GreatOutdoors.com: Ed Viesturs Sat Phone Dispatches

Ed Viesturs’ Final Baffin Island Dispatch

Ed Viesturs — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:14:29 -0700

Editor's Note: See the final batch of photos from Ed's Arctic journey.

Hi everyone. Just a few final thoughts on our Baffin Island adventure after being back home. Our return journey home was rather uneventful once we were able to leave Pond Inlet. As we flew home John and I discussed what we had done, what we had learned and possible plan for the future.

One of the things we wanted from this trip was to find out from the local Inuit what their observations were regarding climate change. We had the opportunity to speak with a few of them and there were common traits that were apparent to all of them. They had noticed over the last 15 years or so that Eclipse Sound, which they live on the shores of, freezes over later each year and melts sooner as well. They hunt primarily at the flow edge-where the frozen sea ice meets open water, as this is where the marine species that they hunt gather-and this area has become more tenuous and disappears faster each season. This makes their hunting season shorter.

The flow edge is also vital to Polar Bears as this is where they also hunt for food. The fact that they are now once again on the threatened list, makes apparent the fact that their habitat is changing and being affected by climate change.

The local Inuit also mentioned that they are seeing species of birds in the area that they have not seen before and they therefore have no traditional Inuit names for. We noted this from conversations last year as well. Some species of duck that normally migrate south each season are spending winters in the area rather than leaving.

Viesturs Calls in Final Dispatch

Ed Viesturs — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:32:49 -0700

Hi everyone, it's Ed Viesturs calling on behalf of myself and John Stetson, it's Sunday May 11, happy Mothers Day to all the mothers out there. We're now back in Pond Inlet staying with our friend Dave Reed, owner and operator of Polar Sea Adventures, he's been gracious and nice enough on both ends of our trip to let us stay in his house, which has been a nice respite from being out in the tent. We came into town yesterday, we skied the final seven miles, it was a beautiful day, kind of sad to leave the interior, but we skied the final several miles out of the Salmon River and then we got back out onto the sea ice of the sound and skied into town here at Pond Inlet. So yesterday was kind of the end of the trip, 107 miles total according to our GPS. We had a great trip. Out of the days we were out we had one rest day, two storm days, and man we learned a lot, I had never down something like that, pulling a sled, going over terrain such as that that, it was exciting, it was interesting, very educational. If we do decide to do a bigger longer larger trip this was definitely the stepping stone we needed to test our equipment, to see what worked, what didn't work, how we might improve the systems that we're using, whether it was the skis, the tentage, the food, the meals, that type of thing. We figure we worked out a lot of the bugs and learned a lot along the way as well. We will be sending in some photos once we get them all downloaded and get to the proper type computer where we can sit down for a minute and organize and send in some photos from the trip, so stay tuned for that, hopefully within the next several days, also like to download a map so we can actually show you and highlight the route we took on Baffin Island. So stay tuned for more, it will be a couple of days, we're leaving tomorrow from pond, an early morning flight to Ottawa, then on Tuesday we'll go our separate

Last Camp of the Trip on Baffin Island

Ed Viesturs — Sat, 10 May 2008 08:27:28 -0700

Hey everyone, it's Ed Viesturs and John Stetson calling from Baffin Island, it's about 7:30 Friday night, May 9, we're in our last and final camp of the trip. We made about 13 and a half miles today and we only have tomorrow to ski or pull another six miles until we get into the community of Pond Inlet. So this is almost the end of the trip. My GPS ticked off exactly 100 miles today where we are camping as far as when we left. Today was quite interesting because of the wind storms that we've had the past several days all the snow that had been laying over the river and stream ice and lake ice had been blown completely off so we were on glass smooth ice or whatever snow surfaces there were it was extremely hard packed snow. And to make things more efficient we actually walked all day today rather than trying to ski on the glare. And to give ourselves a little bit of traction we both had a set of those little running shoe rubber things with little metal cleats on them and we slipped those on the bottom of our boots and that's how we gained enough purchase and traction to walk on the ice. So we kept plugging along, and here we are, our last camp. A lot of the shallower lakes that we noted today are already melting, whether that's early for this time of year here on Baffin or typical it's hard to say. There was a lot of dirt that had been blown free of snow I think because of wind storm that we had earlier. But it was a nice day, slightly overcast and it was just cold enough that we weren't too hot, so here we are. We'll give you a call again tomorrow from Pond Inlet, we've got some other things we want to wrap up and discuss and we may send in a few texts as well once we get our hand s on a computer and we can write some stuff up regarding the trip. Thanks for checking in on Friday night and we'll talk again tomorrow on Saturday.

