March 15, 2005

This year there seems to be more snow than normal year. The snow is everywhere from the mountains to the seas. A silvery landscape is all around us. Markham Fiord, where we've been walking through, extends from Arctic Ocean toward south east. The mountains in Ellesmere surround the fiord from east and west creating the area of calm. It turned out that this time of the year is not suitable for hauling sled. Due to the deep snow and the bitter cold, sledding is extremely bad. It's just too heavy; 5km to 6km is the max we can travel on a day. However, when the sun rises higher and the temperature difference becomes large, the snow surface will become firmer and the sledding will be much better. We can for sure cover much longer distance. But in present cold weather of -40C° to -50C°, there is nothing much we can do.

Struggling to step forwad in the deep snow of Markham Fiord

At 7:45 in the morning I wake up and crawl out of a triple sleeping bags and measure the temperature. I put the snow in a pot and boil it to make hot water (approx. 9 liters) for breakfast and for the daytime use. When the morning temperature is around -40C°, it won't boil soon. So what I do is to make the hot water little by little. As it becomes available, pour it into a bottle of thermos and while we are using up the hot water, make another one. That's more efficient than trying to make all the hot water at once. And the hot water is really good. It is the happiest hour of a day when enjoying hot tea or coffee.

At lunch time, take a brief rest with hot drink

We are sleeping in one tent (North Face). During the nighttime our sweat becomes frozen inside our sleeping bags; our breath turns into frost and when we wake up in the morning we find it is all over the ceiling and wall of the tent. And the frost eventually melts and falls like snow. We heat a stove and dry wet gloves and so on, but water drop forms on the ceiling and the inside of the tent gets damp. I am starting to feel the limitation of three men sharing one tent.

Team ready to make tent after a day's activity

Mitsuro Ohba    


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