Man's 10-hour Arctic trek saves family

[Swede]

When the seal fat for the fire ran out, they'd been sleeping for five nights in an igloo in the middle of a trackless Arctic waste.

With a broken-down snowmobile and their cache of fish running out, Laimiki Innuarak, 63, decided he had no choice left -- he had to walk until he reached a settlement, or he, his wife Rachel Aglak, and their adopted four-year-old son Noah Jonah Aglak would die in the freezing polar dark.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2f1bd857-0abb-4452-8f49-8da03b28b4fc&k=40320

[malaise]

1. A lovely ending

Only the strong survive.

[SeattleGirl]

2. That is a great story, Swede.

It's sad, of course, that the family got stuck, but dang, I'm so glad Mr. Innuarak was able to make it to his sister's house, and that the rescuers were able to find the wife and child.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. what a beautiful, heroic man

gives me faith that the human species will survive. :)

[grasswire]

4. wow

In a genealogy book about one of my family lines, there's a record about an ancestor in the early 1800s living in the frozen north in Canada with his wife and children who set out to find food as they were starving to death. When the food at home was gone, mother and the children could only wait, and pray. Oddly enough, the book goes, in the morning, on the stoop, was laid a freshly caught rabbit. They ate it. The book says that a fresh-killed rabbit was on the stoop often to save the family from death until Papa returned ten days later. The rabbits were attributed to the family's cat.

Sounds romantic, and I have no idea if it is true. But it makes nice family lore.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. I'd bet on a Native American. Not the first such story I've heard. nt

[grasswire]

8. I never thought about that.

Thanks.

[Xipe Totec]

5. If you want a definition of heroism, this is it

Thanks for sharing this story.



"Their trouble began when they had to made a detour overland because warmer temperatures had made the ice soft."

Time is running out...

[karlrschneider]

7. Yep, just like they did before snowmobiles were invented.

;-)