The harsh economics of the Arctic

As if the snow and the cold and the dark weren’t bad enough, a coyote sneaked into the cooking tent and chewed through the camp’s electrics. It blew the fuse on the fridge-freezer and ruined months’ worth of food. The three geologists who were living in the camp, just off the Dempster Highway, an ice road into Canada’s Northwest Territories, had to get a new generator. That meant a week-long round trip to the nearest town, Whitehorse, 900km away.