The Goliath Expedition

 7 February 2006.
Early this morning things begin to calm down. I push out the tents walls to create some space to work in then gather my scattered clothes, shake off the snow as best I can and hang them above the gas stove. As soon as I fire the stove up anything just turns to water. It takes a couple of hours, but then things slowly begin to dry out. I had never started a day in wet or frozen clothes and I’m not going to start now. Every day I start as dry as the day before and that’s my main aim up here. This way I believe I will stay in good shape. It takes a while to dig out my sled from under the snow and this is all spindrift, it hasn’t snowed for weeks. I have about 50ft of visibility at best, sometimes nothing. The wind seems to be blowing from the south for the first time I can remember in a long while.

I push on a short way up the coast, which is somewhat flatter now, with visibility improving all the time. It’s now time to move inland across a spit about five miles to Port Clarence Bay. I have to switch to ski boots and skis as there is too much snow to walk on across this grassy plateau. Now using compass, GPS and the direction of the wind I strike out on a bearing across to the bay. Out on the bays ice, again I’m subjected to a total white-out that starts playing tricks on my mind. I begin to get paranoid about polar bears and end up tucking the .44 revolver into my waist belt. It’s just so creepy. However, as I ski north things gradually get better. The wind dies down and I have it behind me. I begin to get some visibility back and make good progress. I’d imagined that I would have to camp out somewhere tonight but in fact find that I’m making more distance than anticipated, so buoyed up by this, I push on harder to reach Teller, arriving there at 20:00, wrecked, blistered and exhausted. I don’t mind though, as I will not have to beat my way into a frozen wet sleeping bag inside a trashed tent tonight. I track down the School Principal and am given a place in the school to sleep. Coffee, a washing machine, tumble dryer and clean running water. Life can be just too good sometimes.