Expedition Update # 18 - Direct from the High-Arctic! These updates are composed on our sub-notebook computer, which is powered by solar panels courtesy of UNSW, then sent using software from Global Marine Networks, over a satellite mobile phone provided by Landwide Satellite Solutions. Thanks very much to all involved! Date: 25/8/05 Time: 11:00pm Position: 70 deg 33.184 min N, 103 deg 8.681 min W Summary: Alive & Paddling! Location Map: Click the map to the left and a new browser window will open, directed to Google's new satellite maps feature. The map view will be centred on our current location. Zoom in for more detail. Weather: Cloudy, rainy and windy - but in the right direction! Temperature: Around 4 deg C Message: Well - sorry it took us so long to get this update out. A bit of suspense never hurt anyone. =P We survived the long night camped near the polar bear, waking frequently to check all was well. After breaky (the usual oats and coffee), I caught sight of the bear getting up, stretching its neck up to catch some scent and then by the time I found the binoculars, it had suddenly vanished. A little un-nerving.... I kept sweeping the horizon for his tell-tail bulk... Suddenly, no more than 3 meters behind me: "Snap!" - Clark had just broken our unbreakable polycarbonate camping spoon scraping the last morsel of food from his bowl. Our only other unbreakable spoon broke yesterday, so I melted the two bits back together with our trusty lighter and all is well. (Oh, yeah, and we never did see the bear again, despite spending that day looking over our shoulder more often than looking forwards!). The musk ox 'round this part of town are a bit more nervous than we've seen before - they start the whole eye-rubbing-on-leg warning sign when we are a good distance off, and then either stand their ground - forcing us to divert around them into swampy wetlands or more often they eventually loose their nerve and turn and thunder away, stop turn to face us, then stand tail to tail in a defensive I've-got-your-back' style until we are long, long gone. Amusing anyway... The great triumph came a day or so ago when we eventually reached Denmark Fiord - a large stretch of ice-free Arctic Ocean between a massive almost-island joined to the main Victoria island by a narrow land-bridge. Long have we gazed at this spot on Google and NASA satellite images and wondered what it would be like to be there... We wearily heaved our packs up the last 10m onto the embankment and overlooked the turquoise blue fiord for the first time - and it's beautiful. That was a good day - made even better by the fact that our packet of 6 flatbreads for lunch had 7 in it for no apparent reason. Good times. Today we did our largest stint of paddling yet - about 14km, often km from shore along the fiord, wind at our tail, rolling waves and whitecaps pushing us along (thankfully in the right direction)! It was brilliant. Our makeshift paddle (we made from one of our bear tripwire stakes and a spare sheet of aluminium, as Clark's paddle disappeared about a week ago) works like a bought one =) (almost, except being about 1/2 as long, and having only 1 blade, not 2. But hey - life's about being inventive and resourceful out here!) So spirits are high, and we are looking forward to crossing off a good few more km paddling before this ice-free section ends in a maze of ice again. The only depressing thing is that tomorrow is rice-dinner, and we still haven't caught any Char (or any fish at all) to bulk our rice-dinners out with. Glad to hear so many people are following our journey through our updates! It's exciting to be able to share some of the experiences with people back in the world of hot showers and food in unrationed quantities...Special thanks also to the guys at 'The Poles' www.ThePoles.com for following our stories & featuring our updates! Cheers. One thing I have to comment on is our Icebreaker clothes - we have honestly been living in our base-layer merino thermals since day 1, and never got out of them... and they don't itch, or even smell!! (we don't think so anyway, but then again, the smell of our socks has become to us quite a homely warm-tent kinda odour, reminding us of sleep and food... so seems our sense of what smells bad may be a tad skewed, but anyway, we love our Icebreaker gear, and were just commenting today how strange it's going to be to have to wear loose 'normal' clothing when we get back... (yes, we're already dreaming of the 'getting-back' experiences...) That's all for now, Cheerio!! (Getting into our 'Gore-Tex Immersion Technology' dry suits, ready to paddle!) (A very frequent sight - Musk ox pausing to observe us as we haul past) Back to updates list To send us a message, please contact us anytime!