DOG AND SKI

DOG AND SKI

Air Napu

When we set out on this trip, we knew the dogs would help, but we didn’t know how much. And the answer is in these ski conditions they help big time.

And that’s the kind of the magic of skiing and use of sled dogs in combination. And it’s that combination that Otto Sverdrup and other Norwegian explorers who are his contemporaries discovered and played with and kind of created one of the modern modes of polar travel: the combination of Norwegian cross country ski technique and running Canadian Inuit dogs because the pace of each, it matches just perfectly. And we experience that every day out here.

We’re getting pulled. Each skier has a dog out front of him pulling, and the skier’s in the middle, and the sleds trail behind. So it’s those 3 items. And the dog does some work and the person does some work and often it’s in combination. So there’s kind of a synthesis going on, where we kind of have a magic travel, that is part of polar exploration history and part of our trip that is just super fun to experience and very, very efficient and very team oriented. The dogs are working, they love to work and so do we. So it’s that magic of dog and ski that is still alive today that is propelling our expedition northwards right now on Eureka Sound. The dogs have paid off just huge. They’re giving us huge travel distances and relatively short hours.

Tonight’s photo is of Napu. He’s one of our 4 sled dogs. He always skis with Toby as Toby has a special relationship with him. And you can see here in this photo, he is super-enthusiastic to get started. So it’s a good example how sled dogs just love to do what they do, which is pull and pull some more.

This evening we are camped right on shore near what we believe are Thule culture tent rings. It’s a little river right here, so it would have been a good place in the summer to camp out. And we think the Thule culture was anything from 400 years ago and back before the Middle Ice Age. It’s pretty cool to be camped where some other people camped a long time ago. Very good travel conditions. Our sleds are getting lighter, our dogs are getting stronger, and we’re having a really good time out here. Thanks for listening everybody.

Daily Data
Date: 4/22/13, Day 23
Location: N79°31', W84°56'
Traveled: 6 hours, 12.4 miles
Temperatures: -11°F am, -2°F pm

FUN FACTS #1

FUN FACTS #1

Down the Canyon

by John Huston

A few days ago we passed the quarter pole of this expedition. And, in honor of that occasion, we have a bunch of fun facts about our trip and about our life on the ice that we want to share with you.

First, though, I’ll give a quick recap of our totally amazing day yesterday coming down from the height of lands between Trold Fjord and Bay Fjord. And on the way we went through this super cool rock-carved canyon about 40’ walls and in many places only 10 to 15′ wide. And then it widened out until we got into a kind of a riverbed that was a braided stream more or less.

So on the way down though, we saw 28 rabbits, three musk ox skulls all with their horns, two of which were attached to all the bones of the dead musk ox. Who knows how long they’ve been lying there. Yesterday we also saw five wolves, two of them howling to our dogs as we exited the height of land near our campsite, which is kind of a big open valley area. And then three more that ran past our camp only 40 yards from where we camped right when we pulled in at the end of the day yesterday. So that was quite exciting. Today we had a real simple day, very straightforward travel back on the sea ice, and we’re now headed northwest and then north up to Eureka.

OK, here are the fun facts about our trip.

Favorite lunch food: we have this instant soup that we add bacon and parmesan cheese and butter to, and then hot water from our Thermoses and that’s our favorite food to eat on break.

Favorite meal: Toby’s Cajun bacon super-grease stew, bacon being the main ingredient and the grease from that bacon.

Coldest temperature: -35 degrees Fahrenheit or -37 degrees Celsius.
Warmest temperature: +16 degrees Fahrenheit, which is -8 degrees Celsius.

Highest wind speed is 30 knots.

Our coolest animal encounter or wildlife encounter:
No. 1, we have two of these, No. 1 is we have three wolves running by our camp within 50 meters last night.
The second coolest was witnessing an Arctic fox kill a seal pup from a distance, but still that was pretty miraculous.

Number of cameras out here: we have 7.
Gigabytes of film shot so far: that is 300 gigabytes so far.

New Land

Number of blisters: 2.
Number of blisters that hurt: 0.

Our favorite kitchen item: we have these non-stick 3-liter MSR pots And of course, a wooden spoon; you’ve got stir stuff, otherwise it burns.

Average hours of sleep each night: 8.

Our favorite kind of clothing on the inside layer: we have our Devold Wool Expedition Zip Necks and Devold Wool Mesh Underwear.

Our favorite outerwear are definitely our Bergans of Norway Antarctic Expedition Pants.

The time John and Hugh have spent listening to iPods: 0 minutes.

Our dog nicknames:
• We have Little Larry.
• We have Paddy for Napu because of his green harness and his red fur.
• We have Queen Elle for her attitude.
• And we have Axel the Machine who seems to claw the earth past him as he pulls; he’s just a total beast of a strong dog.

At Night Toby says, “Time to listen to the Second World War,” right before falling asleep: that happens every night because he’s listening to the history of World War II on his iPod as a goodnight story. Typically he only lasts a few minutes before conking out.

