Day: 96

Entering the Hayes River

Temperature: -30F

Location: Uplands of Hayes River

Latitude: 66deg 46’ 42’’ N

Longitude: 92deg 40’ 1” W

Distance Traveled: 18 Miles

We had a really wonderful day of travel today. It was clear, and the wind died down quite a bit. We covered about 18 miles. We are on the uplands now, right above the Hayes River. All day we tried to get ourselves into a position to descend, and I think we will be able to do so tomorrow. We had some high, rocky terrain, and several times we ran into low troughs that ran in the direction of the northeast. It was really tempting to enter these troughs, but they were the beginnings of other drainage patterns. They key was to stay up as high as we could, and we chose one particular pattern that we wanted to get into. If you go into these lower troughs you can get cornered, and it can be really hard to gain elevation to get out again. So we stayed high, but this sometimes meant really rocky terrain.

The wind blows tremendously strong at these elevations, and the tops of the hills here are just barren with rocks. As a result, we had to travel over these rocks today, although we did have some really good travel.

We are now perched over the Hayes. We chose one particular descent that looks, at least on the map, like a gradual slope, which drops into a narrows, almost a small canyon. The problems you can get into is that once you get into these canyons you can’t get out - you’ve got a one time shot. But we were very fortunate today to have good visibility. There is a northwest wind blowing right now, and we have our fingers crossed that the visibility is good tomorrow. We have to be able to see very clearly tomorrow when we make this descent.

It also can be quite dangerous going down these steep slopes with the dog teams. Tomorrow we will be putting brakes on the sleds, which are chains and ropes, which adds a tremendous amount of friction on the runners, slowing the teams down. We will hopefully be in the river valley tomorrow.

I’m outside of the camp right now, it is 8 o’clock. The sky is very bright, with a big purple earth shadow to the east, and the moon is about 15 degrees above the horizon. It is an absolutely perfectly round disc. I’m looking down to the east, where the valley dips on that side. To the west, the direction we are going to go tomorrow, there is still a little upland. It is windy, probably about 25 below. It was about 35 below this morning, but it rapidly warms up during the day in this spring weather.