Day: 36

A River Runs Through It

Temperature: -34F

Location: Thelon River Valley

Latitude: 63deg 5’ 43’’ N

Longitude: 104deg 36’ 16’ W

Distance Traveled: 22 Miles

We had another pleasant day today, it was minus 34 degrees when we exited the tent. Crystal clear and calm, a very good day of travel. The first ten miles we descended into the Thelon River valley, on the west side. It was downhill, with some flats, and a lot of rocks. We are traveling with extremely light sleds, as we are planning to resupply in a couple of days. We are hoping to get down into that valley and then up on the other side. We made it to the Thelon River valley itself, to a lake called Eyeberry Lake.

It was very cold actually as we got down, as the cold air settled to the bottom. We crossed Eyeberry Lake and then got up into the valley a little bit on the east side. Tomorrow is our last day of travel before resupply. We are going to try to get as far to the east and up the valley as we can.

We’ve been traveling here exclusively with GPS and compass. It is almost impossible to cross this country with the old map and compass. It is very, very difficult to find any kind of topographic features. We’ve had some moraines the last few days that matched up on the map, but otherwise for the last 100 miles it’s been impossible to navigate without a GPS.

The last few days that we’ve had this good weather have made it particularly easy to travel with the GPS, because we can take it out of our pockets, the batteries work find. The display sometimes freezes up, but with this warmer weather we are able to keep it closer to our bodies. And with the combination of the compass and GPS we’ve been able to go in a pretty straight line.

What we do is map our route out about three or four days ahead of time, usually on our day off. We pick out “waypoints,” certain areas along the way that we want to travel, sort of like A, B, C, D, etc. The day before we were leaving A we would take a point on B, and then onto C and so forth. So the day is broken up into these various waypoints, although the distance between them can vary between three and 20 miles. With the waypoints and the compass we’ve been able to figure out this country pretty well.

We’re expecting the Twin Otter to come in on Friday. The forecast is very clear, cold, and hopefully not too much wind. The entire arctic right now is very clear. It’s windy to the east, but we are under a cold, stable area.

Travel is good, the dogs are happy, and everyone is pleased with the milage we made today. We traveled 22 miles, we made 24 yesterday, and we’re hoping to make 18-20 tomorrow. Then we will be out of the hard snow and the hard terrain.