The church at Stanley Mission
It was a very cold morning as we left Prince Albert at 6:30. We’d hoped to leave about an hour earlier, but I slept in longer than we had planned, as the alarm didn’t ring (perhaps we set it for 5:00 pm). The temperature was near -29C as we drove north, and though it warmed up periodically to about -25C as we travelled through various different weather systems, it had dropped again to about -27C by the time we reached Stanley shortly after 10 am.
We drove to the Northern Store (I’d phoned the store last week, and they said we could park there), and located the manager. He was pretty surprised that we were planning to snowshoe in, as it was very cold. We said that our target low temperature had been -25C, and that we hoped that it would warm up to that during the day. He checked his iPhone and said that the forecast was for about that temperature during the day.
“You’ll be warm enough whie you’re walking,” he said.
“And we have a stove, so we’ll be all right at night,” I replied.
Leaving Stanley Mission
We finished packing our toboggans, tying the skis, poles and shovel on, then set off. There is a large open patch of water just to the west of the church (there must be a fairly strong current there) and fog was rising above it. After taking a couple of pictures, we set off quickly across the lake, following the snowmobile trails which skirted another patch of ice that had been slushy, though now at this temperature it looked solidly frozen. In the rough tracks as we started my toboggan tipped twice and I was very concerned that it would be unstable. However, it seemed to work well after that and never tipped again.
We headed to the south east to where the trail follows out a creek which flows into the south end of Mountain Lake. It was easy travel at first since the trai was going across the bay and was smooth. Soon however it left the water and began to cross overland. Then the trail got a good deal rougher as it crossed many frozen hummocks in the spruce bogs. It also climbed upwards steeply enough that it was a tough pull with the toboggan. Though never long hills, the trail did go up and down quite a bit.
Lunch along the trail
We stopped aong the side of the trail after about one and a half hours, at a spot where there was enough room to pull our toboggans off the trail and clear from the path of snowmobiles. Just before we ate lunch two snowmobiles had stopped and we spoke to them briefly. They were on their way to Hunter Bay on Lac la Ronge, and the lead man said that, “it’s supposed to go up to -10C tomorrow, according to my iPhone,” so that gave us some hope that we would have a warmer day tomorrow.
I’d wrapped my coat around my insulated water bottle and sandwiches before putting it in my pack. The water bottle had been filled with boiling water when we left Prince Albert, and when I took my sandwiches out the cheese had melted and they were still warm. We ate our peanut butter cookies, drank our litre of hot chocolate and some water, and then headed off after a short stop of about ten minutes. We were already starting to get cold from that brief stop, so walked on for another hour before we paused to eat our gorp.
The trail was easy to follow as it is used by enough snowmobiles to be well packed. If it were not for them we could not possibly have completed the trip. I was pulling a toboggan that weighed about 95 pounds, and a 25 pound pack, while Graeme’s toboggan weighed 115 pounds and his pack 20. The sleighs were not hard to pull on the flat, though up hills were tough, and the constant jerking of the tow lines as the sleighs climbed up and down the frozen hummocks made it a strenuous walk. This was particularly true for the three or four kilometres before reaching Iskwatikan Lake where the trail winds a lot as it crosses overland.
Finally we reached our destination of Iskwatikan Lake, though we still had a couple of kilometers to go until we reached a spot to camp. A small point of land, not too high and with enough open space that we could clear looked promising. Best of all, it had a great deal of dead spruce, both standing and deadfall, for firewood.
We set up the tent quickly after I stripped off my wet shirt and put on my down coat. Graeme just put his parka on over his wet clothes, which was a mistake. He was all right until we got the ground shovelled clear of snow and set up the tent. Then he got very cold very quickly. I got a few twigs collected and the fire started as fast as I could, then he changed into dry clothes and ate some gorp while I sawed and split some bigger wood, and we soon had it warm in the tent.
It got dark very quickly, so it was good we arrived when we did about 3:30 pm. By the time we had the tent set up and the stove going it was already getting dark. I tried to pump the lantern, but the pump was jamming and very hard to use. We did get enough pressure to set the new mantle, though not well. Once the lantern warmed up it worked a bit better, but later in the evening after supper I took the pump apart and used the one drop of oil we had in the stove repair kit to lubricate it. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot better after that.
After our supper of chile and rice we went out to cut a good deal more firewood. We sawed the entire tree which was beside our tent, until we got to the base where it was too thick to cut easily. I did most of the sawing and Graeme split the wood. We stacked enough in the tent to last through the night. We did let the fire die down, but about 3 am I awoke and my face was very cold (though my body was fine) so I restarted the fire and kept it going until morning.
It was a long walk of 12.3 km pulling our heavy loads, and a very, very cold day, It did not warm up above -20C near noon, and by late afternoon the temperature wa back t -25C..