Oct 2009 Update:
Canada 2009 was a make or break trip. After five expeditions in as many years, we’d turned an improbable concept into a series of extraordinary machines, but behind the scenes, there was race between our Antarctic dreams and impending parenthood …for more see the blog.

More Photos: click here.

Expedition Wrap-up:
There is a tradition among modern adventurers to seek out uninhabited regions, but northwest Hudson Bay is filled with people going about their lives in conditions every bit as harsh as those faced by even Antarctic adventurers.

Mixing wilderness adventure, invention and meeting local people made for a unique type of adventure I found enormously rewarding. I hope adventurers can build on our work and create some great journeys across this very interesting part of the world…for more see the blog

Update 15/4/09:
…I thought about hopping into the deep blue frigid water in 20 knots of wind and I imagined a quick and unpleasant death. Dave sat at the ice edge working out technical details and logistics for a future expedition. Arctic Kite Sledding was definitely the most out-there thing I’d ever done, and would probably ever do. Dave however was ready to push past and head out to further horizons…
for more see the blog

Update 14/4/09:
…we shot down the coast, stopping to talk to a few snowmobilers heading up to Rankin. Three and a half hours later we put our kites down on the outside of town and hauled our sleds in, with an increasing entourage of small children…for more see the blog

Update 12/4/09:
Dave and Ben are on the move again! They just covered 80km in 3.5 hours, Scroll down and check the map for their current position... for more see the blog

Update 11/4/09:
Harry was taught to hunt by his father, who was a “mounty”, or a frontier cop. In spring his father would spend a month dogsledding a thousand kilometres down to Churchill, delivering mail to communities along the way..…for more see the blog

Update 10/4/09:
Iridescent green cascades in the northern sky entertained us for a full hour with their mysterious pulsating. We stopped to pitch the tent at 10pm, having totalled about 11 hours of skiing that day, covering 110km, and felt sufficiently confident to go back onto full rations for the night, expecting to make the remaining 40 km into Rankin the following day…
To our immense frustration, we awoke to a blizzard from the south…for more see the blog

Photos 10/4/09:
Check out the blog for some beautiful photos from the team.
Some older posts have had new pictures inserted into the text - find them on the RSS  feed.

Update 8/4/09:
…We sailed north across the ice, then entered a narrow river valley with granite cliffs on each side. Long journeys by kite are strange, hypnotic experiences. Unlike a sail on a yacht, a kite never stops moving, and on downwind runs you constantly trace figure-eight patterns in the sky with your kite. Somehow by making small adjustments in the way you trace these patterns you can optimise your speed, so you’re constantly adjusting your squiggles in the sky. It is a bit like staring at a giant hypnotist’s metronome for 12 hours a day and the effect I imagine is similar, around your feet are swirling rivers of wind-blown snow, travelling downwind with you. But as you’re travelling at the same speed as the wind, it feels eerily still…..for more see the blog

Update 5/6/09:
Update from the team, it has been tough going, but they are now only 40km from Rankin inlet…
….for more see the blog

Update 3/3/09:
Text from the team: Hipatbecalmed63d43.467N93d46.712Wnotfar!willcall10minsforwx.
Then Dave called with all the news….for more see the blog

Update 1/3/09:
Well, I haven’t heard from the team for a couple of days. This is entirely normal for us, for when the going gets tricky we often forget to do things like put the solar panel out to charge the ….for more see the blog

Update 30/3/09:
…back at the cabin, the morning after the Caribou feast, Manesy gratified us with a more traditional display of inuit technology by butchering half a frozen Caribou outside in the snow, before loading up his snowmobile and komatik and roaring off with the others. This left Ben and I to inspect the sled and the damage incurred during the previous day’s thrashing over countless razor sharp granite boulders. I’d been dreading this all night…for more see the blog.

Two new updates: 28-29/3/09
…The lake ice was fast and smooth, but connecting the lakes were ridges the Inuit call eskers, which were littered with exposed rocks. There was no way we could avoid all of them so we just blasted over and through them, waiting to rip another runner off the sled…… for more see the blog

Update 27/3/09. Icebirds on the move.
Just got a Sat phone message from the team, All is well, very well as a matter of fact! They were camped 40km NW of Rankin inlet on their way to Baker lake, which is 420 km inland from Hudson bay, Ben said the sled was working as advertised and it was -30 degrees (not including wind chill). The terrain was offering reasonable travel, though it’s not exactly ice-cap smooth! Go well fellas!

Update 25/3/09. A Stroke of luck, a new plan.
…..We are taking other measures, lightening our sleds by leaving behind a few luxury items, including our second sleeping bags for the super-cold nights. The idea is that less weight means less need to power up our kites so much and risk smashing our way through rough ground. But our best hope is to avoid bad ice all together. Starting further north where we can travel on land should help….for more see blog

Update: 22/3/09. Challenging times!
We sailed our sled out into thick pressure ice today, where the tides and currents pile the ice up into waves and blocks. Churchill is surrounded by pressure ice and we were trying to get through it in the hope of better conditions on the other side. We travelled a while before we got the sled sideways at speed and damaged a runner. (The sled is built really tough, but the ice conditions are just atrocious here) We tried skiing though it and it was even worse than on the sled. We were not keen to make any damage worse so it was “game over” for the day and now we’re back in camp…..- for more see blog.

Update: 21/3/09:
The last we heard from the team, they were camped a few km west of the Churchill river mouth, awaiting daylight and a forecast SSE wind so they can head North to Arviat, to join in the traditional feast that happens at the end of this weekend’s Dogsled race. They could have easily headed in any other direction over the last few days but the wind has been “right on the nose” for the 400km Arviat run!…. - for more see blog.

Update from Ben- 19/3/09:
Despite looking like 100 miles of unmade road when I turned up in Churchill, I didn’t feel too bad. I got a taxi to our lodge, and not surprisingly, ran into Dave just emerging from his natural habitat- the hardware store… - for more see blog.

Dave reports from the Ice - 16/3/09:
The first thing I noticed about the Churchill, is the way people talk about the temperature here. They dont bother using the word “minus”, and they tend to talk in windchill temps, rather than air temps, because, as any one who’s ever been in -35C/40kmh wind will tell you, windchill temp is the temp that really matters. So when i got off the train in Churchill on Saturday, I was told the temperature was, simply, “58″. By which they meant -58C……read more on the kitesled.com blog.

The plan: Ben and Dave are in Canadian Arctic to travel 2000km+ on the frozen surface of Hudson Bay. The lads will be travelling by kite-powered sled for 4 weeks along the remote west coast and inland Tundra.

View Hudson Bay expedition tracking in a larger map
This will follow on from Pat and Dave’s 2008 expedition to the Eastern shore of Hudson bay.