20 05 99

Position: 65° 39' 07" N 38° 56' 28" W

Diane's note: As you know Laurie is calling by satellite phone. The early part of the transmission was good. We lost contact at the end.

We were a bit delayed with the helicopter flight this morning. It was snowing quite heavily when we got up but we eventually did get off. The helicopter was packed absolutely to the limit...hardly space for us to sit. As we were on our way to Isertoq, it's only a twenty minute flight, the helicopter pilot gave us the option of landing on the range just above Isertoq. He made the decision actually and landed us on the range. That was fine...he took us right on to the range and it helped us catch up a little bit on the missed time, but not too much because he wasn't very far inland.

We had about an hour calm weather to repack our gear fortunately, because everything came of the helicopter in separate bags. We just nicely started to pull away when the wind picked up and for the next two or three hours we found ourselves with an increasingly strong head wind. Eventually we realized we were making such small progress and the conditions were getting potentially dangerous if we got separated or lost sight of each other. So we decided, even though it was the first day in any case, not to push it.

We decided to make camp. That in itself was an odyssey because with the rising winds and we hadn't had a chance to get into a rhythm and regular system yet it took us quite a while to set up. Finally we got into the tent and started to sort our gear and get supper set up. In fact the winds have been extremely strong. The tent has been flapping violently until just few minutes ago. I picked up the phone and decided to hold it to the side of the tent so you could hear the wind but it just died down. Anyway we'll be ok. We'll see what happens tomorrow. It'll take us quite some time to dig out; everything is covered from this wind. So otherwise we're very, very happy to be here and underway...

Transmission lost

Close this window to return to Greenland Traverse Expedition.