Day: 14

Back On The Trail

Temperature: -20F

Location: East Arm, Great Slave Lake, NWT

Latitude: 62deg 34’ 25’’

Longitude: 110deg 42’ 48’’

Distance Traveled: 14.7 Miles

We left the village of Lutselk’e this morning. We got up at about 6:30 in the home-ec room, and it took us about four hours to get everything packed up and cleaned up. But by 10 o’clock we were down by the shoreline. The school was recessed for our departure, and we had about 50 kids from first to eighth grade swarming all over the dogs, and each of them had their pet dogs, and they were climbing all over the sleds. It was a very festive day. Finally we hooked up the dogs and kept the kids at a distance and headed off to the northwest of the village, waving good-bye to the kind people there, who were so good to us during our two-day stay.

The day was kind of cold, a little wind, about 20 below. Nothing too serious. We had lunch at the usual time, 12:30, and quit around 4 o’clock. We made 14.7 miles, which is very good. We resupplied at Lutselk’e, so we are fully loaded, with very heavy sleds. It’s going to be another week or so until we get down the weight. We’ve got some portages ahead, as we leave the eastern end of Great Slave Lake.

We’re in the famous east arm of Great Slave Lake, which is very deep. It is about 1,800 feet deep underneath us, there are deep canyons that drop off. The channel we are in right now is about 15 miles wide, and it goes off into infinity to the west, probably about 100 miles. It’s really a spectacular evening, clear, a little bit of northern lights, even a faint bit of light around 5:30, which is a hint of spring on the horizon. The highlight of the late evening here, as the temperature drops to about 35-30 below, is the contraction of the ice, which produces great rumblings. It sounds very different from the contractions on the rest of the lake, due to the great depth. It’s like sleeping on a large bass drum. It has an almost metallic sound. And the distance reminds me of the great plains, and the rumbling of thunderstorms. We hear some rumbling from the west and then some rumbling from the north and then some periods of silence. It’s just like a thunderstorm, only it’s in the ice. There is no danger whatsoever, it’s very common with the low temperatures and the contraction of the ice. What is very different, however, is the noticeable change in quality with the deep water. It has a kind of depth-charge sound to it.

We crossed the Arctic Ocean in 1985 and did the unsupported expedition in 1986. The Arctic Ocean is about the size of the United States, and it’s about 1,500 deep at the north pole, which was covered in that time by about eight feet of ice (now it’s down to six, due to global warming). But that ice is constantly moving, moving at an average of three to five miles a day. And when big storms would come up, from 1,000 miles away - say, from the Alaskan side - it would set huge sheets of pack ice, like the size of Texas, in motion. And like tectonic plates, they would slide and hit one another. That was quite spectacular. And that was much different from here, here it is totally solid, but in the ocean you would have large areas of water that would open up or great pressure ridges that would form almost instantly.

I’ve spent a lot of my time on ice, sleeping on ice, and I actually sleep quite comfortably when the ice is rumbling like this. I also like thunderstorms. So it is actually a very lovely evening here. We bought $100 worth of candles and $100 worth of powdered milk and $100 worth of caribou meat in Lutselk’e. And Hugh and I have the luxury of burning four candles here, so the tent is very well lit in soft light. We just had our dinner here, and ate light. We had little appetite after leaving town, but our appetite will pick up tomorrow as we’re out in the cold weather.

It’s just a spectacular evening. Looking out of our tent I can see the two other tents, which are lit up by lanterns. Silhouetted in the darkness and the northern lights you see the black outlines of the dogs, stretched out 10-12 dogs in each stake-out chain. We’re happy to be back on the trail and into our simple rhythms, and it’s quite comfortable now at 25 below.

Hugh says hello to his wife and child and all his friends in Thunder Bay. He will talk on the phone tomorrow.

But one last thing, we met a 23-year-old Frenchman named Oliver in Lutselk’e, who is living out his dream of living in the wilderness in Canada. He came up to Lutselk’e when he was 18, and lived there for three years. He now has a problem with immigration, because he’s only allowed in the country for six months at a time, and even that is now beginning to expire, so he’s in a little bit of a quandary. But he really belongs in the north. The people have taken him into their homes, and he is really respected in the village. He is a very important man up here, and hopefully he will be able to stay in the north. I kind of bonded with him, and I like the French too, I’ve traveled with the French. And it was nice talking about Paris, and he knew John L., my partner in the Antarctica expedition, 1989-90.