There’s a bear, JF pointed into the sun in the next valley. I eventually saw the big, squat shape lumbering away from us a few hundred metres distant. But its black, i said. Its definitely a bear, JF reiterated. The binoculars confirmed a blacky brown coloured bear, a massive one, but the low sun and the distance made it impossible to see details. They do get black bears in this area occasionally, maybe it was a black bear, or an unusual coloured polar bear? I guess we’ll never know.

It was a great day for wildlife. We were land bound for the 2nd day in a row but today was sunny and much more exploring friendly. A short lunchtime walk brought us to a fox den, with 2 red colored foxes with big bushy tails scampering around on a lush patch of green grass. We watched a young carribou nervously make its way towards the nutritious feast, his eyes on the tiny red mammal guarding it’s territory. The ungulate made a casual circuitous route to get closer to the grass. He got within a few metres, probably drooling already, before a small movement from the tiny fox had him taking off and settling for the shorter darker grass up the valley.

In an evening walk we saw the foxes again and then our mystery black bear. It’s time for an early night now. The wind has dropped a lot, its still a headwind but probably only around 10 knots. The forecast is for a switch to SE tomorrow so wee well wake up at 3am and if there are no whitecaps against us we’ll launch and hope for a long day covering lots of miles. 2 bad weather days has meant that we have only 4 days to get to Salluit which is about 150km away, and we need to get there on 1st August in time to organise our stuff and get to a postoffice! Fingers crossed for that SE wind tomorrow.

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