It was a rough first sleep. The constant daylight, snoring from huts beside, time change and cold make for a restless sleep.
Its a rude awakening when we have to crawl out of the comfort of the bed in order to pull some clothes on for breakfast. Breakfast is amazing. We have warm porridge, homemade granola with yogurt, quiche, bacon, fresh fruit, and freshly made croissants. Tessum is at the espresso machine making delicious coffees.
There is a sign up board in the dining hall for todays activities. Half of us will go ATV-ing to Polar Bear Point and then onto Cape Marie, and the other half of us will go Unimoging to Gull Canyon to look for Muskox. Our group is up first for the ATV's. We have the Bonner family, the Neys family and the Fougners in our group. Our guides are Sven and Lee. We all pair up onto the ATV's, and we also have a Gator which seats 4. Wendy, Bruce, Kelly and Lee are in the Gator...and off we go. Dave takes the reigns on the way out. We decide that he will drive out, and I will drive back. After a quick lesson...we are off.
Its about 10 minutes going mostly North to the mouth of the Northwest Passage. The weather is cold, but not bad at all.
Sidebar: Up to this point, I have been wearing my Helly Hanson long underwear, wood socks, and icebreaker light long sleeved shirt as my base layer, with a sports bra. My next layer has been my very fetching green fleece pants and then my Helly Hanson half zip long sleeved shirt, followed by my matching...and equally fetching green zip up micro-fleece. Next is my down puffy vest, followed by my Vancouver 2010 outer shell and my MEC rain pants for wind. On my head is a MEC toque with ear flaps, and an MEC bandana for my neck and face. On my feet, my trusty Muckboots - Edgewater, and on my hands my ski gloves.
Once we hit the Northwest passage, we start to head west along the coast. Its definitely colder out here, but we see seals and of course lots of ice. Its quite spectacular, and of course flying along in an ATV is great. The path is well marked with custom Inukshuk formations and a well travelled path. We stop at numerous sites along the way, historical Thule sites, found whale bones and so on.
For lunch we stop in a small gully where we can find some shelter from the wind. There is little comfort there, but the lunch is spectacular. There is something truly wonderful about a nice hot home-cooked meal on a cold day after you've been experiencing the great outdoors.
Lunch is delicious tomato bisque soup, fresh made bread (by Josee), carrot sticks, amazing cured sausage from the Hutterites in Alberta, and yummy cheese from a Dutch importer that they deal with. They serve us this in these great foldable plastic bowls, which we then rinse out for coffee and tea...with milk if you want it. No comforts lost on this trip!
After lunch we go for a climb up the nearby mountain. The terrain here is shale, so its hard climbing and mostly straight up. Once to the top however, the view is magnificent. Recently, with the snow that has just fallen, the guide staff had been able to slide down the snow from the top of this mountain. Dave, Kelly and I decide that we don't want to climb way out to the edge of the peak, and head down to the snow slide to see if its something worth undertaking. The sliding area looks very steep, and very icy...so we carry on down the shale (sliding and losing our footing along the way) to a lower part of the snow slide. I determine that I do not want to be the first person to give this a shot. Poor Dave, bless his heart, agrees to be the first person to give it a shot. Maybe not our brightest moment. Perhaps just deciding not to slide at all might have been the best way to go. In any event, Dave takes off down the snow bank. At first it doesn't seem too bad. The snow is thick and so he doesn't go that fast. The snow however very quickly turns to ice, and Dave is all of a sudden shooting down this hill at top speed. He is trying to use the side of his foot to slow himself down, and unfortunately ends up sliding sideways, and then all of a sudden takes a tumble at the bottom into the shale. It looks painful and terrifying from where Kelly and I are. I yell down to him and ask him if he's okay. He says he is...but that it was intense, and not recommended. That's enough for me. I try to then traverse from where I am near the snow, over to the shale to go down. Unfortunately, I have one bit of snow that I need to cross in order to get down. I try my footing out on the snow and unfortunately, its ice just beneath the surface. As I try to gain some footing in order to get across, my foot slips, and I have nowhere to grap onto. I give a terrified look towards Kelly before I start sliding down the hill.
I had no intention of sliding down this hill. I had contemplated earlier on, but after watching Dave hurtle down, I was solidly happy to just carry on down on the nice shale. I am now sliding down on the snow and have to very quickly get my head around this fact, and get my nerves in check and ensure that I don't kill myself. On the snow, I am able to dig my heels in and I'm using the heels of my hands to try and slow myself down. I'm doing okay, but I know its a losing battle, as there is ice near the bottom, and I know I'm in trouble once I reach it. My only goal is to keep my feet downward, and to keep myself as slow as possible. Once I hit the ice however, its game over...my speed picks up and I'm now shooting downwards towards the rocks. The only way to slow down will be once I hit the shale at the bottom of the ice. The snow is shooting into my face from my boots trying to dig into the snow. My adrenaline is going and I am just praying that it will be okay. I see Dave off to my right and his face reads shock and fear. I finally come crashing into the shale at the bottom...thankfully feet first. I pop up...I'm alive...I have no broken bones...I'm okay!
