SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
"Just calm down. Be cool, and everything is going to be okay."
This was the mantra that kept city councillor Dan Wong going as he completed a 117-kilometre solo trek from Frank Channel, near Behchoko, to Yellowknife on skis in just three days last week.
Wong was inspired to make the journey left incomplete by Jaret Moshenko, who raised more than $10,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society last December by pledging to attempt to snowshoe 400 km to the East Arm and back, but had to turn back after just one day.
"I'm just so proud to accomplish the goal of completing, in a small way, the journey that Jaret Moshenko had begun through the Hearne Channel Trek for Hope," Wong told Yellowknifer on Wednesday. "He had some unfinished business on the lake and I brought some closure to that.
"It was also an experience for me to ski for my grandfather's diagnosis 10 years ago."
Wong had to work hard for his success, breaking trail most of the way to Yellowknife while pulling a heavily-laden pulk full of gear.
For Wong, it was not so much the skiing that was challenging, but how to deal with the cold when he stopped to rest. Temperatures dipped to -32 C on the first day, April 4, with a bitter wind. This caused a delicate balance between wearing enough clothing to stay warm, and not overdressing and sweating, which would have caused his clothes to freeze.
"It was pretty difficult. At some points, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to complete the journey, the wind was so cold," he said.
But Wong pushed through, and by the end of day one he had skied a total of 32 km.
Night brought little relief as he tried to sleep in a tent with no heat source. In his gear, Wong brought down-filled pants, a coat and a beaver-fur hat Moshenko had lent him. He said this kept him warm enough to not worry about freezing, but the winter camping experience was not exactly comfortable.
"It was an extremely dark, cold lonely night," he said.
Day two dawned with clear and sunny skies, much like the day before. However, the ice-crusted snow posed some challenges as it scraped the grip wax off his skis fairly quickly, causing Wong to slip on the snow and stop more often to re-wax than he would have liked.
By this point, Wong was also feeling the isolation - it had been nearly two days without any sign of another person. There were wolf tracks, but not so much as a ski trail or snowmobile track.
However, it was around this time that a plane carrying Canadian Volunteer Aviation Association volunteers did a low fly-over to hello. The group was in the area conducting search training exercises and had heard Wong would be skiing in the area and set out to find him.
The touch of human contact gave Wong a boost, he said, and by the end of the second day he had completed another 25 km.
After a second rough night in the tent, Wong awoke at 5 a.m. on April 6 with about 60 km to go, and he was determined to get home by nightfall.
The challenge of the journey helped Wong contemplate the battle cancer patients go through while in treatment, he said.
"A cancer diagnosis, it comes with a lot of baggage that is bound to test your very character, but it can be handled and it can be dealt with. In our community there are many people who have done that and who have survived it, and those people are heroes and the inspiration that took me home," he said.
Following his planned route, Wong chased the daylight and made it through the Grace Lake portage to Yellowknife just as the sun was setting.
When asked what he thought of the whole experience, Wong summed it up in this way:
"Time spent in the wilderness is never time wasted."
