We had 4 wonderful (and tiring) days on the Dalton Highway.  We drove well north of the Arctic Circle on a quest to see wild Musk Ox.  Our trip deserves at least 3 posts, one on the animals,  one on the mountains and geography,  and one on time, distance, and sunlight.  

As expected, we didn’t see any Musk Ox our first day (Fairbanks to Marion Creek Campground).  But we did see 2 wolves!  The silver (light grey? white?) wolf was carrying something in its mouth – I think a large snowshoe hare.  The black wolf was clearly  traveling with the silver one, though 100 yards apart.  We watched them travel across open tundra for several hundred yards.

The black wolf stopped a couple of times and looked back at us. The silver wolf would occasionally have to lift its dangling prey higher over the tussocks.  They paused at a line of trees at a creek.  I thought I saw the black wolf lift his leg to pee and then the silver one squat.  They both disappeared into the trees close together.

On day two, about 500 miles from Healy, C’s eagle eye spotted our 2nd caribou of the trip.  We stopped for a nervous caribou running to and fro, and he saw another strange animal in the brush.

We decided the blond, fuzzy creature could be a Musk Ox, or a Grizzly,  or even a horse with a winter coat!  It took a long time for it to come out of the brush and confirm that we had met our goal – my first wild Musk Ox (C’s second). 

C joked that we should turn around instead of going to our planned turnaround in another 12ish miles.  I joked that we should continue until we saw an entire herd AND a baby.  We stayed with the single Musk Ox nearly an hour.

We moved on, and there WAS an entire herd!  We saw 23 Musk ox just past pump station 3.  The herd including a few yearlings.  Road workers said there was a newborn,  but we didn’t see it. 

Fortunately, I switched to mostly looking at birds (despite the cold!) which kept us there longer.  Eventually the baby Musk Ox woke up from his long nap and we were there to see him.  He was so tiny and cute! Wow, watching him run about and then nervously call for his mom was so precious.   With the baby, we saw 24 in the herd.  What an unforgettable day!

Over 4 days we saw 2 Caribou,  2 Wolf, 1 Moose, 14 Dall Sheep, 25 Musk Ox, 1 red Red Fox, 1 Porcupine, 2 mystery black mammals far away (leaning toward Arctic Fox, but perhaps one or both were black Red Fox or wolverine?), several Arctic Ground Squirrels, Arctic Grayling, 1 Northern Hawk Owl,  4 Swans, 4 Snow Geese,  lots of mosquitoes, and other birds.

The owl was awesome.   It flew across the road in front of our truck, swooped down into the tundra, and pounced on a rodent.  It then carefully looked around in all directions for a long time before beginning to eat.  It didn’t  fly off with its prey, but ate it on the ground, using a talon to lift the meat up to chest height before leaning over to rip off a chunk with its beak.

On our return trip, we spent the 3rd night boondocking near where we saw the wolves.  We hoped to see them or hear howling, but no luck.  We did see lots of hares and quite a bit of hairy wolf scat.  The next morning, I found an old gnawed bone wedged between some rocks a few hundred yards away.  The bone was not from a snowshoe hare!

What a great trip!  More in the coming posts…