We met a guide and he suggested that my dad and I try to hike horirder(spell check) mountain. It was a couple days hike from the town. The next morning we began to trek towards the mountain by walking along the coast. To our relief the Mosquitos were very minimal on this hike. About 3 hours into our trip the weather took a turn for the worst. It started pouring rain and the cold rain made it difficult to cross the marsh. We got through the marsh and we were supposed to cross James creek to get to the mountain. The creek looked more like a river at the time and there was no way that we could cross it. We walked down to the mouth of the creek where the water rushes into the ocean. Here we found numerous large pieces of wood that we used to quickly make a small shelter were we could hide from the intense rain.

In order to keep warm we found a old rusted barrel on the beach that we filled with drift wood and burned using naptha. It took a long time to get the fire going in the rain but eventually we got it going. It turns out that were we camped was a old hunting ground that was used to cut up the kills from the hunts. There were bones of all kinds everywhere. Fortunately there was an abandoned tent not far from our site which had several liters of fuels. This fuel helped keep our fire going in the rain.

Written by Adam McLeod

At night a icebreaker came in with a

large ship to deliver supplies to the town and this was a huge event. Everyo

ne in the town went outside to watch the supplies get loaded in even though the weather was terrible. There were elders and child

ren all around the dock watching the supplies get loaded in.

Written by Adam McLeod

On the way up there was no trail, we had to just make our own path. I found bones scattered all over the mountain. I found a old Inuit smoking pipe on the trail along with a old caribou antler. I found the pipe early in our hike up the mountain and I found the antlers on the steepest part of the hill on the way down. Half way up the mountain there was a large cross with several old coins nailed into it. We continued up the mountain so that we could get a good view out into the inlet. It was amazing to see all the ice out in the ocean as it flowed into the inlet.

Written by Adam McLeod

We began to hike up the pass with our heavy backpacks. It was very deceiving how far things were. Often we would see a landmark and it appeared no more than 10 minutes away because the terrain was very flat and easy to hike. But sometimes it would take us hours to get to these landmarks. There were countless creeks that we had to cross, some were very easy to cross whereas others we had to put on our water shoes and cross with great care. There were many segments of the hike were we had to go over unstable rocks and go up hills that clearly had avalanches as recent as the night before. We hiked for several hours before setting camp near a bog. We had to set camp because the flies were unbearable.

It was a very interesting experience to see how the constant sunlight messes with our biological clocks. I constantly found myself thinking that we must rush to find a place to camp before it gets dark. It was some sort of instinctual signal saying find safe place before night. But there were no nights. We had absolutely no sense of time. Sometimes we would hike till 1 AM and we estimated that it was close to dinner time. My dad had his biological clock really thrown off, in fact it was actually frustrating! We set up camp at 1 AM and after a long hike I was hoping to get a good nights sleep. My dad woke up at 3:30AM thinking that we slept in cause it was light out. He did this twice on our hike. When he woke up he tried to make scrambled eggs from freeze dried food but the food was horrible and it had more flies than eggs in it. After he woke up he started packing up and we then continued on the hike despite having only a few hours at most of very uncomfortable sleep. Eventually we got to crater lake which was beautiful. The lake reminded me of wedge mount and the crater gave us shelter from the flies because it was windy at the crater ridge. The view was amazing from here as well. We decided to stay here for a day because the view was awesome and the river we had to cross next looked impassable. Eventually we both decided that we should not go further up the valley from here. There was a series of large rivers we had to cross and it looked like a never ending bog from the top of the crater.

When trying to cook meals here the oven did not work because the wind was too intense. We were eager to have a meal now that there were no flies around. We ended up burning a towel to generate heat to make a freeze dried meal. It tasted amazing after eating nothing but meal replacements and beef jerky for a few days. When we went to sleep it was cloudy so we could not see all the mountain tops. When we woke up the clouds cleared and we could see all the mountain tops with massive glaciers sitting on top. It was quite a sight.

We decided to head back early to try to catch an earlier boat back. Due to the fact that we could not go any further and we were very satisfied with the trip, we felt it was best to head back early. Shortly after arriving at the drop off point we saw a boat! We did everything to flag the boat down and they saw us. The boat did not pick us up though, they went further up the beach and dropped off two men. Then the boat drove off while they waved goodbye to us. It turns out the people they dropped off were park rangers. They had a radio and they called in to ask a boat to come get us at the next high tide. We were told that our outfitter Charlie would be there at some point between 5-9PM. Considering it was 10AM at the time that means we had a lot of time to burn at that location. Another group came to that drop point in hopes of being picked up that night also. Their boat came earlier than ours and we were not allowed to go in that boat because their outfitter does not like our outfitter and we are supposed to not go back with a different out fitter. It was very frustrating because at this point we were not even sure Charlie got the message. We asked this outfitter if Charlie knew but he did not give us a definitive answer and he just drove off. Just as we were becoming resigned to the fact that we may need to set up camp and stay an extra night we saw a boat in the distance. It was Charlie and he came right at 9PM.

On the boat ride back the scenery changed dramatically. The waters were clear on the way too the pass several days before but on the way back the waters were full of icebergs. The boat had to slowly navigate through the icebergs back to the dock. The boat certainly needs a new paint job after that ride. I am very glad that we came back when we did because sometimes what happens is that the boats get trapped due to sea ice and we would have been stuck in the pass with no contact to the outside world. We could have potentially missed our flights due to such a delay.

Written by Adam McLeod

Packing For the Arctic

Well we started packing for our trip to the Arctic weeks before we actually left. The longer we have before departure the more stuff we think we need for the trip. TIME TO GO!!!

Written by Adam McLeod

Written by Adam McLeod