Expedition Update # 19 - 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: 29/8/05 Time: 1:00pm Position: 70 deg 35.166 min N, 103 deg 25.115 min W Summary: Stranded by bad weather 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. Use slider at top left to Zoom in for more detail. Weather: Horrendous - 50km/hr bitterly cold wind, rain, mist, no sun. Temperature: 1.5 deg C, but to -12 deg with wind chill apparently Message: All good things must come to an end, as did the ideal weather helping us paddle along the ice-free Denmark Fiord. As I write this, we are both huddled inside our tent which is being buffeted this way and that, willing itself to tear free from the 8 ropes and 16 tent pegs holding it to the face of the Earth (for now). The screaming arctic winds outside are unrelenting - between 45 and 50 km/hr steady, sometimes gusting higher still amidst sheets of icy rain, but at times like that I'm not game to lean out of the tent with the windspeed meter, in case the tent should seize the opportunity to make another leap for freedom, whisking with it my warm sanctuary - my sleeping bag - away from me across the tundra. All I can say is that we are incredibly impressed with our Exped 'Orion Extreme' tent - it's holding up brilliantly - even keeping its shape and occupants dry - while enduring a pretty horrible gale head-on. There are no wind breaks out here, and our tent must be the tallest thing around for tens of km, with the exception of the bear that made the prints we almost fell into yesterday. Yesterday was quite the experience, as Clark commented, it was definitely 'one of those days you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemies, but glad you've experienced it yourself and survived' to use as a yardstick in the future when days seem 'hard'... It started off innocently enough as we packed up camp - a few things fell apart as we did this, but nothing new there. Donned drysuits and slowly smeared our PACs down across the sticky mudflats between our patch of dry gravel and the fiord, ready for another days paddling... As we toiled through this wasteland, we found some startling examples of wolf prints - 15cm long! Go on, measure that out. No sooner had we dragged ourselves away from these that we had to pull ourselves up short to stop ourselves falling down into the biggest polar bear tracks either of us have ever seen, including documentaries - everything. Some people talk of bear tracks the size of dinner plates - well I normally put my 30cm ruler alongside tracks for photographs, but it simply dropped inside these prints with room to spare. There's a visual effect used in filming called the 'trombone effect' or 'counter-zoom' where you zoom in on a subject the same speed as you move away from it, the result being that although the subject remains the same, background world seems to stretch outwards leaving the subject looking very vulnerable and engulfed by his/her surroundings. Well, as the bear prints finally released their magnetic hold on our eyes and we both looked up at each other, the world was definitely trombone-effecting around us as our minds boggled at how big the bear must have been. Still, another day in the Arctic - we'll survive. So we set off paddling into a mild headwind. 12:00, time for lunch in 1 hr, we decided to head for an island slowly looming up ahead amongst the ice bergs and stop there. Soon after the island was lost in a veil of rain, the sky grew dark, and the storm hurtled across the water to engulf us. The wind picked up, forming rolling waves we guessed to be about 1m high, the crest of each one blown into a breaking whitecap. Rain lashed against our DirtyDog snow masks blinding us, but taking them off was pointless as we were surrounded by mist anyway and couldn't see a thing. At least the goggles have amber tinted lenses that give the world a warm, cosy feel. =) I have adopted the little makeshift paddle and eventually by 2:00, although I was giving it my all with each and every desperate paddle stroke, we were sliding backwards against the distant shore - unless the herd of musk ox we were using as a reference point (the only things sticking up out of this otherwise 0m above sea level death-zone) were walking forwards..? Waves no longer broke over the bow, but instead rolled right over the bow, along the deck and broke into the cockpit itself - thanks to my Mum for sewing us up these cockpit skirts! We gave up and swung for shore, and staggered through shoe-deep mud trying to find somewhere for lunch and all the nut rations we'd missed. We were like shipwrecked sailors on a barren wasteland, we couldn't paddle, and there was nothing, NOTHING, in sight, just flat mud, semi immersed in seawater as far as the eye could see. We drank the last of our water, chewed on our Vegemite burrito bread wrap huddled backs to the gale on a bit of driftwood... First things first - we need water to cook with, so we set off, bear spray in 1 hand and water bags in the other, heading towards one of the many identical horizons, tasting salty pool after salty pool as we passed inland. We found one that was semi fresh water and scooped up a saucepan full. To our astonishment however, when we tilted the pan, instead of pouring down into the water skin as logic dictated, the water just poured out horizontally and was blown into a fine mist way downwind, and never hit the ground. So I turned my back to the wind and poured in 'shelter'. Again the arctic chose to defy logic and wind must have been eddying around me as now the water poured UPWARDS directly into my face! Hilarious. We both just laughed. I don't know how we keep our spirits so high in times like this. =) Slight delirium I think. Now past 5pm, 1km in the opposite direction we randomly struck a patch of dry-looking gravel that looked above tide-level, so we sloshed back to our PACs and hauled/pushed/smeared them to where the tent stands now, while we wait out this storm. Our unbreakable spoons broke again, and so I've decided to fix this problem once and for all, and have begun making a spoon out of a musk ox horn we found a few days ago - 'the Inuit’s plastic' as it's called, can be carved, heated and bent into weird and wonderful shapes (but perhaps not spoons it seems..? We'll see.) Our Leatherman multi-purpose tool has proved itself invaluable once again, I think its saw blade was designed to cut musk ox horn. =) Well time has come for one of us to crouch in purgatory - the zone between heaven and hell (our tent vestibule, between the open arctic and our warm tent interior) - and find our next nut ration, so that's it for now... STOP PRESS - Clark just unzipped the inner tent zip to discover a tiny little sandpiper bird snuggled up in purgatory, nuzzled in between the inner-tent, the camera drybag, and our washing up bag. You know your tent's good when wild animals prefer it to natural shelter (either that, or because the nearest other form of shelter is a bit of driftwood 200m away in the gale, all of 10cm high, that I’ve already gone to the toilet behind...) Tomorrow is day 32 - half way to our 65 days! What an eternity. I forget what normal life is, this has become the norm. (Back in the good old days - paddling our PACs day before last, amungst bergs and good weather.) (Left - making a genuine arctic 'unbreakable' spoon from Musk Ox horn, Right - My 30cm ruler inside massive Polar Bear tracks) Back to updates list To send us a message, please contact us anytime!