Alaska Snowmobiling 2
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The call of the wild can be irresistible. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is the Weather Notebook. As correspondent Amy Mayer explains today, one Alaskan retiree answers that call every spring by logging many miles and tracks on his snowmobmile in the Great North.

Roger Siglin points to spots on a circumpolar map that he hopes to visit this spring. Thick black lines highlight the 9 long distance trips the retired biologist has already made in the region. In all, he and some friends have driven 13-thousand miles in the far north.

"We just look at a map of northern Alaska or northern Canada and say gosh, it'd be interesting to drive from here to there."

And by drive he means on a snowmobile, across the tundra where there are no roads.

"We love the sense of adventure, taking off into country we really know very little about, other than what we can read from a map. We love the stunning beauty of the arctic in the springtime when they days are long and the sun is bright."

Traveling on frozen rivers and lakes and the Arctic Ocean, they are surrounded by snow.

We don't usually see much except the country. It's amazing how you can travel huge distances and crest a hill and see hundreds of square miles of snow and not a single thing moving in it, even though you see tracks all the time.

Encounters are rare - whether with people or wildlife. Siglin says he's seen just 3 wolves, a couple of wolverines, one grizzly bear and some migrating caribou. On this year's 24-hundred mile journey from the mouth of Canada's Mackenzie River on the arctic coast to a Hudson Bay village almost 1000 miles north of Minneapolis, Siglin says he doesn't expect they'll meet anyone. Fortunately, he finds great company in the beauty and nature of the tundra.

Thanks today to correspondent Amy Mayer of Fairbanks, Alaska. And to Subaru of America and the National Science Foundation for their generous support of the Weather Notebook.