After over a week of long cold nights and even longer cold days, I heard an excited but crackled voice over the radio – Neil had news! He’d witnessed and filmed a wolverine! And not just one - a second wolverine was visiting the den – and one (presumably the male) even bringing food to it! Something we’d never even heard of in a wolverine. We were in business!
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Setting up camera traps before we departed – our last hope to finish the wolverines story.
Over the following days, the sightings continued and the wolverine appeared unaware of Neil’s presence – the perfect situation! But as time ed and spring advanced, the frozen rivers and winter snows started to be replaced by running water and an expanding mosaic of brown tundra, melting through from below. Our route home on our snow machines was melting with it, and there was still no sign of kits!
With Neil focused on the den, and each day getting warmer, we headed out on a snow machine repeatedly to map our melting route home, until finally we ran out of days! If we didn’t leave now, our snow machines would be trapped for the summer, and we’d need a helicopter to get us out. To say we were bitterly disappointed would be putting it mildly – it might only be days (or even hours!) until any kits showed themselves now - but we had no way of knowing.
As a final roll of the dice, we hid several camera traps in the vicinity of the den, making sure to cause no disturbance. Once we felt we’d given ourselves the best chance of at least one camera filming the moment (if it were to happen), we slipped away.
The journey back – six hours threading our way over a landscape more tundra now than snow – at least confirmed it to be the right choice to leave. Now all we could do was wait.
Six weeks later, back in Bristol, an email let me know a package had arrived for me - my stomach lurched – I knew what it was; the cards from our abandoned camera traps had finally made it home! With fumbling hands, I inserted each card into the reader almost nauseous with trepidation. What was on the cards? A lot of blowing snow, a red fox, some ptarmigan… and just a handful of precious shots showing a wolverine kit emerging from a snow hole!! Then almost as quickly as they appeared, mother and kit trotted out of frame, never to return.
We’d done it!
Over the years, I’ve come to the realisation that, while trying to film the hardy wildlife that live in the cold parts of our planet, at the end of each shoot I’m left with a feeling of having been given a masterclass, yet again in just how ineffective we are as humans, in their chilly world. But nonetheless, we return each time, with a bit more experience and do our best to keep up!
