All of a sudden it feels warmer?

After a leisurely breakfast, it was back to sorting out kit; its amazing how long it takes to move kit from pile to pile; the piles remain the same but in another location.  But today we managed to sort out the repair kit, and I fixed the skins to the skis with epoxy and screws (sorry Jim) whilst Jules was busy sealing the seams on our Vapour Barrier Liner (VBL) sleeping bags.  But we are slowly getting to the point where we will know exactly what we are taking (or maybe not!).

Having sorted the skis we decided that it was time to take them out for a spin.  The training objective today was to ski out to the broken ice on the bay about 2.5 miles away, practice putting up the tent (again) and then test fire the shotgun.  Jules is referring to the shotgun as the ‘bank job gun’, as it is a short barrelled pump action with a pistol grip rather than a standard butt.

As we skied out across the bay, we came across what appeared to be a series of melting ponds; these ponds seemed to steam and when prodded (fairly hard) with a ski pole, we were able to break the ice.  We decided to ski around these pools rather than risk crossing them!  But as we skied out across the bay we came across a some polar bear tracks - which surprised as we had been told that the huskies which were tethered in the bay would stop the bears coming into town (these tracks were between the huskies and the town) - so there goes that theory!

The ski out was enjoyable, but we worked too hard and we were starting to sweat - this is not a good thing, as we must learn to slow down and not push the pace, not matter how good we feel.  This lesson could take some time!  We eventually found a large piece of exposed ice and decided that it would make an outstanding range; so the shotgun was quickly out and off we went.  We quickly went through a couple of birdshot and solid shot slugs, and then remembered that there was potentially a polar bear in the area and we were ‘rounds complete’.  Oh well, not a great deal we could do about that, so it was back into routine and the tent went up a lot quicker and easier than yesterday and Jules got the stove on fairly rapidly.  What is good about the new tent is that it heats up very quickly which means that out on the ice we will have something to look forward to in the evenings!

The weather was calm with the temperature hovering about -34, but it felt warm; not sure if this is a good sign.  The ski back was enjoyable allowing us to take in the scenery as all we had to look forward to was more weighing and bagging of food.  Tonight was banana chips, nuts and we then started on the butter (quickly finding it was frozen solid).  Still lots more food to pack……….

My skis; looking down at Sharon, Alexandra and Jonty whilst I ski.

Polar Bear paw print and my hand.

Our makeshift range - Jules stood about 10m away from the pressure ridge (yes its a big lump of ice!).

Our tent pitched on the Arctic Ocean

Jules under the setting Arctic Sun