Day 1: April 3, 2026
Will landed on Great Bear Lake and bid farewell to Yellowknife and civilization behind him. This afternoon he made a slow, deliberate trek up the Bloody River, navigating thigh-deep snow and embracing the profound silence of the Arctic Circle. Establishing the rhythm of the expedition is the job at hand.
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Hello, Will here. It's Day 1, April 3rd. Dave flew in about ... he arrived about 10 o'clock on time in Yellowknife. He left his homestead on the east end of Great Slave Lake around 8 o'clock. It's a little over hour and 45 minutes drive (fly) from this plane. He landed. The weather was clear, it was calm. He refueled the gas and loaded up the plane, I said goodbye to my friends there and around noon or so we were off. And it took about a little over three hours to reach the Great Bear Lake. It was very clear all the way up, a little bit of haze. He came in on to the west and landed on the Great Bear Lake around 3 o'clock. Right at the mouth of the Bloody River. It was a good landing for Dave, for the snow was kind of kind of soft. And so he refueled again, and loaded, and he took off. And I was there.
So I loaded up my sled, and it was a little bit of a north wind came up. And I went up, started going up the Bloody River. At first it was kind of hard packed, a little bit of ice, under four inches of snow. That was from the drift, probably from the big lake. But then as I got in to the river more, it started winding and narrowed down with trees on either end. So the snow got quite deep, kind of low, thigh deep. And I had a relays, loads. I wasn't out to make any big distances today. I just wanted to haul three or four hours to get some exercise. It's been a long way up here. You know, just closing up shop at the Center and at the homestead. And my staff and everybody's taken over for me in my absence. And that was a three week job. And the drive up here got all the bags. And it's quite a relief to be up here right now. It's really silent. It's silent here. It'll be really silent. I mean, the silence is here all the time, but it's calm.
And uh [...] It's about five degrees right now. The sun is getting lower on the horizon. It's not too low yet. Not too much heat in the time right now. So I'm back in the river here. And I've just [disordered] the tent. Usually the first day or two, it takes a while to get your gear ready. And that's why I'm moving kind of slow. So I'll start out off tomorrow, I'm not going to go real hard on the first day here, especially in the deep snow. I'll probably keep relaying. I'll be in the snow for a while, probably at least two, three three days. Once I gain a little bit more elevation, I'm going to cut across country in about 15 miles from now to the next river. And I'm hoping it gets more drifted snow. But for now, it's deep snow. Incredible Northern Lights last night on the Great Slave Lake. And this is actually under the belt of the maximum Northern Lights you get. You get it in Fairbanks and Yellow Night and down by Churchill. So you normally see it almost every night. Except the peak of the, you know, eleven ... the sunspot cycle goes in 11-year cycle. And when it peaks, you have more solar activity. It's on peak or kind of going off the peak right now. So you get extra lots and lots of Northern Lights here. And the night is probably about four or five hours of darkness right now. It's rapidly being turning into 24 hour light. I landed just a little bit north of the Arctic Circle. So I'll be north of the Arctic Circle on the whole expedition. So, yeah, I want to try to get my dinner going here and I'll check in tomorrow. So this is Will on the Bloody River right off the coast of the northern part of the Great Bear Lake. Day One, April 3, 2026. Over and out.
(L) Will scanning the runway in Yellowknife • (M) The Yellowknife Handlers (Jean Johnson, Bruce Johnson, Will Steger, Paul Macek, Linda Nervick) • (R) Will and pilot Dave Olesen
Takeoff in Yellowknife.