Times a dog has peed on a camera: once. Good boy, Napu.

The best wildlife spotter on the team is Toby.

First person in his sleeping bag every night: Hugh “Lightening Man” Dale-Harris.

First person dressed out of the sleeping bag every morning is me John.

Favorite spice in the spice kit is cayenne pepper, which we’re running a little bit low on right now.

Our favorite expedition travel gear is our Asnes Waxless Amundsen Skis.

And that’s the last fact. So thanks everybody for listening to the facts of the expedition and following the blog. We’re having a great time out here. Over and out.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: 4/21/13, Day 22
Location:N79°07', W84°39'
Traveled: 7 hours, 14 miles
Temperatures: 4°F am, -8°F pm

UP THE GUT

UP THE GUT

Happy Team

by John Huston

Today we left sea level in Trold Fjord and ascended up a rocky, tight river gully to a height of land or a watershed where we are now camped.

We’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time. We read about it in Sverdrup’s book, New Land, and his diaries as well. And we found the day to be a lot easier than the book depicted, but not the diaries. So we think there is some embellishment going on in the book to some degree.

Anyway we called our little river gully, which was steep-sided and narrow about 40 to 30 feet across most places with steep walls, we called it The Gut. It was full of rabbit poop. Toby said he never thought he’d be skiing over a bed of rabbit poop. That’s what he did and the rest of the team did all day.

Towards End of Trold

It was a fun day. It’s really fun to be on land and off the sea ice. We saw lots of rabbit tracks, Arctic fox tracks, wolf tracks, and our dogs did really, really well, getting us up sooner than we thought we’d be able to get up.

In camp we have two wolves checking us out from the horizon. We saw an Arctic fox. We also saw a small herd of musk ox on one of the outlying hills. We’re excited to be half way through Sverdrup’s connection to the northern part of Ellesmere, which was a big unknown in his day. It’s fun for us to imagine how they went about it making the route decisions basically on a blank slate. We had a good day, one of the highlights of the trip so far. And we hope you had a good day, too. Thanks a lot, bye.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: 4/18/13, Day 19
Location: N78°39', W84°16'
Traveled: 7 hours, 8.8 miles
Temperatures: 4°F am, -18°F pm

ARTIC FOX ENCOUNTER

ARTIC FOX ENCOUNTER

Feasting fox

Yesterday during the last march Toby “Hawkeye” Thorleifsson and Hugh “Hawkeye” Dale-Harris spotted an Arctic fox directly in our path as we skied north through Trold Fjord.

Foxes are normally pretty shy, but this one wasn’t moving. As we got closer we realized it was in the process of killing a baby seal. It had found a seal den, which is kind of a hollowed out series of small caves created by the mother seal, and it was in the process of killing a seal pup. Now an Arctic fox is about half the size, maybe even smaller, than a seal pup, so it was quite an undertaking for a small fox. But by the time we got closer, the seal was dead.

Trold Fjord Camp

So today we continued skiing work north through Trold Fjord. Trold Fjord is absolutely gorgeous. Where we are now it’s about a mile, mile and a half wide, cliffs a 1,500 to 2000 feet high, and today it was a wind tunnel, 25 knots or about 30 miles an hour, straight down our faces from the north all day. So wind is pretty tiring. We’re fortunate to have 4 strong sled dogs with us to make a day skiing into the wind a lot more productive than otherwise. But we’re happy, we’re healthy, no frostbite or anything. We’re fairly warm and we’re enjoying some quiet, non-windy time in the tent right now. OK, thanks for listening everybody.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: 4/16/13, Day 17
Location: N78°22', W84°57
Traveled: 7 hours, 10.8 miles
Temperatures: -8°F am, 4°F pm

RESUPPLY TOUCHDOWN

RESUPPLY TOUCHDOWN

Unloading the resupply

by John Huston

It’s a happy night in the Bergans of Norway Wiglo tonight. The Wiglo is the name of our tent.

Our long awaited resupply flight has successfully delivered the goods and our wait of three days is now over. We’re celebrating in the tent tonight with some potato chips, salt and vinegar variety. And a special dish, Norwegian fried bacon, which is Toby’s specialty, bacon fried up with taco spices and a few other spicy spices left in all the fat, of course.

It was a bit touch and go the past few days with finding a weather window to get a flight in. And this afternoon and most of the day we finally had some blue sky and some kind of friendly clouds that fade away. But it’s quite a thing to call in a flight when the logistical things are so expensive, and if it comes and it can’t land due to weather, then we end up paying a lot of money. So, we went for it and it all worked out and we’re really happy we don’t have to deal with that again.

Tomorrow we are back on the march happily; we’re tired of sitting here. And we go into Trold Fjord in the next about 50 miles which culminates in a very tight mountain valley that we have to find our way out of, and we’re excited to figure out that puzzle. So thanks to Hugh and Toby today for making a nice area strip and for Kyle for filming everything.

