Day 44: May 16, 2026
Will resumes the lost dispatch of Day 43, because on that day he officially declared "game over" on surface travel, establishing a camp on a 30-foot cut bank to begin the perhaps long, certainly unpredictable wait for the river to break up.
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This is Will here at Horton River, May 16th, day 44. I just found out yesterday's dispatch cut off, and yesterday was a very important day, so I should cover what was cut off. I think where it was cut off, I was talking about the river and so forth. I took a break at lunch at 1 o'clock, and I normally take a mandatory half an hour off just to really stop and try to do a cat nap. I stretched out my foam pad on the ice here after I had my soup and rice and laid down for about 15 minutes. The sun intensity was really something that, at that point it was the first time I was ever warm on a break. And I woke up, and I had left a spoon next to my cup here, and that actually melted into the ice and the lashing ropes just in that 45 minutes or so break, melted it into the ice.
So it was a new intensity for me and for the sun, and I had stopped prior to the crossing that I was going to make on the river. A little bit questionable, I felt I'd take a break and then take a look at it with fresh eyes. And just in that short hour period, 45 minutes, that had became even more questionable. So I decided not to try to cross there. And just believe it or not, within that couple hours span, an hour later, the ice started changing a little bit, getting more soft. As I mentioned before, it had been perfectly brittle, real easy to read, but once it gets soft, it was pretty much game over. I tried to travel along the shoreline, up on the shore, and my ... just a little bit off the ice. My sleds were trailing down on the ice, you know, the thinner ice was okay there. And then there started to flow along the shoreline there, and I stopped to check it out, and that flow got bigger into a little bit of a stream running, and it went into a whirlpool, believe it or not. Just something ... whirlpools are really scary, ominous. They make this noise. They sound almost like a friendly brook, but they're off on a kind of a sinister type of a note, kind of a sucking noise. And it was not a major whirlpool. I wasn't worried about myself falling in. It could take a sled down or, you know, maybe be a tug-of-war war trying to get it back up. And that was it then for the year. I made the decision at that point. I'm not going to be pushing anymore.
The river, I was going to go to, comes into the Horton was just about three miles ahead, but I decided it looked like a nice spot, kind of a rare spot, a little bit of a cut bank. It was a straight line. It wasn't a curve when I was on it, but the shoreline was really kind of a diverse straight line with this little bit of a cut bank that's 30 feet high. The first 15 were kind of straight down, typical of gravel. And then a fall of rocks and that below that go into the water. It was no problem with safety, but that top of that cut bank was real flat. And the forest was really good.
The forest there is real spatial. In other words, the trees are maybe 20 foot apart. There's a couple that are close. And there's lots of room in between of the trees and that and ideal for camping. So I decided that evening then that, it was about 3 o'clock, that I'd call it a day and then make a decision and make my camp there.
So I did that yesterday and then today, my original site was not ... it was a nice view and that, but there were too many trees in the way. That's the reason, I think the reason I cut off on the dispatch is that trees gives you bad reception on a staff home. So I made another camp just close to the ledge there. It was a little bit more open for reception, but I could get a little more sun. I really rely on the sun to keep me warm and dry. It's still the same cold weather. This is day five of it. Actually, it was a little colder than yesterday. Same thing, 15 degrees in the morning. All the pots that are filled with water are frozen. And it's beautiful weather if it was March. This has been five days in a row with not much [...], but in May, mid-May, it's really rare. It's real unusual in this cold spell. Especially now here waiting for the river to break up. And who knows what's going to happen. But anyway, I'll talk a little bit more about the camp and so forth like that tomorrow. But I just wanted to clarify that yesterday, because the conditions changed, that God just made the rule with me. I could have traveled this morning, it was froze up good. But I just call the game when it's a game and the game's over. And so I made the decision here. So this is actually day one of the wait. So we'll see what happens. And I'll talk to you tomorrow then. This is Will. Over and out.
Today’s morning cold continued a five day trend that might have allowed travel, but Will decided not to push his luck, as he conveys in today’s dispatch. Visit Will’s interactive map for complete control of magnification and orientation.
In today’s dispatch Will mentions coming upon a whirlpool making a sucking noise and the inhibitions it inspires. This video from his 2016 expedition provides an idea of what that looks and sounds like.