Editor’s Note: This is the first of several articles about Jon Pelham’s trip to the Arctic in 1989. We hope you enjoy them.

PART 1. THE SETTING

It is my sense that most butterflyers would rather visit the tropics than the atctic. The wildly diverse, numerous and incredibly colorful butterflies of the tropical regions beckon those interested in butterflies for all the obvious reasons. I am often asked if I would like to visit the tropics. I must reply…Nope! From the titne I was first instat, I have been fascinated by the dull, obscure and frequently poorly-known butterflies that live on the very fringe of livability, at high latitudes. For me, it is in the Arctic that new discoveries bring understanding that sutures with what I know of my temperate home.

Thus it came to pass that I generated an opportunity to visit the Yukon Territory in Canada in 1989. For three months we prepated equipment, supplies and itinerary. Our ttip began on the first of June and we returned home on the tenth of July. I will relate various of our experiences in a serial presentation. If I do my job well, you will want to visit the Arctic; I’ll see if I can arrange it!

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

Lars Crabo. Some of you have heard me speak of Lars, always with great respect. What else can you give someone dedicated to studying Noctuid moths? His journey to the moths is the path oft tread. He began as a butterflyer; to this day he has a good knowledge of butterflies. His special interest, Noctuid moths, are a most numerous and troublesome group of organisms. They seem impossible to identify.

Maybe someday Lars will create a “Field Guide to the Noctuid Moths”. I am not holding my breath. Everyone who looks for caterpillars comes across larvae that they hope are butterflies, only to have me pronounce them “Noctuids”. Lars studies them assiduously. He is “Crazy for Noctuids” as we are “Crazy for Butterflies”.

Jon and Sigrid Shepard. While not a single entity, it is difficult to mention one without the other. Sigrid is an amazing person, lucky to be alive. You have heard the story of the miner taking a canary in a cage down into the mine to alert the miners to undetectable toxic gases. Sigrid is our “canary”, sensitive to very small amounts of toxin in air, food and water. She has been known to become comatose over monosodium glutamate in Chinese food ‘Ibis seems remarkable in light of the fact that she is so robust in every other way. Pity the fool choosing to argue with her! I have and regret it still; me, Pelham! The list of her accomplishments is too long, so I only mention that she is the author of several cookbooks. She can cook, and I am here to testify that her preparations are wondrous! Many is the time I have feasted on Sigrid’s finest. Her meals are an integral part of our arctic adventure. So are mine, but in an entirely different context Jon Shepard is the dean of Northwest lepidopterists, and by that I do not mean he is simply the oldest. Whenever Jon and I get together, there are the most intense conversations, complete with blue sparks and ozone. These times are some of the most pleasant I have known; they are full of arcane butterfly references, personal history and hilarity born of the many years we have know each other. He and Sigrid are my good friends.

Kenelm Philip. There is also too much to say about this fellow; I don’t know as much about him as I do Lars and the Shepards. I first met him at a National Lepidopterist’s Society meeting in Corvallis in 1967. Since then he has become the leading authority on arctic butterflies of North America. He is full of information (and other things!). It was our great good fortune to meet him in the Richardson Mountains; it was unplanned. He is “Crazy for Butterflies”.

Glenn Morre!. A friend of Lars’. He is also “Crazy for Butterflies”, and likes a good aperitif. He was good company in the woods.

PART 2. A VIGNETTE

To pique your interest, I relate one particular highlight from our trip. From the ninth to the twentieth of June, in the Ogilvie Mountains we had incredible weather, and sampled butterflies continuously. We were tired! We began at Windy Pass in the Ogilvie Mountains and expanded in several directions, eventually arriving in the Richardson Mountains on the twentieth. Much will be revealed about this period, but one moment stands out.

The journey from the Ogilvies to the Richardsons is long, with few diversions. It seemed we were “driven” to get there, pushing ourselves to the limit of our endurance. We arrived late in the day on the twentieth, and prepared our camp at a “famous” locality on the Dempster Highway.

Kilometer 413 is not especially romantic, either in name or appearance. It is a “locality” primarily because there is a gravel pit supplying the local road maintenance crews, thus it is a good spot to set up camp. The Richardsons are an uplifted range of sedimentary rocks, canted at more than forty degrees from horizontal. They run in a north to south axis, and the Dempster Highway runs parallel for nearly half their length, whereupon it crosses them into the Northwest Territories. They are well eroded, providing spur ridges running east to west, with small streams between them. KM 413 is at a point between two of these ridges as they descend to the arctic wet tundra. The ridges themselves ascend from wet tundra, through dry tundra to a barren, lifeless expanse that resembles the lunar surface in appearance.

Soon after setting up camp, we ran into Ken Philip along the road. What a surprise! He naturally fell in with the good company of souls devoted to the study of butterflies. Sigrid prepared what must be considered an exotic meal in this arctic clime. Ken deferred; he is a “meat-and-potatoes” sort of fellow, at least when it comes to meals. Dinner and conversation appeal to me at any time anywhere, but I cannot think of a time where I enjoyed it more than this evening in a gravel pit at 660° N latitude.

It grew late, and since there was little collecting to be done, a walkabout was definitely in order. The sun, though relatively low on the horizon, still gave us late afternoon illumination. Lars, Glenn and I climbed to the adjacent ridge to take advantage of the view. What a view it was! To the north and south of us were series of ridges, each like the one we stood upon, as far as we could see. To the west, a lowland of boggy tundra, with meandering streams and ten billion mosquitoes. To the east (and up and up) were the Richardsons, a barren landscape amazing to those of us accustomed to a planet so full of life. Our spirits soared!

Glenn, an energetic and ebullient fellow, suggested that no finer place existed to celebrate the summer solstice. The only thing missing was the proper libation, and the tw:inkle in Glenn’s eyes suggested that a solution existed near at hand. After a pell-mell descent, bouncing, sliding and bounding, Glenn frantically disgorged the contents of his pack onto the ground. With an unheard (but clearly visible) “Aha!” he turns again to ascend to us, with Jon and Sigrid trailing (Ken was “somnolent”).

With the good fortune and the timing that comes with serendipity, we rejoined near midnight. Glenn plied us with a fine brandy, and we toasted the longest day as well as our company. For all the obvious reasons, this moment lives with me still.

PREPARATION

Our trip was planned well in advance. We prepared all the food, equipment, maps we needed. We spent several months scouring the available literature for info1mation as to where and when we should be. Finally; we sought and received all the advice and insight that Jon Shepard could give us regarding places of special concern. As we began our journey, we realized that many decisions about where to stop along the way would be made according to our own experience and the weather.

Our route was from Seattle to Vancouver, thence north up the Fraser River Valley, passing through Hope, 100 Mile House, Williams Lake, Quesnel, Prince George, until we arrived at the beginning of the Alaska-Canadian Highway at Dawson Creek The plan was to avoid diversions in the early part of the trip, so that we might spend some time in the Peace River District of British Columbia, in the vicinity of Dawson Creek From there we expected to stop next in the vicinity of Stone Mountain Provincial Park, where we were to do some exploration for Jon Shepard. After this last site, there were no planned stops, save for rest, until we arrived in the Ogilvie Mountains, on the Dempster Highway. Remarkably, our itinerary fell right into place. We left Seattle at noon, the first of June 1989 and arrived at Windy Pass in the Ogilvie Mountains early on the morning of the sixth of June. There was much between, as I will relate in future articles.

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