Baffin Island

I went to Peru with Josh Wharton.

I went to Baffin Island with Christina Loosli.

That was an amazing trip.

Blew my mind.

In the same way, there was perhaps a solid causeway of land from Canada to Europe reaching out across the northern Atlantic.

Baffin Island, and other islands of the Canadian North Sea, the great subcontinent of Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and the British Isles, all formed part of this continuous chain.

As the last of the great changes, there came the Ice Age, which profoundly affected the climate and soil of Canada, and, when the ice retreated, left its surface much as we see it now.

during this period the whole of canada from the atlantic to the rocky mountains lay buried under a vast sheet of ice heaped up in immense masses over the frozen surface of hudson bay country the ice from its own dead weight slid sideways to the south as it went it ground down the surface of the land into deep furrows and channels it cut into the solid rock like a moving plow and carried with it enormous masses of loose stone and boulders which it threw broadcast over the face of the country these stones and boulders were thus carried forty and fifty and in some cases many hundred miles before they were finally loosed and dropped from the sheet of moving ice In Ontario and Quebec, and New England, great stones of the glacial drift are found which weigh from 1,000 to 7,000 tons.

So snow geese in the mid-continent, at least on Victoria Island, looked really, really productive.

Okay.

What are some of the other areas maybe that contribute to information about snow goose populations is it just victoria island

no for mid-continent um uh there's west hudson bay and we we kind of skipped over this but unfortunately for like three of our eastern eastern crews around the hudson bay so south hampton island baffin island and the west hudson bay in ontario um all of our banding was canceled this year due to helicopter issues and logistical constraints and so we didn't get to check on some of those really important areas baffin south hampton which is like coral harbor area um produce a lot of birds.

And we didn't get to check on those this year because of logistical constraints.

So didn't get too much from the east, but Victoria Island, Banks Island has abandoned crew and a research group there.

How

about Baffin Island in Canada is the fifth largest.

Really? And there you go.

That just gave me the top five.

LAUGHTER

Yeah, I guess that's my first memory, but really the pivotal moment in my life was going to a bush school through University of Manitoba when I was in my undergrad, and I went up to Pangertung Nunavut on Baffin Island, and I was doing Inuit studies in environmental science, and that's where it occurred to me that we Southerners had such a huge impact on...

these remote communities, their main food source was being impacted by PCBs and DDT.

And that's where I kind of thought I would go down a water toxicology, water chemistry route.

She has also done various ultramarathons and has been on multiple expeditions to some of the most remote places on Earth, including places like the Atacama Desert and the Canadian Arctic.

In this episode, Mason and Valerie explore Valerie's seven-day expedition across Baffin Island on skis, made even more impressive by the fact that only a few months before that expedition, she was diagnosed with cancer and was going through chemotherapy.

I hope this episode encourages someone out there today.

Here's Mason.

Which one do you like more? I think the really cold temperatures.

Yeah, but they both provide really interesting challenges, but I think the cold is my go-to.

Well, speaking of that, nine years after this trip to Chile, you are getting ready, you know, when you're preparing for this, I know you did it, but to cross a portion of Baffin Island.

Can you tell us a little bit about the island and what you were planning to do? But what makes this place so special and so unique?

So with the, with the Gogarth accident, I was smashing myself up, but I, I, I was back on the rock within 10, within six months and, and, and fully, fully kind of climbing again.

I went to Maru, I went to, I went to Trango Tower and Baffin Island.

But in 1998, when I, when I, I had my massive brain injury on the totem pole.

So the totem pole, I'll just give you a bit of context, eh? Because the totem pole is in Tasmania.

Question number eight.

Mount Odin is the highest peak on what northern Canadian island, the largest island in Canada? That Canadian island is Baffin Island.

Baffin Island.

Number nine.

The Philippines consists of more than 7,000 islands, but more than half of its population lives on which island? The correct answer here is Luzon.