No caribou were harmed in the making of this memory

Well, we carried around our rifles for three days and called it good. Not only did we not see any caribou, we didn't see anything that could crawl, walk or fly until we got back to the car (two ravens and a family of ptarmigan were hanging out by the haul road). 

From the tracks and turds we figured the herd had been through the area in the last week.

 

Scat+wind=flying buttresses

Do you see anything Robert? 

The snow conditions varied from wind-scoured dunes to deep fluffy wallows.

Whole sections of the hillslope were trampled out like this where the caribou had hoofed down to the lichen and moss below. You could see tracks from fox, hare, and weasel that came in afterward to take advantage of the exposures.

 We skied down a narrow canyon to check for caribou. We then skied back out.

 There was absolutely no wind (even our frosty tent fly didn't make any noise through the night). The northern lights were bright enough to see by, not that anything was moving in the Chandalar Valley.

Besides us shuffling from the tent to the pee spot and back.

Robert is a big Dune fan too, so on our way back to the car, we pretended like we were Fremen wearing stillsuits dodging Harkonnen thopters and watching for worm-sign. We didn't see any worms.

Back in the trees on the way home. Some of the Black Spruce were more snow than tree.

For the complete "hunt" pictures click here.