Another High Wind Day

Ed Viesturs — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:45:35 -0700

Hey everyone, it's Ed Viesturs calling here, on behalf of John Stetson and myself. Wednesday night May 7^th. We decided not to move today. It was very, very windy all through the night and in through the afternoon and we could have moved had we had to, but it was about 10 degrees outside with 40-50 mph winds. It would have been quite a struggle. We only have about three days, or so, of travel to get us back in to Pond Inlet so we decided not to push things and hang out in the tent. We did have to get out for awhile to dig ourselves out. We're tucked behind this big rock and because we're in the lee of the windward side the snow tends to drift on this end and because of the wind last night it drifted on to part of the side of the tent. So we spent some time outside today shoveling the snow off the tent. Other then that it was just kind of a lot of hanging out, something that I'm quite familiar with in the big mountains and the storms, is hanging out reading books, relaxing a little bit, stuff that we normally don't do at home when we're real busy. But it was nice to be here in this environment, watch the wind blow through the rocks, and have the snow scraped off the ice. This is a very typical Artic kind of day to be gray and windy, and blowy and cold. But we were very comfortable in our tent all day. The wind now, at about 7:00pm is starting to abate. It's almost calm, there's a slight, slight breeze. And our plan now is to get moving again in the morning. We'll get up around 6:00 or 7:00 and we'll be out the door. And start heading down the water course which is now the Salmon River. It's a little twisty and turny but we should after a couple days intersect with our original camp II and then from there head out the stream to the sound and from there to Pond Inlet. So by late Saturday, hopefully, we'll be back in town. That's all I have for now. We'll call you with a progress report tomorrow and thanks again for checking in.

Grounded by Wind

John Stetson — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:51:10 -0700

12.5 Miles Today

John Stetson — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:29:51 -0700

Sleeping and Camping Systems

Ed Viesturs — Sun, 04 May 2008 23:59:23 -0700

I’m just going to continue with talking about our sleeping and camping systems. We’re using a three tent, a Mountain Hardwear Trango 3.1 tent which they graciously modified for me. The inner body of the tent they used lighter weight materials and on the outer fly sheet we had them add about 18 inches or so of extra flaps at the bottom edge of the fly. And in snowy conditions once the tent is positioned and anchored we can actually pile snow on the snow skirt, you might say, and that helps not only anchor the tent but prevents wind from blowing up and under. So this is a very typical Artic and Antarctic scenario for putting these tents up.Right now we are camped on the sheet of ice so we’ve got the tent anchored with ice screws. Inside we’re cooking with an MSR XGK multi-fuel stove. We chip ice every night from these lakes and that’s what we melt to make our water. Our seeping systems consists of a nylon, waterproof, breathable, bevy sack and inside that are two pads that we sleep on and then we sleep inside of a large synthetic sleeping bag rated to about 15 or 0 degrees. And inside that, in really cold conditions, we’ll also put our 0 degree down bag inside of that as well.Every morning we roll up that whole sleeping system like a big burrito. Rather then stuffing everything separately we roll it up and we strap it on top of our sled and that’s how we get ready to go rather quickly. It’s a bulky looking thing when it’s strapped on the sled but it’s rather light. So, again, we had a good day here just hanging out. We’re starting the beginning of our decent down this river and lake system and look forward to the next 5, or 6 or 7 days of rounding the bend and finishing off this really spectacular trip. Thanks for checking in.

