TREK ACROSS ROOF OF WORLD

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 10 March 1934, Page 11

TREK ACROSS ROOF OF WORLD

T>EIXDEER. not prancing over the housetops, hut actually trekking across the roof of the world, is the story of the four-year journey of Mr Andrew Bahr and his herd of 3000 reindeer from near Nome to the further side of the mouth of the Mackenzie Stiver. The trip' began before Christmas, 1029, and is expected to end “anv time now,’’ states the ‘‘Christian Science Monitor.’' This is the herd bought of the Lnmeu Jteindcer Corporation of Nome by the Canadian Government for the purpose of introducing reindeer among the Eskimos of northern Canada just as thev were introduced into Alaska from ,Siberia in 1391. Mr Bahr. leader of the trek, is one of a group of Laplanders brought to Alaska to teach the natives how to herd reindeer. He has had with him on the journey a dozen helpers, includin«r women, Laplanders and Eskimos. Thev started with 3400 head of nundeer of which some have been used for food and others have been lost in the rigours of the journey, so that even with the many fawns that have increased the number, the herd will haidlv approximate 3000 on its arrival. The route has been, for the most pait

Four-Year Journey With Reindeer

through uncharted territory and a preliminary aeroplane trip was made by •Mr Bahr over part of the route and later a machine was sent to help his crossing the Brooks Mountains. Pood was cached ahead for the end of the first lap, but since that they have had to depend upon reindeer meat, ,game, and what other supplies rhe Lorn oils have been aide to get in to them. For months fit a time there has been no word of, or to, them. With tlieir sleds drawn by dogs or reindeer, the travelling has had to be done over the winter ice and snow, while the summer months were spent in. camp. Only hints of the hardships of the journey across this unknown furthest-north terrain have come out. •Sometimes for 4S hours at a time this handful of people have had to remain in their sleeping bags with the temperature 70 degrees below zero find in the face of driving snow.

They must wait until the ice over the wide delta is solid and covered with snow, as the reindeer cannot travel on glare ice. Then they will have to get word down to a wireless station 150 miles south at Aklawik before the outside world will know.