Visits to the North usually go well. But sometimes, they go to hell -- "that's no porcupine, it's a grizzly cub!" Here are 17 secrets from our experts to living through, and loving, your trip.

Roald Amundsen once said “adventure is just bad planning.” And sure enough, the old Norwegian was so well-prepared he made Arctic travel a snap. you MAY NOT be sailing the Northwest Passage, but it still pays to heed the advice of those who’ve gone before you. Up Here’s writers have explored nearly every corner of the North, on trips that have been incredible - and sometimes, incredibly bad. Here are 17 of their best cautionary tales. Follow their suggestions and your time in the North can be safe, sane and totally bug-free. OK, we’re just kidding about the last part.

Ask a local first
“Despite May’s long, warm days, the Department of Transportation website said the ice-crossing to Tsiigehtchic, NWT, was still open. The Dempster was rough but passable. Then we got to the crossing: overflow of indeterminable depth; ruts too deep for a pickup truck, let alone my minivan. But my promise to deliver a van-load of people clouded my judgment. I gunned it. We bounced and splashed and scraped over the barely-frozen Mackenzie. Two thirds of the way across, the van was high-centred – wheels in slush, underbelly on jagged ice. I laid in the icewater in jeans and a flannel coat and tried to dig us out with a flimsy window scraper. Eventually someone from Tsiigehtchic brought a truck down to the shore. He attached cables to chains to a tow strap to our rear axle and pulled us free. Then he gave me heck for driving on the river so late. I told him the website said it was fine. His response: ‘Shoot, I forgot to call those guys yesterday and tell them to close the road.’” -Loren McGinnis

Plan on delays
“Up here, everyone gets waylaid by the weather, even the Coast Guard. For a newspaper story one time, I hitched a ride on a Coast Guard icebreaker between the Nunavut communities of Iqaluit and Kimmirut – a two-day sail with a 30-minute return trip scheduled by helicopter. But as is common in August, southern Baffin Island was smothered by fog, which scrubbed all flights in or out of Kimmirut’s notoriously tricky airport. After a day of waiting for the chopper, the ship turned around and sailed for Iqaluit. I stayed on board, returning the slow way, my deadline blown. The lesson? Always, always schedule more time than you think you’ll need. And if possible, travel with Coast Guard cooks. I was thankful for those two extra days of good eating. -Chris Windeyer

Talk to strangers
“As a teenager my family and I embarked on a two-week canoe trip. We started just north of Mayo, Yukon and paddled down the Wind River to the Peel and then down the Peel to Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories. We ran out of food on about Day 12 and the fish just weren’t biting. We arrived in Fort MacPherson late in the evening – haggard and gaunt. We were met at the dock by Johnny Charlie, a local Gwich’in elder we’d hired to drive us down the Dempster Highway the next day. He informed us the grocery store was closed and our faces sank with despair. In the meantime we found a campsite and set up our tents. That night, as we fantasized about a feast, we heard the chugging of an old truck coming down the dirt road. It was Johnny, and he came bearing gifts – pork ribs, chocolate bars, Jiffy Pop, potatoes. We devoured the spread like ravenous huskies and took our plump stomachs to bed with smiles on our faces.” -Peter Jickling

Read the bear-safety pamphlet
“When I first visited the Yukon, my cousin took me on a three-day hike in Kluane National Park. He’d given me a brochure about bear safety before we left town, and I’d skimmed it quickly, but I didn’t take the possibility of an up-close encounter very seriously. So when we emerged from some thick brush halfway through our first day and found ourselves about 30 feet from a mother grizzly and her two cubs, I froze. I couldn’t remember a word of the advice in the pamphlet. Luckily my cousin was better prepared: He talked to the sow in a calm voice, reminded me not to run or turn my back, and got us both moving slowly backwards, away from the bears. The cubs were curious to get a better look at us, but the mother herded them in the opposite direction, and everyone – people and bears – walked away with no harm done. I haven’t come that close to a bear again since, but when I do, I’ll know what to do.” -Eva Holland

Pick up hitchhikers
“A couple summers ago I was driving along the remote Liard Trail when I saw a young guy thumbing on the side of the road. Since it’s the North, I was pretty sure he wasn’t a serial killer; I just figured he was having car trouble. I pulled over and invited him to hop in. Turns out he was from Siberia, where, as a little kid, he’d come across an old National Geographic with a photo of the Nahanni River’s Virginia Falls. For the past two years, he’d been saving up to go there. Finally, he made it to Fort Simpson, where he’d waited three weeks for an empty seat on a floatplane tour to the falls. Getting home turned out to be the bigger adventure: His attempts left him stranded on the roadside. »
Until I came along he’d spent three days in a pup tent, being harassed by mosquitoes and bison. He said to me: ‘Siberian highways: Much more developed than Liard Trail.’ I drove him all the way south to the Alaska Highway, where, I assume, he caught more rides and eventually flew home. He made my drive way more interesting. And, if I get stranded on my next Northern adventure, I know karma will be on my side.” -Alana Kronstal