That’s the update today. Thanks for listening everybody. More to come soon.

Daily Data
Date: 4/15/13, Day 16
Location: N78°04', W85°32'
Traveled: 0 hours, 0 miles
Temperatures: 4°F am, 0°F pm

QUEEN ELLE & WHITE OUT

QUEEN ELLE & WHITE OUT

Queen Elle and John

by John Huston

Today we had an off day on April 12th, Day 13 of the expedition.

It was supposed to be our resupply day where a twin otter airplane chartered by us would land with our resupply, and then continue north to Eureka to drop the rest of our supplies there. But we had a white out this morning, which is low clouds descending into our camp and we couldn’t see a darn thing all day. So we are sitting here hoping to get the resupply tomorrow.

We’re at the mouth of Trold Fjord, which was first navigated by Otto Sverdrup back in 1901. And as far as we know few, if any, people have navigated through Trold Fjord to the north all the way to land and up since then. So we’re kind of excited about that. It’s a steep long fjord. We’re hopeful of some more wildlife, and we’ll be in there for, I don’t know, at least 5 or 6 days, most likely. It’s one of the kind of crux points of our expedition.

Today’s photo, or one of them, is of me and our queen. She is named Elle after Ellesmere Island. She is the friendliest Inuit dog you’ll ever meet. She and I have been skijor partners since the get-go, and most of that time up front leading The New Land 2013 train. Elle’s, I guess, the most natural lead dog that we have in the group, and we have one or two other candidates as well, but she’s done a good job. She’s super friendly. Sometimes we take her off leash and she runs around camp or the trail and says hi to everybody, so it’s fun to have that kind of peppy, puppy-like presence. She’s 3 years old and she’s really good at rolling over, and lying on her back, and sticking her paws in the air requesting belly rubs, and that sort of thing. I feel lucky to be skiing with Elle, but we’ll change it around as we move forward in the expedition.

Yesterday we skied across Dahlman Fjord to the mouth of Trold Fjord and on the way we came across a lone wolf and we got some pretty good photographs and a lot of good video of it walking along the sea coastline and that was pretty awesome. And then we got to camp and we were greeted by a polar bear. It never really got closer than 250 yards, but it did take some time to kind of watch to make sure it didn’t get closer. So, so far our dreams of Ellesmere Island wildlife have been realized and we’re happy about that. OK, hopefully we’ll see a plane pretty soon!

Daily Expedition Data
Date: 4/13/13, Day 14
Location: N78°04', W85°32'
Traveled: 0 hours, 0 miles
Temperatures: 14°F am, 14°F pm

FIRST 10 DAYS: 1902 VS. 2013

FIRST 10 DAYS: 1902 VS. 2013

Happy Toby

by Tobias Thorleifsson

It is now Day 10 of our expedition and as the expedition historian, I am carrying with me Otto Sverdrup’s original diaries from his planned trip in these areas in 1902.

And he was traveling in pretty much the same region of Ellesmere that we are in right now and I’d just like to sum up our experiences the last 10 days and compare them a little bit to Otto Sverdrup’s experiences. First of all, the temperature, our temperature has been extraordinarily high compared to what he experienced. In just a few examples: he had -41 on the 3rd of April, -42.2 three days straight after that and -39 as late as the 12th of April, all these temperatures in Celsius. So as know, we’ve had pretty hot temperatures with up to -11 Celsius during the daytime at a certain point, that’s a major difference.

We’ve also encountered lots of polar hares and polar bears. When we meet these animals, we enjoy the moment and it’s a great time for us and we enjoy it. Whereas for the Sverdrup expedition, polar hares and polar bears were food, and they invariably depended on killing animals on the land to get north. So when Sverdrup was coming up the Regent Bay and Baumann Fjord where we are now, he was dependent on killing bears to make it further north. We are obviously carrying all our food, all our dogs’ food, with us in our pulks.

The other major difference is the sea ice. We have been traveling exclusively on first year ice since we got up here in the Arctic. And that is ice that was created in the fall of last year and this winter. We’ve got quite nice surfaces, quite like the ice you get on the Great Lakes during the winter. Whereas Sverdrup in his diaries writes how he was constantly traveling over multi-year ice that presented them with great challenges to get their dogs and teams through. Multi-year ice can be anywhere from 2 to 6, 7, or even 8 years old.

So that was a short comparison of the 10 first days of the Sverdrup experience in 1902 and our first 10 days in 2013. We are looking forward to the next 62 days of the expedition, and I will do more blogs where I compare our experiences with that of Sverdrup and his men in 1902.

This is Toby, signing out. Hope everyone is having a great spring down south.

Daily Expedition Data:
Date: 4/11/13, Day 10
Location: N78°04', W85°32'
Traveled: 13.6
Temperatures: 12°F am, 0°F pm