Day: 92

Storm Day - No Travel

Temperature: 10F

Location: Quoich Rvier

Latitude: 66deg 13’ 52’’ N

Longitude: 93deg 14’ 14” W

Distance Traveled: 0 Miles - Storm Day

Yesterday afternoon when we traveled we had a very strong southeast wind. Though it cleared up for a while, some clouds came in later on, and the weather looked very suspect. So we purposefully found a good spot to stake out tents down on a small lake. We put ice screws in, expecting the worse, and put the dogs in deep snow.

Around 11 p.m. last night a storm came in with really strong winds, probably about 60 mph. I was lying in bed, wondering if the tent was going to hold up. We have great tents, Hilleberg tents are some of the best in the world, but were worried about out stakeout points. If an ice screw breaks or falls out we can be in big trouble.

At night with storms like this when the tent starts really shaking things start flying out of the the nylon net near the ceiling that holds our socks, satellite phone, pens, etc. When things start flying out of the net it is a sign of a bad storm. My thoughts first go to what would I do if the tent blew apart, and I do a mental check of where my mukluks are, my parka, etc. so I am all ready for action. After worrying for about an hour, you usually just give up and go to sleep with the sound of the wind and the tent flapping.

In the morning it was blowing quite hard, though it was a warm storm, a spring storm, about 10 degrees above zero Fahrenheit. This is extremely mild, and one advantage is that we didn’t have any frost in the tent. Usually, during previous storms on the expedition, the tent has been all frosted up, and it is always wet and damp inside. But today it was relatively dry inside.

Hugh and I slept most of the day, an extreme luxury. We went back to bed around 8:30, after we all decided not to travel today. At 11:30 we had another check on the weather and a little lunch, and slept until about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. It was a good break for all of us. My muscles were kind of sore after skiing up front all day yesterday and the previous four days, so we did have a good rest day.

The barometer is at a record low for us on the expedition, and still dropping, which means there is the potential for really strong winds. When it drops really low like this we can get the backside of the storm, which is a northwest wind. But we will see what happens. It kind of cleared up in the afternoon, the sun was shining, but there were still strong winds from the southeast. We’re hoping that it will clear off a little tonight, but the barometer has to rise quite a bit.

This is almost reminiscent of an Antarctic storm. There’s kind of a whining of the guylines outside the tent in the wind, and in Antarctica the storms sounded like this a lot. I think being at the bottom of the world in a place so isolated on the globe it sounded particularly lonely. During the storms in Antarctica, I was tenting with Victor most of the time, and he used to sing Russian songs at night when we had the candle going. They were happy times, but also desperate, because we were short on food, and didn’t know if there would be another cache.

It’s comfortable inside now, we have the candle going, Hugh is writing in his journal. I want to say hello to Mike in Pelly Bay and many thanks Mike for helping us out here with the information. I want to give you our location here (see above). I will call you again tonight, and was wondering if you could give us some advice on the route we might take to get up to the Arrowsmith from here - what part of the Hayes River we should drop into.