi my wonderful expedition partners who shares the same passion for arctic wolves like me and of course the biggest thank you and appreciation to my amazing and supportive family.
Based on the experience gained I have made a new plan and we will be going for another expedition in April 2024.
Wish us luck!
