2004-11-23 - Almost unbearably cold
21 Nov, 04 - 19:47
GPS-pos: N66°06´ | E151°00´ | Alt: 27 M
-41°F, it is truly cold, the tent is not much of a help I´m afraid, and we´re camping at N 66 °06´23.7 E 151°00´57.2. There´s no wind, no clouds, 6 hours of daylight. 19 km;s today, 22 yesterday and 12 the day before.
The main problem right now is that there´s almost impossible to take a break. It is almost unbearably cold. Almost terrifyingly cold. The only thing one can do is constantly move and hope to avoid as many obstacles as possible. We´ve been pretty lucky so far. We´ve navigated to near perfection, even though we cannot follow the shortest way due to big areas of broken up ice which are extremely difficult to pass. We´ve, so far, had no problems with spotting open water, since it´s smoking like the worst fire due to the cold. An inch of snow covers the ice, so it could be much harder. But the cold is harder to handle than I imagined. And worst of all is, it´ll just get colder every day from now on until mid-February.
We freeze to the bone almost every meter we ski. And all the time it takes either to get inside the sleeping bag and all those hours it takes to get thoroughly warm or inside a logcabin belonging to these fantastic forgotten and isolated humans which dot the river. Luckily they´re more than we thought.
On top of these facts, we´re presently surrounded by lots of fresh wolf tracks. A mother and a bunch of young ones. A pack for sure. We spotted a polarfox today. Nope, enough of this, I can´t handle the cold anymore, it is so cold right now, but I like to add, I think we´re beginning to get things under safe control. We think. At least until tomorrow. And, there´s so much to tell, but not right now. |
