Day: 53

First Muskox Sighting

Temperature: -44F

Location: Adjacent to Dubawnt River

Latitude: 63deg 44 ’ 8’’ N

Longitude: 100deg 12’ 45 ’’ W

Distance Traveled: Not reported…

We had a good travel day today. This morning it was 44 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, but it was a warm 44 below. It was clear, with no wind at all, and actually felt like it was 30 below. We couldn’t believe it was that cold until we looked at the thermometer.

The sun is now rising higher each day, and there is actually some heat to the sun. We are bypassing the Dubawnt River. There is about 20-25 miles of river that we decided not to travel near at all, because of the danger. And I was afraid of getting into a dead end in steep country, so we are taking a detour via GPS. It was a very good day for us because we had the best visibility of the expedition. We could meander around a number of moraines and eskers. An esker is kind of a snake-like pile of stones. These are very hard to get around, but there are several lakes that divided these eskers, and we were able to find these on the GPS as well as actually see them. We are able to travel through this country in a whiteout with the GPS, but we just never see anything. But today what we were actually traveling through.

It was a very beautiful day. We actually overheated a number of times, pushing the sled. Eric and Hugh saw about 15 muskox right before we made camp, spotting them with binoculars. So we may run into muskox tracks tomorrow, or perhaps the actual animals. That would really stimulate the dogs.

The dogs had a great day of rest yesterday, and ran very well today. They are really into the rhythm right now. We stopped an hour early today to get out some more of the education report for the schools. We have a mechanical problem with the generator right now, so they didn’t get the whole report out yesterday. Mille and Aaron are working very long hours on these reports, and they will be up late again tonight. But we have spare batteries, so they should be able to get everything out.

On our day off we usually start the generator and charge all our batteries. Most everything we use has rechargeable batteries. In Baker Lake we will pick up solar panels to use for solar rechargeable batteries. We didn’t carry them on this section because of the lack of sunlight. We’ll go from the generator to solar in three weeks. And the solar should be enough for all our battery needs, from the AA’s to the satellite phone and so forth.

It was a calm day, but the wind is now picking up, and we’re hoping we’re not in for another storm here. We have been very blessed with great weather.