Traditional Inuit technology wins over modern materials
Glenn cooking Walrus
Hi it’s Glenn here. We’ve been making good progress since leaving Arctic Bay. After 3 days we’ve come up the Admiralty Inlet and we’ve crossed the Steensby Peninsula. So we’re getting up now and getting ready to go. You may even hear the dogs barking in the background – they’re just being fed at the moment. On the way over the night before last one of the dogs gave birth to five tiny puppies. This was just as we stopped. This was unexpected. And instinctively she tried to get them into the tent to get them out of the cold. So Simon put up a shelter for her but it seemed pretty clear that these tiny things weren’t going to survive the night. While we were sleeping we heard the plaintive calls diminishing and eventually in the morning there was just one puppy left. Simon put the puppy into his anorak to try and keep him going through the day as we were travelling, but by the end of the day he had died. So all the puppies died.
We’re going to head off now towards a seal hunting area near Polynya. The weather is pretty good here at the moment. Travelling has been easier because instead of having the nylon runners on the sledge, we’ve taken those off and made a runners out of soil mixed with sea water and it freezes rock hard. Every day sometimes twice or three times a day we have to turn the sledge over and remelt the water and retreat the runners so re-ice them. This is the old Inuit traditional way and it works very well in this very cold dry snow that we’re getting. So progress is better. I think it’s probably still in the region of 8-9 days back to Iglulik. But the travelling is easier because the temperatures have warmed up a bit now — it’s about minus 27 now which is a considerable difference from minus 35. It makes life easier especially when the sun is out and the sun is shining longer in the day now. Anyway love to everybody and I’ll report in soon.
