THROWN TO THE WOLVES

Adventure cyclist and travel writer Donivan Berube sets out on an 18-month journey to ride the 30,000-kilometre Pacific Coast route from Alaska to Argentina. In this extract from the opening days, bears, rabid wolves and sub-freezing temperatures make for an interesting beginning...

- Donivan Berube

I was 50 kilometres south of Coldfoot, Alaska when a government truck U-turned in the road ahead, sending a muddy shrapnel of gravel rocks and shale blocks skidding into my spokes with metallic chime. It groaned to a rigid stop right in front of me, engine idling into a sombre whine. A middle-aged woman stepped out from behind the wheel, brushing her gloves off against the sides of her work pants. I pulled down my winter facemask and stole a glance at the license plate while she approached. ‘For federal use only’, it read.

The sky was impenetrably grey, temperature buried below freezing for days on end. She wanted to warn me about a wolf a few miles ahead exhibiting ‘strange’ behaviour. I wondered what constitutes strange behaviour for a wolf this close to the North Pole. “I don’t know what your deal is,” she said, emphasising the ‘deal’ while pointing at my bike mistrustingly, “or what you want to do with this information, but judging by the way it lunged at my truck and lashed out against passing semis, it suggests rabies and will come for you, too.”

Just days before, I’d flown 400 kilometres into the Arctic Circle, rebuilt my bicycle on an airstrip at the Arctic Ocean, and begun a two-year trek south for the bottom of Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego Archipelago. I’d been warned about bears, of course, expected them en masse and planned accordingly. But this was something else.

Call of the wild