After our first night out

Everything had gone relatively according to plan in respect to our first night out until about 3 o'clock in the morning.  I awoke to some sounds outside, what sounded like foot-steps….or were they paw-steps?  I ignored it for a bit but my curiosity and fear grew as the sounds continued around the outside of the tent.  At the same time there were some creaks and cracking sounds of the ice, which put me firmly in the "I'm now scared" zone.  Matt woke up and looked over to me asking "how goes the war?" and I promptly told him "shush".  He quickly got what I meant and asked where the shot-gun was, "outside!!" I replied.  We listened some more before eventually determining that the noises were actually just the breeze against the tent - over active imagination you might say, but considering we had crossed a number of bear tracks on route to our campsite, the animals were in the forefront of our minds.

 

As you would imagine we quickly grabbed the shot-gun from outside, loaded it and had it to hand should we have needed it.  The rest of night passed without a hitch, both of us awakening every few hours from either the noise of the Vapour Barrier Liners (like big plastic bags) we were sleeping in which lined our sleeping bags or from the occasional shower of snow/frost that had built-up from our breath.

 

In the morning we put the sleeping bags away, had breakfast, collapsed the tent and started to head back to the Resolute.  The conditions were near white-out and so navigation and sense of direction were fairly difficult.  We were soon passing the husky packs and the boats, frozen in the bay, before getting back to the town.  As we approached one of my bindings all of a sudden felt very loose, a few seconds later my foot came away from my ski and I realised the binding had actually broken - not ideal!!!  Our first training night-out was over and with it we had established a number of lessons….and have now ordered some new bindings, which will hopefully be here in the next few days!!!