Everchanging arctic climate conditions continue to negatively impact the habitat of the polar bear. The changes cause them to search for food outside of their traditional hunting grounds and potentially encounter humans in locations where interactions weren’t previously documented. One such occurrence in 2018 found a female polar bear at Summit Science Station near the center of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) which is over 300 km from the closest traditional food source. In an attempt to mitigate the safety concern posed by potential interactions, the U. S. National Science Foundation-Office of Polar Programs-Arctic Sciences-Research Support and Logistics Program (NSF-OPP-ARC-RSL) has sponsored an effort to evaluate new technologies for use as a perimeter monitoring tool around remote arctic research camps. Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), a technology often used for perimeter detection in high security areas, uses fiber optic technology to sense mechanical vibrations due to seismic or acoustic sources, including foot-steps. The systems are typically very sensitive and can not only be used to detect an intrusion, but often characterize the type of intrusion. Sensor ground coupling in soil is well understood for these systems; however, use in arctic conditions with direct snow coupling is not. A range of human foot pressures was used to simulate foot pressures of various sized polar bears. The very large surface area of the polar bear foot when considered over three points of contact for a walking quadruped, results in a similar foot pressure when compared to the single point of contact of a walking human. Using polar bear analogues, we demonstrate DAS performance in direct snow coupling, evaluate the loss in system sensitivity due to increasing snow pack and assess the effects of extreme cold on fiber optic sensors down to -70 degrees Celsius.