Expedition Update # 20 - 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: 3/9/05 Time: 11:00pm Position: 70 deg 46.865 min N, 103 deg 59.814 min W Summary: Heading Inland 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: Was bitterly cold, now on the improve, sun even! Temperature: down to -2.5 but now a toasty 7 deg C Message: Well, we're at a new stage of the adventure. Tomorrow we leave our string of coastal campsites and strike inland, heading towards Hadley Bay in the north, some horrendous number of kilometers away. The last few weeks spent along the coast has been slowly but surely killing us, our PACs and our equipment - especially the last week of paddling. The salt water gets into everything, whether things actually get drowned (like some of our bags of nut rations unlucky enough to live in low-points in our PACs that now leak a little after all the torment we've put them through), or just the salty sea air chewing into our electronics, corroding things and generally making life damp... So although the coast has presented us with more experiences and challenges than we expected, we are glad to be leaving it behind at last. Thankfully though, one of the few things that remained 100% dry has been our two Exped 'Arctic Goose' sleeping bags: There are two things that worry me on this expedition, the first being polar bears, and the second, a wet sleeping bag - both potentially fatal, but at least a bear would provide a quick death. Both these fears will be eased now as we head inland. On day 32 we held the biggest, loudest, most out-there party for hundreds of km, marking our 'half-way day' towards our goal of 65 days. Without booze, or speakers, or disco lights, this wild party consisted of us sneaking a few extra nut rations, an extra hot chocolate, deciding to pretend that it was dehydrated meal night rather than rice-night, and... for the grand finale - we made one of the 2 instant chocolate cheesecake 'just add water' mixes that we brought. I would describe it in detail but I'd end up drooling all over the keyboard and electrocuting myself. Trust me, it was bliss =) Determined not to let us off lightly, the weather has played some interesting games with us of late. After sending our last update, the temperature fell and fell, and fell, and stayed there. We awoke to find our world blanketed in a layer of snow and ice, smaller lakes totally frozen over, and snow continually falling (or rather being projected at us by the still raging gale). The temperature remained below zero about 90% of the time for over 2 days. This was new, and forced us through some steep learning curves. We only once, for example, made the mistake of leaving our thick heavy wet paddling gloves on the deck of our PACs outside overnight. We had to thrash them against rocks to break up the ice inside before we could then ease what we thought were already painfully cold fingers inside. Being honest, I'm not sure if I've ever had to endure such pain before, desperately trying to remain silent while my fingers screamed out that they were dying for several minutes while I whirled them around and pressed them under armpits in an attempt to warm them... Once the ice inside had melted they burnt as if they had been frozen in a block of ice and now boiling water was being poured all over them, while also being struck repeatedly with a large mallet with each heartbeat - they remained painful for 2 days. Quite the experience. A similar story with our kayak booties. Yet after one wasted day held up by weather, we pushed on, paddling amongst bergs while snow blew into our face, until the waves slapped enough sense into us and drove us ashore. We turned on the GPS - 3 hrs paddling and we'd accomplished 900m. With no other option we were faced to haul through this muddy wasteland, something which we've been avoiding for days. With the whole terrain wet and soggy (and partly obscured by snow), it made no difference whether we bothered to avoid small ponds or mud pits sealed with only a thin crust of ice, and we just toiled onwards like broken men, simply willing each step to pass. The end of the day saw us a grand total of 2km from the previous campsite, but hey - that's 2km we didn't need to do the next day. However, as luck would have it, the weather totally reversed on us the next day. Not only did the sun beam down on us, the temperatures soared to 5 deg C, the waves died down, and both the current and wind were now in our favour! Brilliant! Totally determined to escape this coastal torture and reach the spot where we are now, we prepared ourselves for a massive days paddling, even pre-making lunch and putting it in little bags in our cockpit so we didn't even need to stop for breaks. We flew along, covering our record distance of about 16km in one day. Towards the end the wind and current absolutely died away leaving us paddling along a sheet of perfect glass, suspended above the bottom in crystal clear water, along with countless blue bergs. Not a single ripple or breath of wind for over an hour - feathers rested motionless on the surface as we slid past, and the sky and water merged into one in the distance. As we cruised past the often towering or overhung bergs we could see their intricate, convoluted sub-surface structure holding them up. It was a magical moment, and one of the many beautiful Arctic memories that will no doubt remain with us forever. A large seal even escorted us for almost an hour, gradually surfacing closer and closer to my bow until I stoped and glided to a rest. The seal then came right up to us, huge black eyes deep in curiosity (as were ours) until we had to push on again - we needed to find somewhere to pull-up to make our weekly satellite phone call to SkyNews TV for an interview. It's so incredible that we can be paddling out in the middle of the semi-frozen Arctic Ocean, hundreds of km from anywhere, and yet do a live interview! Thanks very much John at Landwide Satellite Solutions for these sat phones - awesome! As we paddled onwards, the number of icebergs grew until we were no longer paddling 'past' them, but rather through them, winding this way and that trying to find paths though and around. It came to the point where we could go no further; the maze of ice had reached a dead end. We were forced to turn back and try to escape the way we'd come. However, we spun around to find that the bergs had drifted, and the way we'd come had closed! Visions of Shackleton’s ship Endurance being crushed by the ice, leaving his men stranded on drifting ice instantly came to mind, but thankfully we found another tighter route out. Phew! When we did eventually hit land, we were faced with yet another bizarre animal encounter. While we were busy looking at a small whale skull washed up amidst the gravel (inside which a lemming was sheltering), and noticed this bird - rather like a young seagull, but HUGE - land next to our PACs. We watched in growing amazement as it waddled over (dodo style) to my PAC, and hopped on deck. We grabbed cameras and started sneaking up very slowly, until it became evident that it totally couldn't care less about us. So we walked right up to it and stood next to it in bewilderment as it then proceeded to sabotage our PACs - pecking and pulling at anything it could find: bits of rope, sponsor logos, hatches, then it eyed off our Ortlieb waterproof camera bags! With a cry of 'don't touch what you can't afford!' we sprang at it and managed to scare it off perhaps 3 meters. In the end we both ran away with our PACs. A lucky escape. So tomorrow is a new day, a new bowl of oats and coffee for breaky, and a new somewhat less watery horizon to explore. We are having the BEST time out here! Full of stories, photos, footage and unforgettable experiences (some we wouldn't wish upon our worst enemies, but glad we endured). As I write this I can hear the occasional thundering as bits of overhanging ice break off nearby icebergs, and the deep rumbling/gurgling of a must ox (We've discovered that this noise does indeed come from musk ox, not, as we initially thought, from the internal rumbling of a hungry, stalking bears stomach just outside the tent which is exactly what it sounds like). (Left - PACs get their first taste of the real Arctic! Right - Chris holds up whale skull) (Left - bird sabotaging our PAC. Right - curious seal. Below - Clark paddles amongst ice) Back to updates list To send us a message, please contact us anytime!