They knew that we had a record of putting half-serious schemes into practice and the

They knew that we had a record of putting half-serious schemes into practice; and the particular risks involved in our project made it seem, even by the standards of crazy projects, insanely reckless Yet to us it seemed wholly reasonable. Now that our daughter Montaine was 18 months old, what could be more natural than for Diane, my wife, and I to take her with us as we spent the best part of a year crossing Canada's frozen north by horse and by sleigh? To "civilised" modern Europeans, putting the health and safety of a small child at risk is one of the greatest crimes it is possible to commit, and some people seemed to feel that our plan was faintly obscene We saw it the other way around. The great, empty, mountainous spaces of the far north are the most beautiful places on earth. The real crime against children is not to expose them to such experiences, and to cosset them against nature until they are incapable of discovering them for themselves. In any case, we are not fools. I have years of experience of Arctic expeditions; most recently I had spent a year and a half in Siberia, among the Evenes, one of the last nomadic peoples of the far north. One does not survive such adventures by taking risks blindly.

I would not expose myself - let alone my daughter - to any dangers I did not feel confident of mastering. What made me feel that our expedition was feasible was the fact that most of those 18 months with the Evenes had been spent travelling, by reindeer sleigh; several Evene families had had young children with them, including four under the age of two, and they had been able to keep them safe and happy. What we were proposing was something which they - and other native Arctic tribes - had been doing successfully for centuries.The most obvious danger was the cold. At -30 C, let alone -50 C, there is a constant and often dramatic risk of frostbite and hypothermia even for the most robust adult: a few minutes of insufficient protection can be dangerous With a toddler, the margin of error is much smaller. Then there was the isolation: hundreds of miles and maybe several weeks' journey from the nearest outpost of civilisation. None the less, on 25 June 1994, we found ourselves at the end of a dirt-track a few miles north of Prince George in British Columbia, heading for Dawson City on the Alaskan frontier, nearly 2,000 miles to the north.

After an inauspicious beginning - a badly balanced bag slipped, causing the pack-horses to panic and leaving us with all our possessions scattered over hundreds of square yards of trackless forest - we settled down to the first stage of the journey: the 300-mile trek from Prince George to Lake Thukada in the northern Rockies, where we planned to await winter.In those early days the conditions were, in theory, easy: a green mixture of forest, riverside and swamp. We rode as a caravan: me at the head, Diane next with Montaine behind her on a specially designed double saddle, and then two pack-horses, with our dog Otchum, a Siberian laika, scampering between. Montaine seemed fascinated by the strange landscape - so different from the much tamer countryside of our native Sologne in central France - and was constantly pointing at geese and ducks, or laughing as Otchum chased beavers into the river The one drawback was the rain. On our first evening, after we had grilled freshly-caught trout over our fire in a glade full of wild-flowers, the rain started to fall, and we huddled into our tent, with Montaine lying between us in her little sleeping-bag and Otchum rolled into a ball guarding the entrance. It did not stop raining for a week.Bit by bit, we worked our way northwards and upwards into the Rocky Mountains, skirting lakes, crossing rivers and high passes, getting into our stride.

Montaine seemed delighted by the ever-changing landscape, and we began to wonder why everyone had made such a fuss about our taking her On the tenth day, we received a sharp reminder. As we made our way through a grove of alder trees, we suddenly came face-to-face with a large grizzly bear, just 20 metres away. My horse reared, throwing me off; the pack- horses fled in terror, taking the other two horses in their wake (luckily, Diane and Montaine had dismounted just moments before). We were helpless: my Winchester was still in its holster, which was tied to my saddle. For a while, the grizzly sniffed the air, still standing (a sign of anger), growling and puffing. Then, just as we thought it must be on the point of charging, it dropped on to all fours and walked slowly away.It took five hours to find the horses and gather our belongings, which were scattered over several kilometres, and our food had been pillaged by a wolverine. Montaine's dehydrated milk reserve was safe, but we would have to ration the remaining food, and try to live off the land - fish, partridge, mushrooms, berries - to compensate for our loss.

Even at its gentlest, the far north is a dangerous place.As the weather worsened, progress became more difficult. Sometimes we had to wade through rivers with Montaine perched on our shoulders; sometimes the currents were too strong for this to be safe, and we had to make huge detours Yet Montaine seemed as happy as we had ever known her. She could tell the difference between an elk and a caribou; she loved to spot black bears stuffing themselves with bilberries; she even imitated the cries of geese. When our morale wavered, it was she who cheered us up.In mid-August, after seven weeks of walking, we reached Lake Thukada, 1,400m above sea level By these sapphire-blue waters, we would await winter. For a month, we built a cabin: cutting down trees, stripping them, using a horse to drag logs - and all the while keeping an eye on the increasingly adventurous Montaine. With a few weeks to spare before winter set in, we completed a beautiful hut, 30sq m in size, insulated with moss and perfectly waterproof; and, shortly before the lake froze over, we had our last rendezvous with civilisation: two friends arrived by seaplane with the dogs - nine of Otchum's brothers and sisters - , a sleigh and two tonnes of dehydrated dog-food.