Team make good progress; arrive in Umingmaktok
Hello this is Glenn on 1st August. Our position is 57 degrees, 41 minutes, 42 seconds north, 110 degrees, 56 minutes, 30 seconds west. We are actually camped in the little settlement of Umingmaktok which is near the top eastern end of the Bathurst Inlet. We’ve travelled across the top of Bathurst Inlet and we’ve had a very successful time travelling across there. We’ve had a few big open crossings but the weather held and we were able to get across without any sort of drama. So that was pretty good, they’ve been pretty long days though. The wind today is quite strong, it’s a strong southerly wind which is in our favour but it is bit choppy, so we’re waiting for things to calm down now before we put to sea again.
Everything is going to plan – we’ve obviously have had to look at our food situation because we’ve got to try and make it to Cambridge Bay on rations that we had that were going to allow us to go south into Bathurst but I think as things stand it seems to be panning out okay. We’ve had some wonderful sunsets because we’ve been paddling late into the night and the scenery is absolutely stunning up here. It’s still very reminiscent of western Greenland but very, very beautiful scenery; huge big orange granite rock structures and big blocky cliffs—the whole thing is very nice.
The people of Umingmaktok have been very very welcoming and at the moment they’re allowing us to charge up some batteries so that’s good news particularly in view of the Sat phone which is what we’re using at the moment. Anyway, love to everybody – tomorrow or possibly later today all all being well we’re going to head northeast into Melville Sound which is south of the Kent Peninsula and then up though Warrender Bay up into Elu Inlet which we should reach in about 10 days’ time all being well. And then we have to make portage across land and carry our equipment ourselves to get into the Queen Maud Gulf itself.