Camped on a Beautiful Icy Blue Lake

Ed Viesturs — Sun, 04 May 2008 23:27:10 -0700

Hi everyone. It’s Ed Viesturs calling. Sunday May 4^th.We’re hanging out here on this beautiful ice lake today, this Sunday. We decided to take the day off to rest a little bit, repair some of our gear which we’ve had some minor breakages. Dry some stuff out, and I’ve got a rolled up solar panel that I unrolled and charged some of our phone batteries, and to just kind of hang out and revel in this beautiful place.We’re camped pretty much about a 100 yards from the snout of this glacier we came up and over yesterday. Camped literally on this icy blue lake. The ice is several feet thick. It’s clear blue, clean ice which we’ve anchored our tent into with ice screws.It’s kind of eerie camped but it’s spectacular to be camped on this sheet of ultra clear ice.We just took a walk to look at the other side of the snout of this glacier and it turns out we probably made the right decision yesterday to get off the glacier where we could. This whole end of the glacier is quite different from the end that we skied up and over.This end ends in a sheet of ice for many hundreds of yards and the end of the glacier terminates in a series of cliffs anywhere from 50 to 100 feet high and it would have been extremely difficult to exit the end of it on this side. So where we went off and how we got off was probably the best option. It was a little steep section where we put in some anchors and we actually lowered the slats on a rope belay and we climbed down and here we are.

Blue is Cracking Like Rice Crispies

John Stetson — Sun, 04 May 2008 16:41:29 -0700

Hello, John Stetson here on May 3^rd, Ed Viesturs and I are curled up in our sleeping bag were camped at the toe of a glacier we crossed today, actually the confluence of two glaciers that come off of the ice caps on either side of us, and was in our path and we went up. We're camped now on a beautiful, bright blue ice and as we're in our tent we can here the ice of this lake we're on being pushed by the glacier, cracking like giant Rice Crispies, as we lay here, kind of a of fun sound, actually, doesn't seem too dangerous. We had a great day. We felt almost guilty the weather has been so nice each day save for the one storm day. Again today was one of those days where we struggled to stay cool as we were working to get up on the glacier, leaving the lake on the other side, getting very hot, we has some beautiful travel on top, it was like being on top of the world, or so I thought, Ed informs me it was not in fact the top of the world, the top of the world looks quite different, but for me it was very nice. These glaciers come pouring off the ice cap, it's like spilt milk, these glaciers like milk run off in all directions. We got across, a little tricky. We lost, well we didn't know the way, we had to rope off the glacier an get down onto the lateral moraine on the side and travel through the gully, absolutely amazing as we by icefalls over and around boulder to finally get down to our camp where we are now. We traveled about 11.5 miles, all is well, we are looking forward to another day of travel tomorrow. That's all we have. Thanks for checking in. Talk to you tomorrow.

Best but most challenging day so far

Ed Viesturs — Fri, 02 May 2008 19:07:20 -0700

Hi everyone, it's Ed Viesturs calling, May 2^nd, about 8 p.m. We had a pretty cool day today, we went about 11 miles, it was one of the most interesting and also the most challenging days, on one of the sections we had to negotiate through a very narrow chute or gully where the stream or river carved it's way through some rocks and some boulders and we had what we called technical sled pulling, one person in front pulling and one person behind pushing. We made it through that bottleneck, we actually had a couple, and then we broke out into some wide open terrain, to some lakes that we're on now, and we're kind of swinging around, getting close to our farthest and halfway point, we are about 50 miles into our journey, and we're right now camped in a very spectacular place, we're camped right on a frozen lake and right outside our door, about a quarter mile away is an icefall from a glacier that's spilling off of an ice cap directly in front of us. In the midst of this frozen lakes are frozen icebergs that we figure in the summer calve off from the ice fall and bob around in the lake and in the winter they get frozen in. So we're camped here on the lake right next to an iceberg, which is a very rare experience, I don't think a lot of people find themselves on lakes with icebergs in them. Every time we turn a corner we get new and spectacular views. There are huge wall towering above us. Tomorrow we're going to descend on this glacier lake to another long lake, and then we'll hopefully cross over a glacier that has spilled onto the lake for about five miles, and that we figure that will be the crux of our trip. Hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow, after eight or ten miles of journey, we'll be up and over that glacier and be rounding the corner and starting to head downstream on a new river system called the Salmon River. Great day, it

