Day 62: June 3, 2026
Getting off the river to allow the ice dam breakup to flow through yesterday paid off today, as Will “hitchhiked” all the way to his Horton River takeout to start the overland finish.
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Hello, Will here. It's June 3rd, 2026, and day 63 here. 62, I think. I'm sitting on the shore here of the Horton River. I made my destination where I will be leaving, hopefully, tomorrow. I doubt ... It's probably ... Not sure ... It's a long ways. 70, 80 miles. Depends on the route. There's a lot of some unknown. This area is later in the season, so the creeks and that are really full, so they're grizzly country. I saw a brown bear today, and so it's going to be an exciting takeout, but it's a milestone for me to be off the river.
It was exciting. Yesterday, I had the huge breakup. I listened to yesterday's dispatch. If you didn't hear it, it was just incredible what happened yesterday. I had to ... I made a huge decision, and I sensed something was going on and got off the river, and good thing I did. About three hours later, this whole thing went. But that was that, and then this morning, the entire river was clear. I mean, this river here is about twice the size of the Mississippi in Minneapolis, and about that type of a volume in it. It's not a small river anymore, and the streams, everything's really flowing, a quick meltdown. So it's a big river. It's wide. It's got a lot of power to it.
But all this ice just, like, disappeared. I traveled down, and you'd think it'd be all over the shoreline. There's a few eddies that was filled a little bit and a few chunks floating here and there. But it just, when it broke up, the blocks, it was so powerful. It just disintegrated everything, and it just flowed right down the river. It was a massive dam. It was about five feet of ice and so forth.
But that was yesterday, and I didn't know what had happened today. But there was a couple of exciting turns, and every bend was ... I'm always ready for whatever's going to happen, as serene as things are. There were several things that lodged blocks, but nothing curious like the other days. But it was a long, long paddle today, strong north wind against me. And I paddled 12 hours pretty much straight. I didn't even go on land.
What I did is there were still these floating slabs, you know, in the area that were the size of a car or a pickup truck. And they go really deep, you know, six feet, eight feet down, where they catch the current, like a sea anchor. They catch the current, and in any wind or whatever, it doesn't bother them. And they also, they streamline, so they follow the big, wide river, so they follow the current. And I always know where the current is, where the blocks are. Well, what I did is I just hooked up. I didn't even want to be attached to them, but I got on the lee side of these blocks and against this strong north wind. And I just kind of got, I didn't have to paddle too hard. I just had to have corrections once in a while. So it was quite incredible. I would never have made it here. I would have worn myself out paddling against that strong wind. But hitchhiking on the blocks, it was really, really fun.
And the current was strong. You know, it was five, six miles an hour. And if I left all the block in this wind, I had all I could do to catch up to the block. I mean, that's how strong the wind was and how strong the current was. And so that kind of saved the day here, a little innovation. And it's very pretty right now. It's probably about, you know, close to 60. There's still an influence of the Arctic weather here. There's a predominant now, that warmer weather, the altocumulus. But they collided yesterday, got rain last night. But the warmer weather is winning over.
So the hike out is going to be just really dramatic. I have a huge rise, about 600, 700 feet, I think. 800 feet is the ... 800 feet here. And it's 1,500 feet. It's really steep to get up. So my goal tomorrow is to just up to the top, figure out how to get up there on the route. Up there, I'll be heavily loaded. I've got a lot of extra gear, like communication gear, that I can't leave behind. So that's the trick. Otherwise, I'd be, you know, proper hiking weight if I could just ... But it's still cold, especially up high. There's a lot of snow. And hypothermia is an issue when you're traveling light like this. So you've got to take everything into consideration. You can get this rainy, snowy stuff like I had about 25 days ago. And that's really difficult weather. And you can get into a lot of trouble if your down gets wet or whatever it is. So it's not a walk in a park getting up.
It's something I always wanted to do. This was plan A. Plan A was to walk out. Plan B was to go all the way to the Arctic Ocean. But that was not as appealing because the lower Horton is wide. [... ... ...] And then above the Arctic Ocean, another problem. You know, it would have been a fantastic journey to have done that all the way by water. But I really wanted to have a piece of the hiking and that here.
So my health is really good. A little soreness. I'm a little tired of sitting in a cramped raft in a cold dry suit. That's nice to be out. In fact, I could barely stand up when I got out of the... I kept almost falling over when I got off the raft today because I just didn't have my land legs. And so that was cool.
But, yeah, I wish I could just show you a picture of where I'm at here. You know, high limestone bus now getting into. And it's just a beautiful moment here. I'm probably 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle now. And, okay, rather than chat away here, I'll check in tomorrow. So hopefully I have a lot of good news then. Will here, over out on June 3rd, day 62.
An open river allows a forward leap toward Paulatuk. Visit Will’s interactive map for complete control of magnification and orientation.
Fellow travelers: Will and an aerial companion heading in the same direction on the 2023 solo expedition.