17 06 99

Position: 67° 09' 45" N 49° 09' 29° W

Diane's note: Laurie couldn't get through Thursday evening so he made this report early this morning (Friday).

Because of the extremely long day before, we took our time yesterday and only skied in the afternoon. We still did 13.7 kms.We're at an elevation of around 3700 feet. It was not a great day yesterday, with strong wind and blowing snow, poor visibility. This morning is much clearer. There's still strong wind and icy pellets covering the tent. Our gear is partially covered with snow. It should be a good day all the same.

We've now got to tackle the most interesting and potentially most dangerous part of the expedition. Over the next 48 kms. we descend from this classic snow field to basically summer tundra, which means a huge climatic change. It means going through the area of crevasses, glacial streams and rivers and different snow and ice conditions. The snow conditions will change from what's basically snow covered down to what will be hard ice conditions at the end. At the end we have to get over a fast river to get established on land. It's going to be very interesting. We'll have to do a lot of jogging back and forth moving between crevasses. It's also going to be definitely more the dangerous part.

The mountains are just becoming visible on the horizon. We also have to descend now fairly rapidly which will be great. Yesterday for the first time, we actually had a little bit of glide at the end of each step with the steeper descent. It's not steep realy, but just steep enough to notice, especially now that the sleds are so much lighter.

We've got probably a couple of days to go, maybe three if we run into difficulties. We're looking forward to today; we're making good progress.

End of transmission

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