Day: 130

White Out and Fog

Temperature: 30F

Location: Melville Peninsula

Latitude: 67deg 55’ 44’’ N

Longitude: 83deg 15’ 38” W

Distance Traveled: 20 Miles

We traveled 20 miles today. It was a foggy day in the morning, very typical spring weather in the Arctic. Once it warmed up, we had 30 degrees today, the warmest day so far. But when it warms, especially when there’s open water, [in the ocean with Hudson Bay here to the east there’s plenty of open water] the heat in the atmosphere absorbs moisture and you get these thick fogs. Generally you get a fog and then sometimes it clears off and then when it clears off you get more energy and then you get another fog after that. So foggy weather is very typical in May in the Arctic along with lighter snow. We had 4 inches of snow last night. The morning was actually kind of an artistic morning, very undulating country here. At times the 3 sleds were traveling and there wasn’t any distinction between the sky and the land. The sleds looked like they were traveling with a white screen in the backdrop. The colors were very vivid in the shapes, it was a moody weather. After lunch, it cleared off with deep blue skies and when these clear areas opened up it was almost like search lights on the rolling tundra. We met an Inuit family, or number of families actually about 3 snow mobiles, there was probably at least a dozen people. Each snowmobile pulls a Komatuk sled, a Komatuk sled is a lot like ours, a little bit wider. They had like a camper on top. The family rides in that, they sleep in it. They were having tea. It was almost like the old times when you would meet a group of Inuit on the land but in this case it was on snowmobiles which is the way that they generally travel. So they were from Iglulik, they’ve been traveling for 2 days and we spent about an hour with them around 3:00, had tea and we had their trail to travel on. The snow is quite deep here. Paul who is working for NASA taking snow samples. We had five feet of snow. Yesterday, on the day off, we had 6 feet of snow, so it is an area of accumulation. About 4 inches down there is a very hard layer of snow, like concrete. So there was strong winds blowing through here, probably in March. But with the May weather, the warmer weather, you get this gentle snow falling, almost daily. It’s Mother’s Day tomorrow and everyone’s on the satellite phones this evening calling their mothers. We’re all fortunate to have mothers and so we’re touching base with home tonight. Tomorrow is a travel day so we’ll be up at 5:30, travel for 8 or 9 hours. We plan to be in Iglulik on Thursday night, 5 or 6 days from now. It’s warm today, 30 degrees. Paul and I are sitting in the tent having tea. The gentle wind flapping the tent. Very, very nice mellow evening here. The dogs are growling outside. We fed them a fish head and a fishtail that we got from the Inuit hunters. A little scuffle here over the fish head outside. It’s 1,546 miles so far on the trip.