Animation Source Forums

First time posting a new topic.. Oh my!

Anyways, YES I AM AWARE THAT THIS TOPIC EXISTS: "Did Alue Go to Russia?" so don't tell me about it, or refer me to there please folks. I know. It's ancient. I want some new theories and thoughts on this subject. Plus that topic begins with a rather leading question. ;P

Ok! As some of you know I am writing a fanfiction on a sequel to WolfQuest called The Soul's Trail and I've just ended up calling Aleu and co.'s new home "the new lands" for lack of a better word.
Basically it would help me with the plot and story line if I knew where they actually could have gone. I'm wondering what you source-ers think? Where do you think the pack ended up?

But let us consider these things.THIS is a screenshot of the "new lands" as depicted in Aleu's trippy dream sequence. Assuming she really did see where the caribou went, and assuming they didn't all die trying to follow the caribou... Let's say they ended up there.
That place has trees and mountains- ruling out an island (I think). many of the small islands around Alaska have grassy hills but none on that side of Alaska have any trees what so ever. I mean I don't really know where Aleu left from and I know it's just a cheap cartoon direct-to-video sequel. Personally I don't think they went to Russia, I think they took a short cut to another part of Alaska.

But where do you think they most logically would have ended up?

lets take what we know

first off lets look where balto headed on the start
http://screencaps.us/200/2-balto2/full/ ... m-3134.jpg
now i don't know exactly where he's heading. north of the boat? south of the bout? some people should get where this is.

balto and aleu ended up around the mountains and eventually ended up near the canyons. aleu saw a vision where it led to what seemed to be a forest like island. no beach,
http://screencaps.us/200/2-balto2/full/ ... m-6860.jpg


this might might also help a little
http://screencaps.us/200/2-balto2/full/ ... m-7108.jpg

judging from the map I doubt the trip was as long as the serum run

https://www.travelalaska.com/Destinatio ... kaMap.ashx

compared to this

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... LM_map.jpg

now the wolves had to have had a short trip considering the temperature and lack of food they've ate. so in my opinion I'd say around the northwest. see that itty bitty lake above nome?

Personally I narrow it down to 6 possible places; look the places up on Google Maps, I can't figure out how to get a picture onto the forums
1. Imuruk Basin. A large lake in the centre of Nome County. This is my own favoured version of where she went. She crossed the lake and the pack went deeper into the heart of Alaska where game and resources are more plentiful. It's also a realistic distance across for a pack to float across on some ice.
2. Golovnin Lagoon. She could have crossed this Cape and gone to the other side. The Cape (not sure what the exact name is for the land) has many headlands, which would make sense considering the wolfpack's territory is based around a headland.
3. Norton Bay. This bay is almost entirely frozen over every winter (how the team crossed it during the 1925 serum run); Wolf Quest is set during what seems like late summer/early Autumn ("that wind is the sign that winter's coming early"), which supports the fact that an ice bridge is how they cross the water in the first place.
4. Port Clarence. This is also a piece of land that has many of the headlands in the pack's territory.
5. Russia. I don't really see the possibility of her going to Russia. Not only is it an unrealistic distance for a wolfpack to drift across (it would take at least a few days/weeks for the ice to drift the 100-so miles towards Russia, and a wolfpack clustered on a tiny piece of ice for that long... yeah, not gonna end well.
6. One of the small islands around the coast. There's dozens of small islands around the coast near Nome; Sledge Island, King Island, St. Lawrence Island (although a bit far for consideration), the Diomede Islands (between Russia and Alaska in the Bering Straight). The land where the caribou migrated to is shown as a pretty small island, unless there's more land behind the part of land that we see in the film.
Hope you take some of them into consideration, happy writing

Thanks! That lake looks cool- but remeber the orca? I don't think it could be a lake because of that whale...

That's actually true, I forgot about that. You've just poisoned like half my theories that are in my unfinished WQ fanfics. Haha

But yeah, taking the orca into account, she definitely crossed the sea.

I've always assumed they ended up on a small island near the coast, though I'm not sure about the orca. It's possible the coastal waters are really deep there. As far as what happens to them, that will be in the new version of my fanfic series. ;D

One thing is for certain, they were defiantly on the Bering sea when Aleu and the pack sailed away on the ice boat. But as to where they ended up? They either ended up in Russia, which was fifty-five miles away from Nome (I know they weren't in Nome, but they were defiantly somewhere on the west coast of Alaska),St. Lawrence island or Sledge island. Another thing to think about is the River Aleu followed. Whether or not the production team was referencing an actual river, it could of be a clue.

I don't necessarily think they ever were on the Bering Sea. And there is no clear indication from the movie itself that they ever approached it. Tibb and I talked about this years ago (as inferred in Eska's original posting here).


I've seen the Bering Sea for myself (have been in Nome and along the Seward Peninsula shoreline). And, while it is relatively calm when frozen over, or choked with field ice and floes (near the shoreline...and even there, when a strong storm hits, it can shatter ice more than a foot thick, and toss it up into the land in a way which most people wouldn't believe if they hadn't seen it or at least pictures of it. What is known as "ivu" by the Inupiat people), it can also be one of the most stormy, turbulent and violent bodies of water on the planet (apart, perhaps, from the Strait of Magellan and the Drake Passage, around the tip of South America). Anyone who's seen an episode of "Deadliest Catch" would be immediately aware of what I mean.


Granted, we're talking about an animated movie here, but even in the very short ninety miles' distance between Nome (which sits almost at the westernmost edge of the Seward Peninsula) and the very eastern tip of Siberia, the crossing would be deadly. And the wolves didn't enter any body of water right outside of Nome for sure. No, I tend to think, as others indicated, that the wolves crossed some other body of water...either a lake, or even the Norton Sound (a huge body of water south of Nome, which borders the Seward Peninsula, and which many mushers use (and have used for more than a century) to shortcut the trip to and from Nome. It's a much calmer body of water, because it's surrounded on three sides by land, though it is very deep and VERY big!


