Day 19: April 21, 2026
At minus 30, Day 19 featured the coldest temperature reading yet. But Will remains optimistic, finding beauty in the light of the steep drifts as he nears the divide between the Haldane to the Horton river, his “main destination“ to get to the Arctic Ocean.
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Yeah, Will here. April 21st, day 19 on the headwaters of the Haldane River. We've got the coldest temperature yet this morning, 30 below. And a high today of minus 5—a heat wave. However, it was a beautiful day. Not a very good night for sleeping, but the day was perfect. Not much wind at all. Really crystal clear blue sky. I looked in the afternoon there was this alto cumulus coming in. That's a sign of a change, but it didn't last long. It drifted across the sky and then just dissipated. So much for a warm weather, at least for another day.
We moved a load, the heaviest load, of two loads, the heaviest. I moved forward today about seven miles or so. It took about nine hours or so to do that. It was a beautiful day for traveling. There's a lot of strenuous work, though. The travel conditions are almost as good as you can find. Hard packed, crusted snow, very hard packed. Some that you can just walk on. The Haldane River is getting really ... shrinking down in size. In fact, a lot of it's meadowlands right now. The headwaters of most rivers start out with meadowlands like that, kind of like the top of a sponge, especially in the Arctic, and ... it's a little bit of a pickle flowing through that.
But it was a really splendid day. Beautiful, real high cliffs. These hills are quite steep near the river. These drifts from the prevailings are, you know, they're, you know, the usual about 50 feet high. And they drift off over the hills. It's just quite beautiful, especially when the lighting is in the evening when it's kind of a bright white, whitish color in these blue shadows. Really quite stunning. And we really got up into the, you know, the headwaters now. It's really narrowing down to a short trickle of a river, at least, at this time of the year. It's not ... it's all frozen right now. So that was real close to the divide between the Haldane and the Horton River, which goes to the Arctic Ocean. That's my main destination is that river, to get on the headwaters for that. It took me a good solid two hours of really quick skiing to get back. That's the kind of distance that I had been traveling. And I got back just as the sun ... my tent went into shadows.
And, yeah, cooking dinner right now. And, you know, and, yeah, I had a good chat with Dave Olesen. And Dave's last name is O-L-E-S-O-N [sic]. And I have another, Ole Olson is another friend of mine that I wrestled with. And I did early adventures with Ole, climbing and stuff like that. But Dave, as I mentioned yesterday, is a lifelong friend of, well, about 50 years or so. And it's really great to have him, you know ... not ... I wouldn't say he's close by. He's probably 300 miles or maybe more. But at this time of the year, it's perfect for flying and perfect for landing a plane—on skis, of course. And so I feel relatively safe here knowing Dave's at home. And it's kind of a good time for them in the spring. Always when I used to live that life, the spring was so nice to be up. But [...] and what can I say? It's really, you know, good exercise. And I'm looking forward to tomorrow. So one of these days though, I'm hoping in the next week or so, this weather will break. Dave did, I mentioned yesterday, he hits a good nine-day out forecast. But as a pilot, he's privy to the, you know, the best forecasts out there. But it still has more of the cold, but it should break here hopefully soon. And this is Will. Over and out on the Haldane River. Day ... what is it, April 21st. Over and out.
Will’s location at the end of Day 19. He advanced one load forward on a 7-mile relay, but returned to camp in the same location as Day 18. Visit Will’s interactive map for complete control of magnification and orientation.
In his dispatch today Will mentions traveling along the frozen Haldane, which features 50ft snow drifts along the river banks—which might look like this image from his 2023 expedition.