Day: 144

Entering Baffin Island

Temperature: 10F

Location: Entering Baffin Island

Latitude: 69deg 51’ 31’’ N

Longitude: 80deg 16’ 55” W

Distance Traveled: 32 Miles

Our second day of night travel. Our rhythm is that we are out of the tents at 10 p.m., and travel until 7 in the morning. We traveled 28.9 straight line miles (32 total), and yesterday was one of our best days on the trip. We just passed the northernmost point of the North American continent. In other words, the actual land mass of the continent ends about 25 miles to the southwest. And we are now on islands on the sea, heading for Baffin Island, which we can see in the distance. Baffin is a large island, probably 1,200 miles, that runs northwest to southeast. The eastern side of Baffin has very large, glaciated mountains, with granite walls that are very large. They would dwarf Yosemite. It is some of the most beautiful area in the Arctic, maybe in all of the northern hemisphere.

We are now traveling on sea ice, and will be on Baffin itself later in the day. The sun doesn’t set any more. At about 12:30 it is about one diameter above the horizon. We get kind of a red-ish glow from about 11:30 to 1:30, and then after that it is kind of a yellow sun. In another couple of weeks we will have 24 hours of pure yellow sun. This makes it very convenient to travel.

It was a little bit colder last night when we were traveling, probably down to ten degrees Fahrenheit, with a very strong northwest wind. The days are warming, probably around 32 degrees right now, and with this cool spell it will probably stay around 32 for a while, and then we will see warming temperatures by the end of nex week.