Day: 3

Paul's Sled Falls Through The Ice!

Temperature: -35F

Location: Great Slave Lake, NWT

Latitude: 62deg, 6min, 54sec North

Longitude: 114deg, 3min, 34sec West

This morning it took us only one hour to break camp, which is a pretty good speed considering this was only our second camp. We got out of the tents by 8:30 and by 9:30 we were going. It’s clear skies, quite cold, and the sun came up about 45 minutes later. Our high temperature was 26 degrees below zero, and we had a pretty strong 10-15 mph northwest wind, which is wind to our backs, which actually made the wind pretty pleasant. But any time that we traveled upwind for filming or any adventures along the way, our faces would freeze in about three minutes, which is a windchill of about 60 degrees below zero, maybe 65 or 70.

We had a little adventure today, maybe about 11 o’clock, when Paul was leading the way with his sled and he crossed an 8 to 10 foot lead, which is a crack in the ice which, judging from the thickness of the ice cracked maybe a week or ten days ago. He got part way across it and the back of the sled broke through, and sunk part way into the water. They were unable to get the dogs to pull it, and by the time we ran forward it was sinking even further in the pack. We got the ropes and pulled of the critical gear, the camera gear, and anything we could to help lighten the load. And with the handlebars of the sled almost in the water we were able to get the dogs to pull the sled up onto the ice. It was only a little misadventure, nothing really serious, no danger involved. It looked for a while, however, that it would be a day off to dry off Paul and Aaron’s things from the sled, but as luck would have it only the dog food got wet, and it didn’t seem to anything major got soaked. So we survived that one OK. It took us about an hour to pack up, given the severe wind chills, and the ropes were frozen. But were able to get moving by about 12:30, traveled for an hour, then took an hour for lunch, then traveled for about another hour, stopping around 2:30.

We traveled about ten miles today, a pretty good day considering the short days and our little incident with the lead. I’m sitting in the tent with Hugh right now, it’s about 6:30. Our tents are really kind of like a cave. It’s a quanza hut type, maybe ten feet long by four feet wide, and you can’t really sit upright. If you sit up your head hits the frosted walls. We have two burners going and a couple of candles, and it’s really quite dark inside. The wind is rustling the tent here, it’s probably about a 10-15 mph wind, but it’s quite cold. Judging from the thickness of the frost on the tent it’s probably about 40 degrees below zero. If it stays clear it will probably drop some more, but if it clouds up the temperature will probably stabilize. But we’re doing pretty good, and it’s amazing how adjusted to the cold we are already. I’m personally pretty surprised how comfortable I am at 30 below, and we’re really reluctant to come into the tent at night. We spend so much time in the tents, given the short travel days, and especially when it’s clear out you just don’t want to get into the tent. But the tent isn’t all that bad, it’s actually sort of cozy. The frost is the only problem.

Hugh is sort of meditating here, looking at the stove. There’s not really much to do now, especially considering we had a really short travel day. But we’ll get up early tomorrow again, we normally get up around six o’clock, and out of the tents around 8:30. There’s a little bit of light at 8:30, enough to start breaking down the tent and so forth.