The Route

The team will journey across Baffin Island through Auyuittuq National Park. Their travels will take approximately two weeks, depending on the weather and the conditions of the snow and ice. The team will begin their journey in the community of Qikiqtarjuaq and travel on skis over 100 miles across a stunning landscape of ice, rock, and sheer granite mountains to the community of Pangnirtung. All the while, they will be pulling their gear and food in pulks that, when loaded, weigh several hundred pounds each.

Established in 1976, Auyuittuq - an Inuktitut word meaning "land that never melts" - protects 19,089 square kilometers of glacier-scoured terrain. Located in the eastern Arctic, on southern Baffin Island, the park includes the highest peaks of the Canadian Shield, the Penny Ice Cap, marine shorelines along coastal fiords, and Akshayuk Pass, a traditional travel corridor used by the Inuit for thousands of years. Wildlife in the park is scarce due to a low vegetation supply, but the team may encounter lemmings, arctic hares, ermines, arctic foxes, barren-ground caribou, or polar bears during their journey. We hope, of course, that any polar bears we see are only from a very great distance!

With a passion for the Arctic, the environment, and education, Aaron has a long history of traveling within and working with communities in the circumpolar Arctic, including dogsledding expeditions through Canada, Russia, Alaska, Fennoscandia, and Greenland. He has completed education-related expeditions in the Arctic at least annually since 2004, tied to issues such as climate change, sustainability, and Arctic culture. Aaron is an associate professor in the Learning Technologies program at the University of Minnesota, holds the Bonnie Westby Huebner Endowed Chair in Education and Technology, and is a co-director of the Learning Technologies Media Lab. He is also a laureate of the prestigious humanitarian Tech Awards, and a fellow for the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. Aaron believes our personal actions have a huge impact on our environment and that we need to be cognizant of how we're all interconnected and what impacts we are making not only locally but worldwide. Aaron's academic writing focuses on how adventure learning impacts the classroom experience; designing and developing online learning environments; and K-12 technology integration. He's published over 60 journal articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings, and is co-author of the bestselling textbook Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching, and co-editor of the forthcoming The New Landscape of Mobile Learning: Redesigning Education in an App-based World.

Brad Hosack

Chris Ripken