Today starts with Alain giving me a refresher course on how to use the Magnum 44 in the (hopefully) unlikely event of a polar bear attack.  I remembered reading once that the best defense (if you don't have a gun) is to lie on the ground motionless, and that 95% of the time the bear would leave you alone.  Ignoring how difficult it would be to lie motionless, I'm now wondering how they came up with that statistic. 

We are now in a place, according to Alain and the people of Qanaaq, that nobody has ever been.  Our location can't be reached by dogsled, and there's no interest for the Inuit to come this far inland.  There's plenty of wildlife around--guinea fowls, rabbit, reindeer, and fox--as evidenced by the tracks in the fresh snow.  At one point today, we crossed the tracks of a bear, who was, fortunately, going in the other direction.  We do have a natural defense mechanism, of course, in that we haven't bathed or changed for nearly two weeks.  Our odor will surely chase even a bear away!

The edge of the icecap, where possibly no human has ever tread.