Severe storm hampers team’s progress
Hello this is Glenn and it’s the 26th of August and it’s the Arctic Voice blog. Our position is 68 degrees, 39 minutes 09 seconds North, 105 degrees, 34 minutes 03 seconds West. We’ve done pretty well and we’ve been having a lot of bad weather. We’ve managed to get up to the portage at the eastern end of the Elu Inlet. We’re about half way across at the moment, we’ve made camp half way across. We were forecast a storm that hit last night and the temperature has plummeted, we had frost the night before last and last night and we have been experiencing very cold winds at the moment. Probably about 25 knot winds, we’re holed up and can’t move.
We’ve spoken to hunters in Cambridge Bay and it would seem that the storm has set in for 4 or 5 days. The effect of this is to put us behind schedule. We’ve got about 7 days food left and we are now trying to negotiate how we are going to make the last few miles across the sea to Cambridge Bay which is notoriously rough after a storm and takes a long, long time to settle down. We will probably try and get a boat pick up for the short distance. But of course the boats don’t go out in weather like this.
The landscape where we are is absolutely astounding, in fact for the entire trip it has been wonderful, changing all the time. We came into the portage area yesterday and the landscape around here is just white and we realized when we got out onto the shore that it was just shells and it was acres and acres and acres of crushed shells from the days when it was sea level. Of course, it’s no longer at sea level but it’s really quite beautiful and the orange lichens and the tundra looks stunning in the evening light. So quite a wonderful place to be.
Nothing else to report. It looks like were going to be pinned down for a while here, its quite serious weather at the moment very, very cold too.
Glenn paddling on calmer waters!
