Day 61: June 2, 2026
As Will says in today’s dispatch, “I’m always looking for surprises … nothing surprises me really.” However, Day 61 certainly provided its share of head-scratchers as he fought to make progress on the Horton.
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Hello, this is Will here. It's June 2nd, day 61. I've been on the trail since two months now, April 2nd. Dave Olesen dropped me off, and here I am on the Horton River, Horton River. And the ice jam, jam ice, broke up this morning, during the night, and it was the most pleasant morning. It was clear, this wonderful, must have been about 55, almost 60, current going, about four miles an hour, five miles in certain sections. So I pushed off, and off I went.
And I thought, you know, this is the end of the ice. I wouldn't have any more trouble. And as I progressed further north, and by the way, this river, if you look on the satellite photo, it winds. And I traveled 14 miles to travel actual less than three miles north, so it winds back and forth. So it's a lot of miles on the river to make progress north. But it's a great, one of the most fantastic rivers I've ever seen.
And so it was just very nice, beautiful. For a while, there was a caribou, a younger caribou, that was walking kind of aside along the shore. It was grassy, and it kept up with me for a good 20 minutes. It was quite interesting watching it and just watching its legs move. And it was really, it was made for this terrain. And it was really nice. I was able to just relax. And I progressed, less and less ice. The river got much bigger. The streams are just, the creeks are just roaring full with this 70-degree weather for a couple days, all the ice pack is just melting very quickly.
And then around 1 o'clock, I hit an island, and it didn't think much of it. I thought, well, I'll take the inside curve. There's current there. That'll be safe. And so I was maneuvering to get into that right hand on that curve, and I noticed up ahead, it did not look good. So I immediately switched course. There was a smaller channel going off right on the east side, and I caught that just in time. There was a real chaotic, a big box of ice there that was stuck, and I really couldn't read that other channel well. And there's a big, like an eddy, but it was almost like a whirlpool, like a spiral galaxy that was moving real slow with a little bit of ice in it. And I grabbed that kind of whirlpool eddy, and that swung me actually uphill a little bit into that next current. And then I managed there. The channel did not look good there, but I managed to get on shore on the island, and I walked down, checked the route, and I found a route through it. It was a little dicey. And I shoved off, got through that, thinking that would be over with.
And then for the next miles, five, six, seven miles, I kept hitting this ice and having to pick a channel. And in a lot of areas it was a wide river, but it was covered with, it looked like it must have been a sandbar or something, but it was a lot, 80% ice. And I really didn't understand what was going on there. I thought it was a local phenomenon. And in each curve I thought, I would, just get out of this stuff and be able to get back to my serenity again and paddle and look at the scenery. And progressively it did not improve much.
And then it came to one channel that did not look good at all. And I managed ... The current was so strong, and so I had no idea that anything could jam up this current. And so I rounded a bend, and the outside curve is what I took on that one. And it did not look good. I immediately tried to paddle against the current. It was a steep incline there, too. When I got in close here to an eddy, pulled the boat up, and it was so steep I couldn't climb out of it. I just followed the shoreline to check things out.
And I got up, walked about half a mile, and it was really bad. A number of channels, ice all over, grounded. And I thought, well, I guess I'd stop here and wait. By morning time it would probably clear up. It looked like, it just needed a strong current.
I set a beautiful camp up here. It's just a stunning camp. I overlooked this, across the river, about two-thirds of the river on that side is all blocked up, about the size of a football field. It looked fairly stable, though.
And then around 5 o'clock my time, I look up down the river, and this whole river that was open is this massive amount of ice, kind of a shore to shore. It's coming down, moving. And I got all of this on film. I mean, I just can't tell you the power of this and a great decision I made to get out of there and give it a little bit of time. It just, it was beyond anything. You couldn't ... and it was moving at a real fast clip. The water was rising. It was some power. I mean, and some of these blocks were six, eight feet. They were rolling. They collide into each other. A number of pieces, like a basketball size, court size, would be floating down. That would get into another piece and splinter them.
And then all the noise that it made, it was just, absolutely quite a phenomenon. I mean, I got my money's worth on this one. But it really, this river caught me again by surprise. I'm always looking for surprises. I don't ... nothing surprises me really. But I thought it was going to be clear sailing here, and I could get to this place where I was going to hike out. And I was going to really put in the miles to get close so I could get, you know, start getting back to meet that airplane at Paulatuk on the 12th.
So I'm sitting up here now and still watching the ice. We'll see what it does in the morning. My hope is that this thing might flush out some, that there will be a regular channel. Because there's so much power, the streams of ice, and anything that gave it any resistance at all, regardless of the size of the block, it just knocked it over.
And so here I am again. I'm in this phenomenon. And so we'll see what; tomorrow will be interesting. And, I mean, if necessary, I'll just have to wait here. I'm not going to take any chances. And then all along [... ...] Yeah, I'm still recording. All along in this, when I was in that ice that I was six, seven miles, I was very careful, always watching for eddies that I could dive into. There were ice streams I was traveling with, but it was not dangerous chunks. But they, I could watch these streams that get a bead on the current up ahead. So I'm very, very cautious. A couple times I stopped to scout. And I'm not taking any chances here. And you can't be running on a clock or any type of a rush in these situations. So, anyway, this is Will here. I think I've got the full recording today. And day 61, June 2nd. See what happens tomorrow. Over and out.
14 miles of winding river yield three miles of straight line travel. Visit Will’s interactive map for complete control of magnification and orientation.
In this video from the 2022 solo expedition, Will quarterbacks his plan for getting across the rapidly flowing Coppermine River. His planning for this crossing mirrors the kind of navigational foresight required of him in today’s dispatch.