Day: 28

A Toast to the Barrens

Temperature: -45F

Location: Artillery Lake

Due to the technical difficulties we recently had, I’m going to cover two days. Today is our day off, not too much happening today. But yesterday we were traveling on Artillery Lake, and made about 18 miles, in a strong wind, with the temperature around 40-45 below all day. Fortunately, the wind was at our back, kind of a southwest wind, as we were traveling to the northeast. We have about another 10-15 miles to go on Artillery Lake.

Yesterday was clear but bitter, bitter cold. Lunch was an ordeal, and we all froze up almost immediately. We can tell that the weather is changing as we get closer to The Barrens. The temperature has been about the same since we were on Pike’s portage, but now the wind has been kicking up.

The night before the day off is always a festive occasion. There is no hurry to cook dinner or do our chores. Each tent team sort of sits around leisurely, has some tea. I had a bit of Scotch. It was 12 year old Scotch that a friend gave me, and it was frozen in the plastic bottle (we had transferred it from a glass bottle because we didn’t want to lug around the weight of the glass). But when Scotch is frozen, you know it’s 50 below. Our thermometer said 45, but the Scotch is a more accurate indicator than any kind of thermometer. We heated up our tea and cracked some of the ice out of the Scotch and made a kind of slurry, and we poured a bit of Scotch into our tea and had a kind of nightcap before we made dinner.

In my previous travels to the Arctic and the North Pole I used to always bring a plastic bottle of Scotch to kick off the expedition. In 1986 I took some Jack Daniels, and it was frozen of course on the first day. So I thought I would carry it with me until it thawed out, but after about two weeks of being in a solid state we couldn’t wait any longer.

In 1995 we left on the Russian side, and the temperature there was 55 below zero. And the Scotch was ice solid, so we cut out the plastic bottle and made ice cubes out of the Scotch, and just dumped the ice cubes into some water.

So it’s kind of a tradition in cold weather at the beginning of an expedition. We were toasting the beginning of The Barrens here last night.

Today was a very leisurely day. We spent a lot of time sewing and fixing our gear. In another eight days we will have a resupply, so we are sorting through our equipment, trying to figure out what we can send back. We want to drop weight, because we are coming to a serious part of the trip where there is only one way, and that is forward. There’s no option of going back through Pike’s portage; that’s been committed already. And we are all looking forward to the unknowns here, the weather and the terrain.

Today the weather was very similar to yesterday, 45 below and windy. But once you get moving, it is not too bad.