1000HourDay.com [visit 2005 site]

As seems to be the norm following a record day hauling, we inadvertently slept in an extra hour today, but no real harm done.

We were soon up and at it, after enjoying the 2nd last coffee ration we have left (we're saving the last spoonful for a celebration coffee at the far side!). The weather was kind to us again today, the rain held off, and although by midmorning the sun had vanished behind a blanket of clouds, never to return, the remainder of the day was pleasantly cool and a light wind kept us from sweltering to death up the many hills.

Something we've both really noticed up here is how far sound carries - bird calls for instance, we'll hear what sounds like a duck honking right near us, and only after some looking around, track it down to a tiny speck on a distant lake. The same with talking to each other, the other day we were standing on two different mini hills, well over 100m apart as we were both looking for route options ahead, and after our hand signals, shrugging and pointings became too confusing, I just tried shouting, and it was as if we could just speak normally to each other. The world is so quiet up here, it's really something.

After our delayed start, we soon caught up with our average 2km/nut break, and things were looking great. More rolling hills with the odd sharp ditch, more rolling hills, and then, a rocky hill came into sight, and then more of them - we were surrounded. *dramatic chords* Considering the pitiful state of our tire covers, we had been dreading being forced to do any more rough rock sections, but it seems all good things come to an end, and so too must our favorite terrain. We tried to pick the least savage route through jumbled fields of white, sharp rocks, and went for it. There was much grating and grinding and the sounds or rubber being nicked and pulled and snatched at by sharp edges and twanging back, some very near misses as lances of rock slid by mere centimeters from the wheel side while others were totally engulfed by our balloon tires... but several rock hills later, we found ourselves lowering the PAC down the jumbled face of the last one, and a sea of earthy tundra once again stretching out in front of us! We got through without a single puncture. You've no idea how ludicrous that is. One of our wheel covers has now slid off the inner tube almost entirely, exposing more than 2/3 of the inner tube, flapping and flopping around as the wheel lurches around. We're going to do a very brief bit of tire care in the morning before setting off, but really... there's not much we can do anymore. Our PAC is on its last legs, and so are we. It's lucky that the end is so near... I guess if the end was still 150km away, and we still had weeks left out here, then we'd be fine, and we'd just accept it, and life would continue on out here as it has done for the past two months, but now that the end is SO close, I think our mind is letting our bodies shut down a little. We can't cope with too much more. Mentally, I think, we are already there: we can picture it, we've lived that moment a thousand times in our mind, and really, all these days in between sometimes feel like they are just.. in our way. =P And yet we know we can't let our guard down even for a moment, as anything could still so easily stop us.

This last section of the island - the last 60 km or so - is very technical navigation. There are just so many contour lines, so many hills and gulleys and rivers and lakes and 'unconsolidated ground' and cliffs and false-summits and hidden valleys that picking a route through it at all, let alone trying to pick the most efficient route, is proving to be quite a challenge sometimes. We now combine the powers of Google Earth, our topo map, our GPS and a satellite photo map with 10m contours on it that we have for this final section - pouring over all these resources gives us a fair idea of what's going on ahead, but half the time, it's the little details like "well..sure..so there's a 120m contour line here, and the surface of the lake is right next to it... but.. is the lake at 111m, and therefore ringed by a 9m impassable cliff, or is the lake 120m also, with a nice broad walkway around it..?" These things can make all the difference, and you just can't tell until you find out the hard way. We have been pretty lucky with our predictions to date though, and a little 'making it up as we go along' adds excitement to the day anyway =)

What else happened? We saw a few wolf prints, and also noted down the location of another potential tundra landing strip - whenever we spot flat, level, firm ground over 300m long, we’re marking it down for our mate Rene at Adlair Aviation back in Cambridge Bay, as such sites are few and far between, and can be really useful to know about, as you can imagine =)

We hauled 13.72 km today, which we are again, delighted with, especially with the late start and rocky terrain. That leaves us with... wait for it... 22.08 km left to go! Oh it's so CLOSE. But still... so far!! Although, if we get another good day tomorrow, we could break into the single-digit km-to-go! *Fingers Crossed*

We're exhausted.

Just enjoyed our last 'Sweet and Sour Lamb' dehydrated dinner sitting, legs dangling off the 'front verandah' of our PAC, as the evening chill set in. Something we've been meaning to rave about for ages - our titanium spoons! We only brought one item of cutlery (each), and these extra-long handled titanium spoons are brilliant. Anyone who's tried to eat a dehydrated meal from the packet knows how messy and frustrating it is trying to delve in for those last tasty morsels right down the bottom with a normal-length spoon - the packets are always so tall! Well, these spoons are designed for the job. They are like 20cm long, light as a feather and indestructible. Cheesy voice: "These spoons get the Chris and Clark tick of approval, and can be bought at Paddy Pallin" haha =) But seriously, get one if you're going camping. Some of you probably remember the constant snapping of our polycarbonate 'unbreakable' spoons in 2005, every few nights I'd have to melt the broken ends with a cigarette lighter and squish them together, which made the runty little spoons even shorter. =P

Our live expedition updates are written on our tiny ASUS Eee PC 900 laptops, and sent via Iridium 9505A satellite phones from Landwide Satellite Solutions, using email compression software xGate from Global mareine Networks! Thanks guys - it's the perfect set up!