“Resourceful people can abandon their sleds, pack their stuff OVER the mountains (or go on coastal ice where the landscape is otherwise impassible), and build new sleds.”
Or they can sail their umiaks along the coast. Far easier.
“Probably best to slip past them during the winter when they’re holed up than in the Summer when they’re out there grabbing stuff to store up for winter.”
Are you aware of temperature conditions in the winter? You’re looking at -25 F for 6 months of the year. On average. Many lows in the -40s. This is just for the immediate coastal areas. Up the mountains would be even colder in the interior.
Summers you would see around +5.
If you sail the natives in the interior can’t catch you, you are too fast for them, and you can hunt. Keep the women or children in the big boats, and keep your supplies.
The inuit primarily eat seal and whale, anything they can catch along the coast and the ice. I know this is hard for us landlubbers to understand but they preferred to sail. It’s only been very, very recently that it’s easier to ship things via land than it is by sea, maybe in the last 150 years.
Sorry, highs of 40 degrees or so.
-50 F ain't no thang!
If you'd watch the last Iditorod you'd discovered that the sled dogs of the North can do much better than -50 F, and some white folk, only partially adapted to such temperatures, can at least survive it provided they have some degree of shelter ~ and plenty of spare dogs!
It isn't constantly cold all winter long ~ it comes in bursts and waves. You travel in between the really cold periods.