Our destination was 135 km (84 mi) west: the Tanquary Fiord Warden Station. As we hiked, the terrain alternated between gravel and sand dunes to hillsides littered with shattered green and red shale. Sometimes we were accompanied by our own entourage of big, hairy mosquitoes. At other times, we laboured across deep, spongy tundra, teetering step after step atop cauliflower-sized grassy hummocks. There were countless glacial rivers to ford, some thigh-deep and carrying ice chunks that bruised our shins. That’s when a reward of a cup of hot chocolate was outback bliss.

In the absence of human predators, Quttinirpaaq’s critters were astonishingly tame. It felt magical, as if we’d stumbled into some Arctic Eden. A shaggy white female Arctic wolf trailed us for an entire afternoon. She stayed about 30 m (98 ft) away and watched us with curiousity. When we stopped, she pretended to snooze among the rocks as if she hadn’t noticed us. A long-tailed jaeger hovered at eye level in front of Philip to keep him from stepping on her eggs. A baby caribou in search of his mother came within arm’s length. We saw troupes of Arctic hares the size of large cats running on their hind legs as they do only in the High Arctic. Sometimes they are so abundant on Ellesmere, they travel in packs of thousands.

One morning, I startled a family of Ptarmigan, “Arctic grouse,” that were so well-camouflaged their chicks looked like rocks with legs. We encountered Arctic foxes and had a rare glimpse of endangered Peary caribou, tiny creatures—the bulls weigh only 70 kg (154 lbs)—that look as though they should be pulling the sleighs of Santa’s elves. Muskox, great shaggy beasts with curled horns (and highly coveted cashmere like downy fur called qiviuk, were a regular sighting, sometimes too close for comfort. One big male sauntered near our tent one day. That he was not amused by our presence was clear from a threatening display of sniffing, stomping, twirling and snorting as we scrambled—hearts in our throats—up a cliff. Finally, after a standoff of several hours, he turned and sprinted off.