Last night we put on sunscreen before we went to sleep, so as not to get sunburned as we slept. It looked like a nice night, and where we landed wasn’t the most ideal place to set up a tent. Up here the sun keeps circling us, never setting. It was a beautiful ‘night,’ sunny and warm.
Our crossing of Lady Franklin Bay was grueling. Fun too! And so beautiful. We had to haul our kayaks across 18 kilometers of ice. That is a long way! Twice we found leads – narrow cracks in the sea ice where we led our kayaks like dogs on a leash – but the rest of the time we just worked ourselves like we were pack animals. Half way across we saw a few Ivory Gulls. They are whiter than the ice. There are only a few thousand of them on this planet, so that was an amazing sight.
This morning we woke, and all of the rumble jumble of sea ice that had packed up against the solid ice we had been walking across has drifted away. That means that today, for the first time, we are going to be able to actually kayak, get in the boats and use the paddles. It also means that, had we waited a day on the far side of this Bay, we could have kayaked across it too. Conditions change fast here.
As a side note, a narwhal just swam into our Bay!!!
Cheers, Diana