May 1st and All is Well

John Stetson — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:18:45 -0700

Hello, this is Ed and John, up here on Baffin Island, All is well. It's May 1^st. This is my second dispatch. I think I lost the satellite on my first. We're in a deep canyon and so our satellite has limited time before apparently we lose contact. But we had our usual 6 hours of pulling today, traveling about 10.5 miles. Quite arduous, going uphill. It's not a serious uphill but it's a constant uphill through a canyon up this small stream that we're traveling, very narrow in places and it's a real boulder field in places and we have to dodge and move around to get around all of the boulders try not to scratch up our skins on our skis or our sleds. We have seen a little bit of signs of wildlife while we've been out here. We saw yesterday a Caribou rack that was in the snow. And we saw lots of ravens which, is our usual companion out here. This morning we had snow buntings chirping around the tent as we woke up. We're seeing quite a few rabbit tracks or I should saw snow shoe hare tracks and the occasional fox track. Yesterday, just before we camped we saw a polar bear track that was crossing across where we were traveling, heading in the opposite direction. We never saw the bear. It was not too far ahead of us. The tracks were fairly fresh. But now we're up in the un-touched land, and a polar bear would have to be nuts to be up here. And it's very, very difficult to get up here and there's not really anything for a polar bear to eat. But Ed was quite sure that he could outrun me, so I've taken to tying his shoe laces together at night, secretly, just for my own self. But the trudge today was difficult but we made it. We're in our tent now. We had some beef stew just a bit ago. And tomorrow looks to be a very good day as we head into the glacier fields where there's glaciers coming down, blocking our trail, and the ice cap in view, and we're looking forward to it. Thanks for checking in. Goodbye, until tomorrow.

Best day yet, Part II

Ed Viesturs — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:01:02 -0700

Just to continue finishing with the boots, they are a Vibram soled boot with a heavy duty cloth upper with two layers of felt inner boot, quite warm, very flexible and our sled are about six feet long, a composite plastic bottom tub with integrated molded runners on the bottom and the top part of the sled with a fabric covering with a zipper down the length of it so most of out gear goes inside and you can zip it shut and is self contained and then whatever bulky lighter items such as a rolled up sleeping bag are lashed on to the top, connected to us by two long rods or stays they are attached to the sleds and go forward and attach to our hips, the harness system is kind of a hip belt and kind of a hip belt with a shoulder strap system and this kind of distributes the load primarily on our hips but also a little bit of strain on your shoulders, but all in all not too bad, the sled we are pulling are about 200 pounds, and depending on the snow conditions it's really not as bad as you might imagine but it's a constant pull all day. And we're getting a really good work out all day. The hard part is trying to dress properly, there's no wind, we have to go down to our lightest layer so we don't over heat. Yesterday as we discovered that if it's blowing and cold, and we're traveling into the wind you have to put on everything and cover your face, wear heavy mittens and gloves try to stay protected from the bitter cold. But again we had a good day and we look forward to a good day tomorrow and we'll check in at camp four.

Best day yet as Ed and John make almost 12 miles across the ice

Ed Viesturs — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:43:14 -0700

Hey it's Ed Viesturs, Wednesday, April 30, we're at our third camp. I think our transmission got cut off yesterday, we were only able to ski about four hours, last few hours we were facing headwinds of 30 to 40 miles per hour, and it was getting worse and worse as we were pulling our sleds into the wind, so we decided to camp for the night. During the night the winds abated we got a couple of inches of snow and awoke this morning to a very nice day. It was cold but calm, and today over a seven and a half hour period with six hours of full on pulling we managed to go 11 and a half miles, in some of the places it was so calm it was a battle not to overheat, so we were both down to our lightest layers as we skied today. We did travel about six and a half miles down a long narrow frozen lake call Utuk, we crossed another small lake we're working our way down now and in the next couple of days we hope to cross a couple of glacier tongues , the terrain is getting quite interesting. But today was our best day so far, with six hours of pulling, what we try to do each day is go for an hour exactly, then we stop for a break for 15 minutes and then go for an hour exactly, then repeat that process six times, that is what we did today, and eventually we will try to do that seven or eight times as we get stronger and our the sleds get lighter. The sleds are getting slightly lighter as we eat some of food and use our fuel. So that is kind of part of the game as well, by the time we head back to Pond Inlet at the end of two weeks, our sleds should be reasonably light and we'll be a lot stronger as well. The way we travel, we have skis, they are kind of like backcountry touring skis, 70mm wide on the bottom of which attached synthetic climbing skins, the hairs face backward so you are able slide the ski forward but as soon as you put weight and traction on them grips the snow and even the ice. We are connected to the skis with three pin

High winds hamper travel for Viesturs and Stetson

John Stetson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:48:52 -0700

Hello there, this is John and Ed out on the trail, pretty good day, couldn't travel very long. We got sort of a wake up call when we got started this morning things were quite nice and calm about 15 degrees. And as we traveled up the Salmon River the winds started to pick up and got to be . . . (satellite transmissions fails).

