Day: 111

Getting Ready For the Trail Again

This is our last day in Pelly Bay. We are pretty busy getting our food and all our equipment set up. We are changing tent units, Hugh and Eric will now be together, while Paul and I will be sharing a tent. This involves a little bit of rearrangement for equipment and gear, it is sort of like arranging a four-way divorce. But we had a really good settlement, and got all the little details (like who gets the teapot) work out. I have a different tent scheme set up than what Paul and Mille had, sort of my own individual system. But Hugh and Eric are now going to inherit that system, so basically I will now move over to Paul’s system.

We’ve got about a four hundred mile trip to Iglooluk, and we are hoping to cover that in about 21 days. Factoring in two education days and two storm day means that we need to average a marathon a day for the actual travel days. It should be some interesting travel, which I will discuss more in the days to come. We’ve got some trails to follow, but then we cut across some broken sea ice and then into unknown country. We will then pick up another trail system as we approach Iglooluk.

So it should be a really great four hundred miles. The weather is getting milder, and we are now seeing temperature consistently above zero degrees Fahrenheit for the first time. It is late at night here in Pelly Bay, and we are going to get up early tomorrow morning. We will be out on the trail tomorrow, and sleeping under the stars tomorrow night. Although the stars are slowly disappearing. It is midnight right now, and the sky is relatively bright. There are a few stars out now, but it is nearly 24 hours of daylight.