Day: 16

Extreme Cold-High Winds

Temperature: -30F+

Location: Great Slave Lake -

Latitude: 62deg 49’ 37’’ N

Longitude: 110deg 29’ 57’’ W

Distance Traveled: 7.6 Miles

It’s a brutal evening on the Great Slave Lake. It’s about 30 below, with a 40 mph wind. We had a very adventurous day today. It warmed up to 33 below, and I think we must had have 45 below last night. The clouds came in in the morning and warmed things up a bit. It was fairly calm when we left camp, but then the wind picked up. We had one large portage over an island, kind of a short cut. It took us the better part of the morning getting over that. It was very steep, and we gained quite a bit of elevation. Then it began to white-out, so we couldn’t see the lake at the higher elevations. There were cliffs on either side, and then the wind began to pick up, although at first we couldn’t tell from which direction because it was swirling around. Then we made it down the far side, and sometimes going down is more of an adventure than going up.

My voice is a little hoarse tonight from encouraging the dogs during the day. We all had an incredible physical workout, with lots of shouting and yelling and encouraging. Getting the dogs over the saddle at the top and then down was literally a wild ride. I took Mille’s sled down, without any brakes, and it was Aaron’s first downhill adventure. Once the sled get’s moving it is just wild abandon, and you have to just keep your focus as the trees are whizzing by at many miles an hour. So you just stand on the back of the sled and steer it and concentrate on the dogs. We had one last chute that took us down onto the lake and then hit a little ice ledge that put us airborne for a few seconds, and Aaron got a good video of that.

We came down into an area called Shelter Bay, for very obvious reasons. We took our lunch break there, and it was totally whited-out, no visibility at all. Some wind was blowing, but we didn’t realize until we started up again and left the bay, heading east. It must have been a 40 mph wind, really tough, dead against us. In a matter of half an hour all the snow had blown off the lake, so there would be large drifts along with just ice. A lot of the time the dogs would be on the ice while the sled would get stuck on a drift, and the dogs wouldn’t be able to get any traction on the ice. So we would often have to get three or people on a sled to free it from a drift. It got worse and worse as we traveled on, and there was not shelter at all on the shoreline, and it looked like it was going to be too difficult for the dogs on the ice.

So we made a good decision and returned to Shelter Bay, where we are in a 40 mph wind, but it is surely much worse out on the lake. The tent is really flapping in the wind, it’s quite loud. The tent is much colder tonight. 45 below isn’t that bad, if the wind isn’t blowing. Last night was actually very comfortable. But now with the wind it keeps the tent really cold. The nylon walls are all iced up, almost to the top. Whereas last night there was almost no ice at all. Now we have it up to our shoulders.

But it was actually a great day, a good day for the team, lots of high adventure. We really worked together as a team. There will be a lot more of this coming up, this was probably our first introduction into Barrens’ weather. We traveled only 7.6 miles today, but we did pretty well, considering the portage. In hopefully two days we will be arrive at the cabin of a friend of mine, Dave Olson. Dave used to mush dogs with me in the late ‘70s, and I’ve got some good stories about Dave that I will start filling you in on tomorrow, and some of the history of Dave and his wife and children in Reliance.

It’s REALLY blowing now, and everything in the tent is getting knocked around. Hope this dispatch got through OK.