Day 3: April 5, 2026
On a frigid Easter Sunday, Will navigates the winding alluvial flats of the Bloody River and shifts into a granite-walled canyon with a significant gain in elevation. He describes how he uses equipment cues and experience to gauge time and temperature, and he remains energized by the "stunningly beautiful" calm. Listen in on his dispatch.
-
Yeah, Will here. It's April 5th, Day 3. I believe ... I talked to my pilot this morning on the satellite phone and he told me it was Easter Sunday. So, happy Easter there.
It's been real cold here. I use a MSR Whisperlite. It's a small little mountain stove that you have to prime it. You pump up the gas tank and then you turn the lever on. And there's a couple of pipes of fuel that go to a little pan, probably about the same amount as an eye dropper. Then you turn the fuel off. And then you have to light that. The light ... its Coleman fuel. You have to light that and then that heats up the burner. It takes a couple of minutes for it to heat up. And I can always tell the temperature. The Coleman fuel is quite combustible at room temperature. But here I have to kind of go a bit with a lit match to keep it going. And that's a sign its really cold. It's always great when that little stove pops on. It's very dependable. I've used it for, oh, decades here. MSR ... I've used it ... MSR stoves, actually, for about ... since they came out about 50 years ago.
I'm not carrying a... I have a thermometer but it's tucked away. So I'm not... I just can tell the temperature by, you know, the signs. It's totally calm. 20 below in the morning. It gets really nice and warm. A lot of heat in the sun. Probably gets up to about zero.
And also, I'm not following the watch at all. I kind of follow sunrise and sunset. I pretty much get up right around sunrise, a little before. And then I do a long day here. I've been traveling, it's been slow. Really deep snow. I'm traveling .. it's kind of alluvial, kind of a gravel, like a plane. That happens when rivers flow out to a main body like the Great Bear Lake. It's pretty flat. It's almost like the Minnesota River in a way. But the river is quite small. It's only 60 yards, 70 yards wide. So the rivers in alluvial material like that always meander back and forth. So it takes a lot of effort to get straight line mileage in. The snow is up to my knees. I'm actually always trying to find game. There's quite a bit of you know ... moose and ... not, not moose, but wolf—and came upon some caribou tracks for the first time. So if the tracks are going my way it kind of keeps me suspended above the ground.
But then, as I traveled on in the later afternoon, the whole terrain changed. It narrowed down to a small canyon about 50 feet high. The river there was maybe 20 to 40 yards wide. It's steep banks, you've got granite blocks. The trees are starting to thin out there too because of the granite. So the river now is getting into this area where there's a lot of drop happening here. Drops about 100 feet here. I think in the next ... probably the next 10 miles, 11 miles, or so, so the terrain is changing. A little better travel. It's just been a stunningly beautiful, totally calm, settled clear skies. It's really pleasant. I'm quitting about 9 o'clock my time. I think it's 9 or so Mountain Time after sunset here. I kind of go late here. Making up some rice tonight. I'll check in then tomorrow. I actually had some overflow today on the river. I'll talk more about that tomorrow. But this is Will here. I believe it's April 5th, day 3 on the Bloody River. Over and out.
Will’s location at the end of Day 3.
This photo from a Gearlab web site review shows the stove Will describes in today’s dispatch.