"There are no roads, there are no picnic tables, there's nothing except the way this world was 2,000 or 3,000 years ago," he said. "In our short time here today, we've seen caribou, we've seen jaegers, we've seen eagles, we've seen Arctic terns and ptarmigans. And we've only been here a few hours. That's awesome."
Seeing the caribou making their way through the valley is one of the reasons Spener keeps coming back.
"On the last trip up here, we had somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 caribou come through our camp," he said. "I was sitting on a stool with my camera trying to take a picture of a snowy owl. And I turned around, and they were there. And I tell you, the smells, the snorting, the clamping of the hooves, the grunting of the calves, and they just kept coming and coming and coming. And when they were gone, you wondered if it was real.
