Day: 10

10 Days, 148 miles

Temperature: -10F

Location: Great Slave Lake, NWT

Latitude: 62deg 18’ 34’’ N

Longitude: 111deg 19’ 08’’ W

Distance Traveled: 22.9

We traveled 22.9 miles today on the Great Slave Lake, on a trail that was blown over for the most part, but it was our fastest miles so far in one day. The talk of the camp today was the warm weather. We had minus 10 as a high temperature this morning, which caught everyone off guard. We were all talking about roasting in our sleeping bags. And the temperature right now is a minus 3, so it’s very warm, very calm, no snow. And the dogs are sleeping real well.

The day went very fast. It was cloudy for the most part, with some whiteout conditions. We could see a few islands in the distance, but everything here is in such huge proportions. We traveled along a ten mile island, then into a ten mile opening and then into a huge bay. The relief is getting a little stronger here, we have these palisade-like cliffs here. Yesterday we traveled along a 10-12 mile island that had 300 foot cliffs, just like the palisades in Lake Superior in northern Minnesota. And the terrain is definitely getting higher and higher.

One of the big issues right now is mad cow disease. We have not had any news for ten days - luckily - so we haven’t heard of any bad news or political campaigns or such. But we do know that our dog food is on the wrong side of the border right now. It was just two days late on the shipment, and they closed the borders right around Christmas. We have enough dog food right now to get to the community of Baker Lake, which will be in late February. So it’s not a big issue right now to wait for six weeks, but we are hoping the borders will reopen. We are trying to pull some strings with the Canadian consulate.

This is also a big problem for the American mushers who are racing the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod. They each always have their own special diet, which of course for dogs means meat, so this is a big deal. I guess in the Iditarod in Alaska you could probably ship it to Seattle and then by boat up to Anchorage, but that would solve the problem at great expense. The Yukon Quest is also a very big race, and at Dawson City in the Yukon there are many mushers who are baffled. There is also a women’s expedition coming up from Outward Bound in Minnesota, and we spent a lot of time with them in the fall. They are also struggling with how to get their dog food into Canada. So we’ll report in on how this plays out.

It’s Friday night, we found out today. We usually don’t keep track of the days, but we made a call into Litselk’e today. We will be there Saturday night, so it’s an 11 day trip from Yellowknife to Litselk’e. We’re making very good time, as we’ve traveled 148 miles in nine days. The daily mileage has been higher than we expected, in part because we’ve been traveling a trail for about eight days. It’s not a very well developed trail, but certainly enough so that the lead dogs could follow it, taking a lot of the burden off of Paul and Mille and the lead commands.

It’s minus three right now, a real heat wave, and very comfortable in the tent. The ice is cracking, just as usual, right underneath the tent!