Musk Ox Herd
by John Huston
Today was just a super awesome ski day.
On top of that, we ran into a musk ox herd and were escorted into camp by two wolves that were a few hundred yards away from us as we skied into our campsite location. One the goals of the trip is to be able to photograph and take video of the wildlife of Ellesmere Island and we were able to get some awesome close-ups of this really cool musk ox herd of about 12 animals this afternoon. We skied down a river valley and we spotted them up on a hill and Hugh and Kyle skied up there with their cameras and they got some really cool shots. So you’ll see one of those photos in the blog today. The wolves, we didn’t get a photo of them; they were too far away. Today there’s a chance we’ll see them later; they’ve been shadowing us the past few hours here and we’ll see if they get curious and come into camp.
The last two days have been just truly incredible ski conditions with even better vistas and topography then we’ve been passing through. There’s shear cliff walls, all sorts of different angles and changing light have made it just some of the best ski days I’ve had a long time. Our appetites are kicking into gear here. Toby finished his full dinner ration for the first time tonight. So, we’d like to congratulate him on that. And Kyle is not there yet, but Hugh and I have been full bore on all meals from the get-go. So the North American stomach seems to be a bit better on the expedition than the European one so far. We can’t say enough about our dogs; they are having so much fun out here, and they seem just to get stronger every single day. And our mileage has been outstanding, in part because of our dogs, our relatively light sled loads that we have right now, and the ski conditions which, I mean coming into camp this evening was just like, whoa. It was such good conditions we could have skied forever.
Weather’s been really warm. Sometimes we’re just super sweaty; other times are just perfect. It’s not uncommon for Toby, or some of the other guys to be skiing in only a long underwear top; it’s that warm in the sun when there’s no wind. OK, that’s the end of the blog. Thanks for listening everybody.
Daily Expedition Data
Date 4/9/13, Day 10
Location:N77’29”, W85’43”
Traveled: 10.25 nm
Temperatures: -10 °F am, 0°F pm