Day: 73

Happy Trail Again

Temperature: -25F

Location: North of Baker Lake

Latitude: 64deg 34’ 56’’ N

Longitude: 96deg 7’ 45’’ W

Distance Traveled: Not reported…

If you’ve just begun to tune in, you might notice that the daily dispatch is also available in text. At the beginning of each transcript is our location in longitude and latitude. I know a number of people are beginning to follow us in the north, and you can always find our location by clicking on the text version.

We left Baker Lake today. It was a wonderful day, good weather. We had a high of 25 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. It was like a spring day while we were packing up, no wind. A small group of people, friends, came out to wish us farewell, some helped lash the sleds. We got going around 10:30 a.m. There is a big hill to the north of Baker Lake, and anyone who has been there is familiar with that hill. It took us a while to get up the hill. And we were on a trail. Usually, whenever you are leaving a village like this, there is a trail to the next village or, as in this case, a hunting trail. So we will be able to follow the trail for the next several days, which will make for easy going, and we won’t have the lead the dogs by being out ahead on skis or using voice commands.

We had our best lunch break so far, I almost fell asleep in the sun. It was one of those days where you felt like flying a kite, like a spring day. 25 below might seem chilly to most people, but you have to consider that it was clear, no wind, and with some actual warmth from the sun. I have some black knee patches on my insulated suit, and those patches were actually warm to the touch. And the dogs were full of energy today.

We’re camped on a big lake now. It’s calm outside, and cooling off quite a bit now in the evening. probably about 30 below. It’s very comfortable inside the tent. Of course we dried out our tents in Baker Lake, and right now there is no frost whatsoever on the inside walls. We’re living on easy street right now. The walls will collect frost over time, but right now it is easy going.

For the next week or so I am going to go over some of the people we met, in particular the elders and some of the interviews we had, and some of the things we found out about climate change and some of their traditional knowledge.