Drop your prejudices
“Where I live, in Rankin Inlet, people live by fur. The fur on my parka-ruff increases its efficiency by about 30 per cent. At minus-40, I’m thankful for that. Seals are food here, and their skins make good clothing that lasts for years. We don’t kill them when they’re young, and most parts are used. Wonder why we don’t eat more fruits and veggies? Take a look at the prices in our grocery stores.” -Page Burt

Make friends with pilots
“It’s practically a given that if you’re in a small town, you’ll be sharing a hotel with a pilot. These people deserve your most careful social ministrations. They have access to fun and adventure. Once, while I was killing time in the Nunavut town of Baker Lake, some pilots let me ride along in an old DC-3 for a visit to a mining camp. We landed on an ice runway. The people meeting us had gathered on snowmobiles right beside it – a big mistake. The plane started sliding on the ice, skittering so close to the snowmobiles that one almost got clipped by our wing. Everyone was fine, and it was a total thrill. And it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t made friends with the pilots.” -Nathan VanderKlippe

Make friends with the cook, too
“Getting three square meals a day can be tricky in small Northern communities. There are no McDonald’s or Subways here. Usually the only restaurant is in the hotel, and it’s not open for your convenience, but for the cook’s. The first thing you should do after checking in is to get on a first-name basis with her. Once, while staying at a hotel in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, I made the mistake of not cozying up to the cook. I arrived home hungry at 7 p.m., only to find out dinner had ended at 6. The cook was still around, but she was packing up and wasn’t in the mood to feed me. I can’t say I blame her. So no dinner for me that night, and a lesson was learned.” -Darren Campbell

Embrace local culture
“While attending the Open Sky Festival in Fort Simpson, NWT, I went to watch a group of Dene women prepare a moosehide for tanning. They were keen to share their
skills and they invited me to participate. I hesitated, then put down my camera and rolled up my sleeves. One woman showed me how to scrape off the flesh from a fresh and 
pungent hide. Another had me scrape hair off a dried hide. Then I helped carry a slippery hide into the sun to dry on a rack. I worked alongside the women all afternoon and developed a new appreciation for the work involved in preparing a hide. It also gave me insights into the local people and culture. I never would have gotten that if I’d just been taking pictures.” -Helena Katz

Don’t be afraid to ask
“Last summer, I boarded a plane bound for Clyde River on Baffin Island. In Iqaluit, we were told the weather wasn’t looking great and we had a 50 per cent chance of landing in Clyde. I asked the airline attendant what he thought. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll make it,’ he said. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Before I knew it, I was standing in the airport in the next village north, Pond Inlet, clutching my backpack – a stranded traveller in the High Arctic. The manager said I could sleep in the airport, but I glanced at the metal benches and fluorescent lights and thought, ‘I can do better.’ I put on my brightest smile and hitched a ride with a French guy named Claude who took me to the airport-crew bunkhouse. It was locked, though, so Claude offered me a spot in his construction crew trailer – with 10 guys in close quarters. I graciously declined. ‘There’s one more place I can take you,’ he said, driving like a madman to a house on top of a hill overlooking the town. It was the home of Juana and Pat Fuentes, perhaps the only Chilean couple in Nunavut, who offered me their spare bedroom for the night. As I scarfed down homemade pizza speckled with peppers, visions of Hansel and Gretel danced through my head. Maybe it was their basset hound, Dino, or Juana’s desire to drive me around town snapping tourists shots of me and icebergs, but I felt at home in a community where I knew not a soul. The next day, at 5:30 a.m., Juana pressed a carving into my hand and Pat dropped me safely at the airport in time for my flight back to Clyde.” -Katherine Laidlaw

Pack the, um, essentials
“My first foray into the Northwest Territories’ remote wilderness was a 10-day kayaking trip through the East Arm of Great Slave Lake. The fact that I was a total rookie didn’t worry me as much as the realization that I’d forgotten toilet paper. As you can imagine, on the morning of Day Two I had to sheepishly ask our guide if she had an extra roll. You know that joke where a guy brings a pack of condoms to the pharmacy check-out and the clerk calls for a price check? This was no different. “Does anyone know where my dry-bag is – the one with all the TP? Pat here really needs some.” For the next nine days I rationed that roll the best I could. Still, on the final day, I ran out (granola will do that to you). I was determined not to ask again, though, so my extra pair of socks were put to good use.” -Patrick Kane

