Outside Adventure Grant journal entries

June 9, 1998
Today I called Julia to see if she had another teenage Inuit to come with us. She said that she will talk to Marge Joyce and I can call her back tomorrow.

June 10, 1998
Marge has a 14-year-old boy that is interested in going named Jamie Audlakiak. I got to talk with Jamie, since he was in school that day. He sounded like a great addition to the trip. We now know that Jamie and Julie are definitely coming. Our expedition team is complete.

Dylan

June 13, 1998
Yesterday our backpacks came! These things are pretty neat; high-tech super packs with all sorts of cool little features. Comfortable and tough. It's going to be wonderful to hike with these packs on. We also received very nice daypacks, down sleeping bags and three tents. All of it is spread around the office so that we can paw through it and look at our equipment.

June 15, 1998
Today more equipment came: shoes and sandals from Timberland. Man! We're going to be hiking in style! Two months ago, when we put together our gear list, I never thought to imagine what it would all look like on my back, on my feet, and piled up in the office. It really does look like we are preparing ourselves for a polar exploration! I can picture one of the great arctic explorers sitting in his living room surrounded by a mound of gear, saying to himself "Did I really order all of this stuff?" I must admit thought, having all this equipment makes you feel as if you could take on anything!

June 16, 1998
Most of the family has gone to the mainland today for dentist appointments and to get off the island for awhile. Hope and Tristan had time to work in the office this morning before they caught the ferry, which is good, because there is always more work to do. Summer has really begun on the island, the pace always picks up here at this time of year, as it does everywhere. We all get summer jobs and spend lots of our time running back and forth between the islands trying to get everyone where they need to be! I love summer, with all of its hecticness and action and our Baffin walk just around the corner.

As Hope said, our team has finally been completed by the addition of Jamie Audlakiak from Broughton Island. Unfortunately, we were unable to get a team member from Pangnirtung as we had originally hoped. The schoolboard there tried hard to connect us with a student but it turned out that it was not to be. Summers in the far north are apparently as busy for kids as they are in the more southern latitudes. We are very glad to have Jamie on board, today he sent us a huge fax with his bio and all the other information we need from him. We are looking forward to meeting him and Julia, and their friends too. I think that we are very lucky to have made these connections before we arrive, it will be a great help to us in learning about this culture we're visiting, it will also make the time more fun. I've already learned from living in Thailand that it can be very hard to meet people and learn anything at all about a place without having prior connections. It can be done, but it takes time. Though it is fun and incredibly rewarding to grow into a culture over a period of time, it is going to be good for us to already have a head-start on the process. In the short time we are there, I know that we will only just get a taste of what it is actually like to live above the Arctic Circle. Hopefully, with Julia and Jamie's help, we will learn as much as we can in the limited time we have.

With all of the wonderful new gear coming in, I think it is important that we do not lose sight of our original proposal. It dealt largely with our wish to learn about the future of the Inuit people and their land. I feel that it will hold as much interest and beauty as the breathtaking rivers, mountains, and icecaps of Baffin Island.

Tristan

June 18, 1998
Today I called Jamie Audlakiak, Margaret Joyce and Del Smith. Julia is out on the land with her family this week, so no communications with her. This was the first time I talked to Jamie and I'm glad I did — talk about excitement! He should bring plenty of pep to the adventure; he was ready to leave in a week from now.

Del says we are too late to leave a cache at Summit Lake. The winter was too mild for there to be enough snow left now to sled in our food. Sooo ... now we have to carry 25 pounds of food each at the beginning of the hike. It doesn't seem like much — it's all dried — but that on top of tents, etc. is too much, I guess. Anyway, we will have to either "cache and carry", i.e. carry half our stuff to our next camp, leave it, and go back for the rest; or else leave half the food at Overlord and make two separate hikes. Cache and carry seems the best, but we have yet to decide.

John Alderman should have sent the clothing by now, or he will soon ... Christmas again this week! We've been "breaking in" our shoes since we got them, they are definitely fancy stuff. We won't start wearing the clothes until our shake down hike in the White Mountains, but it will be fun to get them anyway. I can't wait to get going and use it all!