The pack of six wolves appeared swiftly on the horizon, in hot pursuit of a caribou mother and calf in the vast tundra of the Canadian Arctic. Splashing through the Meadowbank River, the predators bore down, indifferent to two paddlers floating into view. Zach Fritz and Taylor Rau watched in amazement from their canoe as the mother fled, leaving the calf behind.
Alone, surrounded, the young caribou was no match for the wolves, which pounced and pulled it to shore. The men floated within 30 yards of the bloody scene before the wolves retreated to a nearby hill, shooting back curious glances. Only briefly deterred, the pack returned to the calf as soon as the men passed.
By then, Fritz and Rau had been on the move for more than three months, and they were roughly 160 miles away from reaching their goal: the Arctic Ocean. Starting from near Big Falls, Minn., on May 6, they would eventually paddle and portage 2,700 miles over 105 days, through one state, three Canadian provinces and two territories.
Along the way, they crossed lakes that dwarfed Mille Lacs, skirted river rapids that could devour them whole and navigated one of the most isolated places on Earth — an area largely untouched by civilization, where muskeg swamps can twist an ankle and mercurial winds can topple even the most experienced paddlers. “Beyond Wilderness” is how renowned explorer Will Steger describes the region, a landscape where there is little margin for error and no safety net. Yet even amid such .