Day: 29

-70F Wind Chills and Brutal

Temperature: -45F

Location: Artillery Lake

A very cold day again. 45 below, with a strong wind. Wind chills in the 70’s below, although as we traveled it was clear weather, and the wind was at our back. It wasn’t until we stopped to adjust a ski binding or undo a knot or untangle a dog when we had to bear our fingers did we realize just how extremely cold the wind chills were.

But the travel was good, we had good visibility, which was the main thing. We traveled ten miles down Artillery Lake, and then we turned due east, onto the Barrenlands. We were in an area called the Land of the Little Sticks, which is a transitional area where the spruce trees start fading out, in fact there are only a few little spruces here and there, sometimes there might be a bunch of about 20 that manage to survive in a clump behind some rocks or something like that. This Land of Little Sticks is an area the Indians would rarely travel in. They are very uncomfortable in wide open spaces, and this was the northern perimeter of their travels. The Inuit, or Eskimo, people believed the trees had spirits, and they didn’t like camping among the trees. And the Land of Little Sticks is an area between the two cultures. It is always one of my favorite areas.