Day 68: June 9, 2026
A fierce Arctic windstorm cuts visibility to zero and requires Will to hunker in his bivy and use himself as ballast to keep his tent in place.
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Yeah, Will here, I think it's June 9th, maybe day 69. Real bad windstorm came up here about three hours ago. It's just another beautiful day. Cloudy, or clear, warm. I was scouting the lakes here for some options here to get out of this unpleasant dilemma of not being able to cross the river. I got back to my camp and this thing came on with no warning. It's like a barren land storm. Zero visibility within about 10 minutes, temperatures about 20 degrees, and really bad winds. Literally leaning against a small tent here against the wind, trying to keep the wind off the poles.
And it's hitting the small tent crosswise. The camping spot, there was only one. And that one was the alignment that was good for the wind we had before, but it's a bad alignment for here. There's nothing I can do about it. But in storms like this, you pack everything up in your tent, you know, making sure no loose ends are around. I'm using my, any weight I have on the other side of the tent to keep that from lifting up. But the side I'm at right now will lift up if I'm not here, just that bad of a storm. So I've got everything prepared. I've got all my clothes on, rain gear. Everything that I have is on me, which is the typical procedure. And then I got my bivvy bag, sleeping bag, you know, making sure that's in a right spot. I'm actually using that as a back protection from the wind.
And I have a special pack designed by Jeff Knight. Jeff was co-founder along with Dan on Granite Gear some decades ago. Dan and I have been, Jeff and both and I have been close friends. We designed together. But Jeff put together this pack, especially for this trip, where you can get a large amount of bulky stuff on it. And then everything fits right. But it's designed like a bivvy bag itself. I can actually crawl into this thing and I can pull it up almost to my chest. So I had an incident on the Great Bear Lake in 2023 where a real bad wind came up. And quick ice and like fire hose, I have water coming into the tent. And that evening I was in that, you know, in the, in the, in the bivvy bag.
But so I've got this all set up. And I'm not sure how long, this may be a, hopefully not an all-nighter here that I'm going to have to stay up. But it definitely is a really bad storm. No rain. Hopefully it doesn't rain. That would be a very dangerous situation with hypothermia. And I'm also prepared for everything. [... ...] I'm using the same Warmlite tent here. But this is a real lightweight tent. It's not super reinforced extra hurricane strength like all the other Warmlite tents I have. Normally with hoops, you have these hurricane caps that stabilize the hoops. The hoops, when you're high winds, that's just going to disintegrate on you with the vibration. But if I lean against the wall here, I'm keeping some of the pressure off of the supporting. And I went out right when this came out and secured the stakeout stakes and pounded those in as much as I could. And I do want to get out there if I can to double check the stakes. That's the key thing here in the storm. You don't want a stake to pull. And this is all you, this is, I'm really the same. You only need three stakeout points. But that means if you lose one, one stake, you know, it's a problem. So, but if I get a lull, I'll go out there. I think the stakes are okay for now. There's pretty good ground here. You've got to pound a little bit, but eventually your stake goes in between rocks and that. So I've got a good soil. It's not going to pop right up. I have one extra stake, and I stake it upwind right here. You know, I have time because of this incident today to talk about much. I'm working on options here is all I can say about what do I do next here about this crossing. And it's very ironic that the river crossing is hot, and this is the last one. [audio cuts out]
After scouting did not reveal a river crossing, Will is pinned down by the windstorm. Visit Will’s interactive map for complete control of magnification and orientation.