Day 38, Feb 12 2016

Deep soft snow and amazing sunrise

The sky at dawn was a kaleidoscope of pinks, purples and soft greens with not a breath of wind and -15C. ABSOLUTELY STUNNING!We both wore one extra layer as we were a bit chilly yesterday.For the first 30 minutes we followed the skidoo tracks, then the veered off.It's simply amazing the number of animal tracks and last night we had a visitor from a fox, judging by the prints.After 2 long lakes we rose up a gentle col and peered into a 6 km narrow steep valley. We chose a descent line that gave us maximum forward progress for the minimum altitude loss.As we descended the snow became deeper and we had a final trudge of 5 km along another valley bottom in deep snow... Very tiring. It took us a surprising 5 hours to cover 12 km.As we approached the cabin the guardian for 20 years turned up to check the hut prior to winter opening and was totally amazed to see us!