Ten miles on the first day across the ice

Ed Viesturs — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:30:19 -0700

Hey, this is Ed, we're here at the end of the day. Its Monday, May 28. We finally got out of town, it was about 1:30 after visiting with the park ranger and a couple of the locals to get some of the input about the terrain in this area and we made the decision as I mentioned in our earlier dispatch to take the southern route We loade dup our sleds which we guesstimate to weigh a little over 200 pounds, we have 14 days supply of food and fuel. So we went two miles from Pond Inlet to the South West and then we cut inland, now journeying down what is called the Salmon River, and we will then be connected to a series of long frozen lakes, and then work our way inland, there's some beautiful ice caps that we're going to check out some glaciers and we're just make a loop inland along a series of rivers and long frozen lakes. We were talking to the park ranger today and he actually called the area we're going to by the locals as the ‘untouched land,' they don't travel in that far, apparently there is no reason to, they have no concern for going on icecaps and glaciers if there's no hunting. John and I had a good day today, we traveled nine and a half miles in five hours and things went fairly well, we are going to slowly increase our mileage and hourly travel every day, again the idea is to work on our systems, get our techniques down, and slowly build our endurance to see in the end if we can go eight to ten hours and see how much distance we can cover. It's about nine o'clock in the evening, we just finished dinner, we had a nice freeze dried meal of beef teriyaki and rice, we're having some tea now, and then we're going to fill up our water bottles and shut her down for the night. We'll probably get up around six or seven tomorrow and go for about seven or 8 hours and see how far we can get. Thanks for checking in John and Ed here we're having a good time, day one is over and we got a lot more days ahead

Preparing to ski out of Pond Inlet

Ed Viesturs — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:55:00 -0700

Via Email
April 28th-9 AM-EST. Pond Inlet
Ed Viesturs here from Baffin Island.
Beutiful sunny day here. Still quite cold but that's fine since we will get quite the workout today.
We will be heading out today after we talk with the park ranger and get a permit for the Park over on Bylot Island-which we need to do. Our plan though, is to first head inland, towards the south, along frozen rivers and long lakes to an inland fjord. Should be beautiful and there should be more wildlife such as Caribou to see. It will also allow us to get our "systems" figured out and lighten our loads somewhat by eating some of our food and using some fuel. Then after a week or so we will head back this way and cross the frozen sound towards Bylot Island to the north and take a peak at the glacier there. If it looks good which it does from here since it gains altitude quite gradually. Our loads will then be much lighter and we will have things more dialed. Our sleds are loaded, weigh about 180 pounds and look like overstuffed burritos with a few accesories strapped to the top. Everything doesn't quite fit inside, so we are using the bundgie cord technique of adding on.
Mush On! Ed and John.

Pulling sleds and playing the fiddle on Baffin Island

Ed Viesturs — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:01:53 -0700

Hi everyone, it's Ed Viesturs calling from Pond Inlet on Baffin Island. It's Sunday Evening April 27 10:30 p.m. I'm looking out the window here as the sun sets behind the mountains of Bylot Island which is to the north of us, but it stays light all night pretty much, doesn't get too dark. We had a pretty good day today. We got up early, finished packing, loaded up our sleds, wanted to see how everything fit inside, there's like a zippered cover that extends up and over the top of the sled, on top of that we had to lash bulkier, lighter items, turns out both of our sled with two weeks supply of food and fuel weigh about 180 pounds or so, then we took them out for a little test drive. We skied for a couple of hours, and surprisingly they pulled quite well. For the first part of our trip we're going to ski around 18 miles across the sound here and it's relatively level but the skis and sleds worked well, it didn't feel as bad as I thought it would be dragging 180 pounds behind me the sled went quite well. So we feel good about that. We're going to head out and start our trip tomorrow, we still have to check in with the park ranger in the morning because Bylot Island is in a park and we need to have the right permission and tomorrow we'll start and we plan to be out for a good 14 days, we've got food and supplies to do that, and were commenting how nice it will be on the second leg as our sleds are going to be a lot lighter as we consume the food and fuel. This evening was a little bit of a nice surprise. We went to a community event where they had fiddle lessons, about eight people taking the class, a couple of instructors are here from Nova Scotia, we actually I about a hour and half learned how to play the fiddle and three or four basic tunes, never in a million years did I think I would learn how to play the fiddle on Baffin Island. But that's what we did ,

