Day: 77

Tent Fire!

Temperature: -20F

Location: Canadian Barrens

Latitude: 65deg 0’ 29’’ N

Longitude: 95deg 20’ 51’’ W

Distance Traveled: Not reported

It warmed up to 20 below. We had blowing snow today, white-out conditions, a southeast wind kicked up quite a bit of snow. We led out in front on skis most of the day, and it looked like around 2 o’clock that is was really going to sock in, but by the time we made camp at 5 o’clock it had cleared off, and we really had a nice evening.

The wind has died down now, it is calm tonight, and the dogs are sleeping quite well. The big news in camp is that last night Mille and Aaron had a rather sizable tent fire. They refueled their Coleman lantern next to the stove while the stove was on. They must have had a leakage of fuel. This can be quite dangerous because, in the cold, you can spill gas and it doesn’t ignite right away. They got everything sealed up and about 2-3 minutes later there was a big explosion as the fumes flared up. But both Mille and Aaron are very quick reactors. They put a Patagonia jacket over the fire, which melted the jacket right down, but they managed to get the fire and the whole works out to the vestibule. But they were both pretty shook up about it.

Tent fires I consider probably the biggest danger on an expedition like this. In fact, most polar expeditions have had a tent fire. And it is this refueling process in the cold weather that is really tricky, because you can spill fuel and you don’t really know you spilled it, and because of the cold it doesn’t ignite right away. But five, six or maybe ten minutes later when the fumes warm up, all of a sudden you have an explosion.

With tent fires like this the important thing, if you can’t get the fire out right away, is to get it out the vestibule door, which Mille and Aaron were quite quick about doing. They were able to get the fire outside and, although they were shook up a little bit, they were OK. They spent some time this morning sewing the tent up and just getting the inside all organized again. So there was a little bit of action, but a happy ending, and everyone will be more careful filling up the stove and lanterns with fuel.

Everything is going well here, it was really quite a nice day of travel, despite the white-out conditions. We had set out a food cache, mainly of dog food, earlier. Philip, one of the friends we made in Baker Lake, drove it out in his Bombardier, which is a tracked vehicle, about a week ago. So we will be at this food cache tomorrow, after which the sleds will be loaded pretty heavily. So it will be a lot of work here the rest of the week as we head out with a full load.