#padling

Våttkort på hele halvøya #Asker

Jostein aka poden, arving, sønn – har hatt 80 stk elever på våttkort i sommer og her er bilder fra kursdagen på Holmsbu. Du finner info på @helehalvoya på Instagram eller via http://www.halvoya.no

My watch turned to military time so for the time being all journal entries will seem very official.

We were on the water today nearly 11 hours setting off at 6:45 and not making camp until 5:30. We logged almost 25 miles and with a zero day on the schedule tomorrow we will be able to finally catch up the miles we lost to the ice. As far as ice goes today, we pulled over some but broke through most of what we needed and paddle around the rest—it is starting to play less an less of a factor in our trip showing signs that we should be able to continue as planned and make it to the Morse on time. Hopefully we will get reports that Gary Lake is not frozen so we can take the river north and follow the Back. Our alternate route, however still ends in Chantrey Inlet and it seems as if we will have enough time to avoid Baker Lake as an ending point—good news for us.

Early in the morning we saw a wolf out on the ice,

...smaller than the one we saw yesterday and a bit farther away. It stopped several times to face us, investigating our strange presence. I cant’ imagine the wildlife on the Hanbury are accustomed to human intruders as most routes this far north are run on the major rivers and start from fly in points in and around the headwaters (Coppermine, Thelon, Back, etc.) The wolf watched us with little interest and continued its path along the ice, broad side to us leaving itself open for some decent photography taken by Jeremy. I’m interested to see how his shots turn out by the end of the trip.

We also came into close contact with a ground squirrel that was standing near some rocks at a break point we were taking in the morning.

Larger than squirrels from further south the rodent didn’t seemed to be frightened of us in our canoes nearby and watched from the shore as we took a break from paddling.

Another wildlife sighting was an apparent wolf or arctic fox that we saw on the ice from quite a distance though, it being too far away to identify, I’m not sure if this sighting truly counts as a wildlife encounter.

Trip moral remains high as we were able to make up so much lost time, and everyone seems confident in our ability to tackle almost any obstacle that lays ahead. After totaling around 80 ice miles pulling the canoes (currently the majority of the miles we have made) we know that whatever the arctic waters puts in front of us we can handle. With concerns of time constraints nearly extinguished we prepare ourselves for days of paddling and portaging to reach the Thelon—a long awaited stretch of the trip that should be much easier than what we have faced so far. An interesting trip with may hardships this far we’re relishing in the fact that we are free to paddle our way through the majority of the remainder of the trip and are excited for new challenges that lay ahead.

 DRC: once again sunny and warm during the day with varying temperature of breezes. It seems the air currents pick up cold air off the ice and warm air from above the ground the sweep across the lakes an provide relieve in all temperatures. The tundra climate in summer is truly dry and sunny with little to now clouds. Evidence is in the increasingly depleting supply of firewood, though tonight was the first night in several days we gathered wood for a fire. Extra foliage was available as we camped at the base of a long set of rapids.

Kokatat pants: the gasket on my right ankle broke today but was sufficient with a small piece of duct tape for the tape. Hopefully the water proof rubber ends will hold up the remainder of the trip.