We are sitting in a hunting cabin in the middle of nowhere. Dave is waging jihad on cold feet.

Yesterday was a remarkable day. We woke up feeling OK after not so warm a night. But we were out there, we were doing alright, we hadn’t been eaten by bears, and best of all the wind was blowing in the right direction!

We took off and started to cruise at 20-25km/h. Our route connected up a series of frozen lakes, large and small. The lake ice, where not covered up by snow was unnervingly clear, a deep blue colour like liquid water. Looking into it was like looking into a fractured blue crystal perfectly clear stretching metres into the deep. Best not to look.

The lake ice was fast and smooth, but connecting the lakes were ridges the locals 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.

Somehow though the sled just bounced off them and on we went. On the hilltops we noticed rock cairns placed by Inuit in prehistoric times to guide the way. They call them Inukshucks.

Crystal blue ice speeding by beneath our sled, Inukshucks to guide the way, it was like experiencing time travel and space travel at the same time. After all the work we put into getting here, it was a gratifying moment.

The wind picked up and the snow built into ridges called sastrugi. Our sled bounced off the sastrugi, sometimes getting airbourne across the bigger bumps. Both Dave and I started to wonder when something was going to break.

After lunch (a frozen, teeth-breaking energy bar), we crossed fresh snowmobile tracks,also following the Inukshucks. We followed. The tracks weaved through valleys and across lakes. Then in the distance Dave saw something move.

Ahead was a small herd of Caribou, like deer in fur coats. Dave started to dive the kite to pick up speed as we chased the Caribou down.

The Caribou saw us and took off. They easily matched our speed and then some.We’d never catch them. We continued on.

I couldn’t believe anythiing could live out here. Apparently they live off lichen. At times the hills can be black with caribou, in fact we heard that down near Churchill there is a herd of half a million.Half a million beasts, all living off lichen scratched from beneath the snow.

By 6 pm we’d covered nearly 100 kilometres! An exellent result over such rough country. We started praying for a hut. We’d seen a few hunting shacks along the way, and in our tired state we saw huts on every hill, which as we got closer would turn into rocks. But one squarish rock stayed square, and as we approached we saw three snowmobiles were parked out front.

We parked the sled and Dave walked in. The people inside heard some scratching outside, and with no snowmobile noise assumed Dave was a bear. Luckily Dave opened the door beofre they could get to their guns.

An Inuit, Manesy was out hunting with his two friends, Joe and Steve. They just couldn’t believe we’d sailed out there and came out to see our machine. Inside, they offered us coffee and raw Caribou liver from a beast they had just shot. We accepted the coffee, and declined the liver.

That’s about all the battery life I have left in this laptop. I’ll write more tomorrow.

Ben