Check under your hood
“Last winter, in the dark of January, I drove alone from Yellowknife to Alaska. I wished I hadn’t. I began the 3,300-kilometre trip during a warm spell, so it took all day to notice that my car’s heater was broken. By next morning, the weather had turned; the temperature outside was minus-30. Inside the car, it was just as cold. Motoring down the Liard Trail, I donned Baffin boots, then my beaver hat, then my snowmobile suit and mitts. Eventually, I wrapped myself in a sleeping bag, with one foot sticking out to accelerate and brake. By frantically scraping ice from the windshield, I generated a little warmth. I stopped in tiny Fort Liard and bought a space heater, but when I plugged it into the cigarette lighter, the fuse blew. By Fort Nelson, in northern B.C., I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. I spent two days there getting the heater fixed. And it’s a good thing I did. My first day back on the road, in Watson Lake, Yukon, it was minus-54 out – the coldest temperature I’ve seen. The moral of the story is, if you’re doing a roadtrip, especially in winter, get a thorough tune-up and bring emergency supplies. Or maybe the moral is, don’t do roadtrips in winter.” -Aaron Spitzer

Be flexible
“Two summers ago, my boyfriend and I planned a trip I’d been dreaming about for years. We would sail to the far end of northern B.C.’s Tagish Lake to pay a visit to the mystical, abandoned castle-homestead of Ben-My-Chree. We set aside a week, packed our provisions and launched off from our home on Marsh Lake, just south of Whitehorse. But just a few kilometres down Tagish Lake, where it intersects with aptly named Windy Arm, we hit 40-knot headwinds. Our small boat, with limited sails, couldn’t hold up. We simply couldn’t make headway. So we tucked into the first sheltered cove, pulled up to a sandy shore and waited for the wind to die down. Four days later, we’d forgotten all about sailing. While hiking and exploring the area, we found hidden lakes, creepy abandoned cabins, mountain-ridge vistas and secret waterfalls. The winds never abated, so on our last day of the trip, we enjoyed record speeds on our downwind sail home.” -Katharine Sandiford

Drop your inhibitions
“I was barely off the plane in Iqaluit when someone invited me to ‘join the girls’ for a night of dancing at the local Legion hall. Back home, I’d faked colds, sprains, hernias – anything to avoid a dance floor. My booty simply doesn’t shake. It does, however, sort of jerk awkwardly along with my disco arms. This is a move my friends have dubbed ‘the Lauren.’ Pulling ‘the Lauren’ in front of an entire Arctic town didn’t seem like fun, but neither did staying in my room. I went. As it turned out, the dance floor was packed with Nunavummiut young, old, and ancient; I bumped along to Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’ with women triple my age. ‘The Lauren’ fit right in. That night, I made lifelong friends – ones who took me to all sorts of secret and special places in Iqaluit. In the following days, I scaled rocks, picked berries, and played golf in the tundra – and enjoyed many more nights of dancing.” -Lauren McKeon

Look out for your own safety
“No matter who’s giving the advice, remember – it’s your life. I’ve found that locals are often reluctant to deliver bad news. In Qikiqtarjuaq, Nunavut, I was looking for a place to camp and asked for advice from a guy at the national park office. He suggested the local ‘campsite’ – a patch of tundra beside the town dump. When I asked him if they ever saw bears in town, he said very few. A town map hung on the wall, dotted with pins marking bear sightings. I asked about a particularly dense cluster of pins. He paused and said, ‘That’s the dump.’ So, I repeated: Is it still a good idea to camp there? He paused, then suggested I camp in his aunt’s front yard. The following morning, a polar bear was spotted on the ice just offshore of town. Everyone gathered nervously on the main street, guns loaded.” -Margo Pfeiff

Dress for the season
“For years I worked at Klondike Rib & Salmon in Whitehorse, which is only open in summer. We had people coming in wearing parkas in July. And tourists are constantly shocked when you tell them it can reach 30 degrees in the Yukon. People should also bring sleep-masks to cover their eyes at night. The light drives them crazy. I was surrounded by southerners this year and they were all going nuts about the light.” -Sofia Fortin

Slow down
“As the editor of the Milepost guide to Northern highways, I’ve driven the Alaska Highway a lot. I used to be one of those drivers who did at least 700 kilometres a day and just stopped when I absolutely had to. I know people who’ve driven from Anchorage to Seattle in 72 hours. Then one summer I decided to do no more than 250 kilometres a day. It was a Zen-like experience. My acid reflux improved. I stopped all the time, picnicking at day-use areas or eating leisurely meals at highway lodges. I walked my dog along rivers and on paths through the woods. I stopped beside streams and read books. I watched wildlife and took photos. And every extra hour just enhanced the Alaska Highway experience.” -Kristine Valencia

Pick up the January/February issue of Up Here magazine to read more exclusive tips and tricks from our roster of seasoned Northern travellers.