Route

Route
Jonathan and Kirti Walpole's 950 km canoe journey across Northwest Territories and Nunavut in July and August of 2014

Day 3

Weather: Calm, smokey, hot, buggy
Distance: 37 km
Location: Latitude:63.70515, Longitude:-106.38274 at 07/15/2014 18:14:34 PDT
Map link: Click here

The visibility was very poor today, under 400 meters all day. It was like paddling in fog on the sea, but here the poor visibility was due to smoke that blew in from the south yesterday. Navigation was challenging. It was also hot and muggy all day, and conditions were totally calm, so we were surrounded by a dense cloud of blackflies all day. Occasionally unzipping the face shield of my bug suit to be able to see to navigate, resulted in a lot of bug bites on my throat and under my chin. These soon swelled up and were really itchy and annoying. The smoke was so thick that you could look directly at the mid day sun with the naked eye. It was just a dull red ball in the sky. Much of the day the visibility was too low to be able to see any scenary or wildlife. We did however spot a stoat on shore and several loons on the water.

We stopped for lunch on an esker here and had to set up the bug shelter in order to be able to eat. Drinking could be done through the mesh of the bug suit, but eating was more challenging. We felt as if we were under seige.

After lunch we paddled 10km and then stopped at an esker to hike.

Later we camped on another esker. Again we set up all three tents - sleeping tent, kitchen tent, and bathroom tent. We had a good bug-free wash in the bathroom tent, and long bug-killing sessions in the kitchen and sleeping tents.

Dinner was butternut and leak soup with barley. Very nice! By 10.30 pm the temperature in the tent had dropped to 70 degrees.