That seems to make much more sense to me.


As to the orca, I should note that that species, and others (grays, belugas, humpbacks) have all been spotted off the coastline of the Seward Peninsula and the Norton Sound. And there are many small islands along there. However, the coast is not as rocky or mountainous (and the inland areas not so forested) as the movie would lead viewers to believe. That is a fiction. The kind of terrain and flora you see in the movie would only be evident either much further inland, at that latitude, or much further south if it is to be seen along the coast. MUCH further south. Far too south for any activity seen in the movie (or journeys).


Note this map of the sound, and the position of Nome. The sound empties into the Bering Sea, which sits off from the left side of the map and beyond its edge:

(I really wonder where this notion came from, which so many fans of the Balto movies seem to have, that Aleu led Nava's wolf pack across a seemingly magical ice path to Siberia. And that the caribou would have headed that way too. Granted, again, we're talking about an animated movie which is very unrealistic to begin with, and that most fans are very young when they first view this movie, and have absolutely no personal or direct experience with, or knowledge of, that region of the world, but it just doesn't make any sense. I mean no slight against anyone of course. But I really have no idea where this magical ice path to Siberia across the Bering Sea came from...)

Sorry for the repetitive post here, but this topic sure died in a hurry...

I don't really think it did... I asked a question and got some answers.
What more is needed on a forum question? lol

I don't think they went to the little islands, there's not many mountains and trees there, but maybe up towards the Brooks range. Maybe around the Noorvik area?
Or maybe in the complete opposite direction down south.

Since I'm not that knowledgeable about the area I figured, since they near a large body of water, that it was likely the Bering Sea. Others are probably thinking the same thing.

Heading southward does seems like the more logical answer. If Aleu and the pack were to drift off into the Bering Sea, they likely would have been killed.

Discussion? lol

Which I kind of presumed was the point here.


*BOOM* Details. lol

That was the point of continuing this. Getting down to possibilities, even if this is getting into the area of detail that was probably never intended by the production. Still, discussing this is at least one way of keeping an otherwise dead forum from staying dead.

So I believe they stayed in Alaska, but I guess the real question is where Aleu left from and which direction she went... Does anyone have an good evidence of that?
I understand speculation and that's good, but does anyone have evidence from the movie they think pertains to where Aleu left from?
What was that about a river? I tried looking some rivers up, but I wasn't really finding much.

I mean it's always entirely likely that the production crew didn't have any real ideas in mind. lol

Well, again, since the movie is so inaccurate in presenting terrain and flora for Alaska, it is nearly impossible to speculate on where they started out from. All we know is that the territory of Nava's pack is along a rocky coastline in Alaska, not too far from Nome (a distance which we presume a canine could reach within a day or so, if we follow the story of Balto 2 accordingly).


Given the pics I'll provide, as real-world examples--below, it will be evident that the production people went for dramatic images of the Alaskan coast in creating the scenery for Balto 2, rather than for regional realism. They didn't really factor nearly as much research into it as was done for the first Balto movie, and possibly the third too (because they did a better job with the terrain around Nome in Balto 3 than in Balto 2).


What does this mean? I guess it means we, as fans, have to make it up as we go along. There really is no real-world counterpart, within a day or two's run of Nome (even by a canine) which could equate with the rocky coastline and heavy forests seen in the Balto 2 movie. Both Aleu and Balto would have had to run (and/or walk) for several days, I'd presume, to cover the distance needed to reach that kind of terrain. And since neither Universal Studios, nor Phil Weinstein, provided any geographical or municipal bearing other than Nome itself, then it comes down to fans simply imagining that the kind of taiga forest and rocky coastline (and mountains) seen, in the real world, along the southeastern end of Alaska can, for the sake of the Balto movie universe, all of a sudden appear much closer to Nome, no matter how unrealistic that is.


Here are some shots of the region around Nome, and around the Norton Sound, assuming that distance. As you'll see, it's mostly flat, open scrub tundra, bordered by rolling hills and then, eventually, mountains as you go miles inland (though the hills and mountains are visible from the coastline). Almost all these regions have changed very little in appearance since the 1920s, believe it or not. This is photographic evidence of why what is seen in the Balto 2 movie doesn't help at all in trying to pinpoint a location comparable with one in real-world Alaska:


1. the Nome region (from the air, showing the flat scrub tundra extending out to the foothills approximately 4 miles east of town):




2. the area inland of the coast (eastward...at least a half hour's drive by car):




3. Unalakleet, from the air (one of the towns along the sound):




4. the region around Shaktoolik (another town on the sound):




The only rocky area along the coastline anywhere near Nome is a long, narrow rocky prominence called "Cape Nome", which juts out to the edge of the coast, and right down to a roadway which runs along the shoreline (hugging the rocks as it curls around it). The prominence butts up against gently rising ground which becomes scrub tundra for miles. Much of the prominence was mined by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for huge rocks, after the 1920s, for use as a retaining seawall for the town of Nome. This is how it looks in the winter (the road is covered up by snow and ice, and the Norton Sound is just off the picture to the right. Cape Nome sits, if you'll look back at the map I provided earlier, almost equidistant between Nome and Solomon. As the road (in red) rounds the bend, it leaves the Bering Sea coastline, and enters the Norton Sound coastline, and turns sharply east:




The kind of terrain and coastline we're looking at in the movie is something you could really only see along the Alaska Peninsula and around the Gulf of Alaska, which is hundreds of miles away from Nome (as noted in the map below the picture):