My hands are killing me, and I have snow in my eyes and up my back. I had thankfully moved my iphone out of my side pocket and into my chest pocket...so it is intact. My heart is pounding in my throat and I've got the shakes. The back of my pants are torn, and my rump is feeling a little tender. Dave comes over to see how I've faired. He had thought that I had misheard him and that I'd heard him tell me to come on down. I assure him that it was due to a slip of my heel!
Kelly makes her way down to us on the shale. The three of us are standing there sharing tales when Kelly's son Alex nears the top of the snow. We are unsure that this is a good idea, however he takes off down the hill. He manages to get to the bottom quite gracefully...certainly with much more poise that what Dave and I managed. He admits that he had used two sharp pieces of shale in each hand to help him down the hill. A very wise move!
As we start to walk back, Rob N. nears the top of the snow slide. We shake our head and encourage him not to go. We have determined that the fact that three of us made it down in once piece is only by sheer luck and that our luck could run out at any moment.
When we get back to the other half of the group, we find that they had been intently watching our descents, and have actually caught on videos our slides (those to come). I'm glad that our moment of perfect stupidity will be caught on camera for others to see!
We await the rest of our group to come down from the top of the mountain. Apparently Sven had radioed up to the other guide Lee with a strong recommendation for no others to slide down. We load up, get re-dressed into our warm clothes (as we had shed some on the hike up) and off we go.
Dave has hurt himself from the slide. He is cut up on his knees, and his throttle thumb is very sore. We hope its not sprained. I queue up to drive, even though I'm still feeling a little shaky from my exploit. We head down the coast further until we reach Cape Marie. Apparently this is where in the past many polar bears can be found. With the ice out on the water, they are nowhere to be seen. They are out on the ice looking for seals.
We turn around and start to head back for the lodge. Man oh man do I love ATV-ing. I haven't driven one in awhile and I quickly fall into a comfortable rhythm within a few moments. Unfortunately our ATV is backfiring a little, and it stalls out on me a couple of times, but overall its great, and I throughly enjoy the 25 or so kms back. The boys and I have some fun trying to outrun each other, and a brief snowball fight (one-sided) breaks out at one point. As we near the lodge Sven leads us down into the flats of the river flats (now with no water) where we can finally give it a bit of a boot and get out of 3rd gear. The trail up to this point has had some flat straight aways, but was mostly very twisty and uneven and filled with little creeks and sharp and sudden divets and hills.
Once back at the lodge, we head for the showers. That hot water feels fantastic. Once cleaned up, its time for some beer and wine, games in the great hall, and quiet time before dinner.
Some of the young boys went for a skinny dip in the Arctic Ocean, they did it...and claimed that it wasn't that bad. Apparently the camera wasn't working properly the first time, and so the Fougner boys had to take a second dip in order to capture the moment on camera. We stayed in the warmth of the lodge and had the odd look through the binoculars to ensure that they were telling the truth.
For dinner tonight, again its a magnificent feast. We have ham, cornbread, cabbage salad, sweet potatoes with almonds (soooo good!), cranberry sauce and green salad. We devour our food, and then get served up delicious creme brulee with fruit and of course an after dinner coffee.
The night before, Richard had given us an unbelievable presentation on his North Pole exploits. He is only one of 2 men who have made it to the North Pole with no outside help (dogs sleds, flying in etc.). His stories are magnificent and overwhelming. The sheer idea of being out for 122 days in -60 weather is a concept that is difficult to grapple. His videos of the ice and the cold and the journey are mesmerizing. He has also down expeditions to the South Pole...something I would consider one day, as you are actually on land! Tonight is a presentation from his son Nansen, he is a photographer and the images that he has captured up here are breathtaking. Shots of the Arctic Fox, Belugas, Polar Bears, Owls, Hawks and Muskox during their time here over the years. He does a wonderful job of capturing their beauty.
After our presentation, Bruce has made everyone team up for a game of charades. We haven't had one in awhile. Bruce appoints team leaders, and they each are given a utensil as their team name (Bruce takes 4 utensils and drops them on the ground to determine who will go first). Team Spoon is comprised of many of the young men in our group plus Dave and Jude. Unfortunately the whole game goes under when team spoon acts out the movie "Elysium". They don't get it, of course, and a huge argument ensues about whether Elysium should be allowed or not as it is viewed by many as a proper name. In the end, there is a ruling that it stands, and so team spoon loses. They might be considered poor losers...I'm not sure. Either way, they are ruthless dogs with bones and Elysium has become a constant joke.
After our game of charades, there was a little more quiet time, and then to bed. Tonight feels much warmer and instead of wearing two layers of clothes to bed, I only wore one and no socks. I also managed to score a set of ear plugs from Amanda...the little saint! It was my best sleep in the high north with a water bottle tucked beside me.
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