Waiting for the permit to enter Sirmilik National Park

John Stetson — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 09:12:04 -0700

John Stetson here, we're still up in Pond Inlet. Ed and I went out today for a nice ski, took a look around and enjoyed the good day we had here. A little bad news, the park office is closed and we need a permit. To get up into Sirmilik National Park we need a permit and the office won't be open until Monday. That gives us a chance to do a little more skiing, looking around a bit, talking to the Inuit and that's been very informative. Sirmilik is known as place of glaciers, there's an ice cap up on top where Ed and I intend to head up to, and these guys have seen a lot of change, incredibly diverse area around here, with the marine life, narwhals, belugas, and polar bears, also caribou in the neighborhood. Up where we're going we're unlikely to see any of that, maybe we‘ll get down and see some caribou somewhere. But today was good, we got all packed up now we're just doing our last little things and ready to head out. We have beautiful weather so far and we hope that will continue for a while to give us a chance to get out of town on Monday. Thanks for listening and tuning in, we'll talk to you tomorrow.

Ed Viesturs Arrives on Baffin Island Part II

Ed Viesturs — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:03:39 -0700

It's Ed, just to finish up my dispatch, we're going to spend some time tomorrow chatting with some of the locals, we want to find out a little bit about what's going on in the area, and finalize our food purchases and do our packing and go for a training ski. The weather is not too bad, it's about 10 or 15 degrees here, pretty much twilight, it won't get dark at all and we're hoping that for the next two weeks or more we'll have reasonable weather so we can get some great views. There are beautiful peaks that we can see across the sound on Bylot Island, the highest of which is about 1800 meters so the relief is quite dramatic and the glaciers that spill through these mountains are the highways that will allow us to enter and go up onto the Island and do some exploring. So thanks for checking in its great to be back on GreatOutdoors.com and stay tuned daily for more dispatches from Ed and John from Baffin Island.

Ed Viesturs Arrives on Baffin Island Part I

Ed Viesturs — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:01:39 -0700

Hi everyone, it's Ed Viesturs calling, it's the evening of April 25, and John Stetson and I have finally arrived here at Pond Inlet the community here on the northern end of Baffin Island. After a couple of days of travel we are here, we joked about it, we had really good travel karma, we lost no bags, we had good things happen along the way and nothing went awry and we're here finally. We're able to stay with a friend of ours, that not here right now but he's offered up his house to us, that's where we're basing out of for the next day or so. Tomorrow Saturday we plan to do some more food shopping to supplement what we brought up here, then package our food into man days, load our sleds or pulks as they are called and after doing a lot of other small tasks that we need to do tomorrow at the end of the day we hope to at least go for a couple of hours onto Eclipse Sound and ski around, test our harnesses, test our ski gear, and if all goes well Sunday hopefully we'll be making our foray out to do a long ski tour. Our initial plan is to head straight north pretty much across Eclipse Sound, it's about a 20 mile traverse on quite flat sea ice to Bylot Island, which is this large island, and from there we're going to take a look at a couple of glaciers, and if they look fairly reasonable we want to ski up one of these glaciers and enter the interior of the island, there are some peaks in there we want to take a look at and make kind of a circuit up in there. But it's going to take a couple of days of skiing to cross the sound, it's about 20 miles across, and we can't really make a final decision on what were going to do once we're there until we actually see what these glaciers are like. They are relatively low angle and hopefully relatively few crevasses but we're going to have to evaluate there once we get there. It's been kind of nice to be here finally after all