Olivier Lake

August 7, 2018

Was an extremely fitful sleep last night. The wind was howling continuosly and our tents were a-flapping. I worried that my shredded fly was going to be destroyed in the stronger gusts. It also got quite cool and I spent some time shivering in my sleeping bag as the wind carried all the heat from my body away. We finally gave up trying to sleep at 05:30 and broke camp before having a quick breakfast. We hiked up the valley into the blustery wall of wind, keeping our layers on as there was no chance of overheating today, but at least this wind kept the bugs completely at bay. As we climbed higher though, the wind gradually diminished, the clouds parted, and we were treated to a lovely day. As we neared the summit of the pass, we had a few snowfields to negotiate which were fairly firm and required some aggressive kicking to get in steps. It was hard to tell which was more difficult, the hard snow, or the boulder rubble fields for travel. At the pass we looked down into Labrador and onto the lake we had planned to camp at. It was a beautiful turqoise lake, slightly frozen, and tucked in a sheltered basin. We hiked down and found a rocky, but serviceable area for the tents, setting up our camp in the sunshine and a gentle breeze. This made for perfect conditions to perform much needed repairs to my tent, using up a bunch of duct tape and some sewing materials. Once the camp chores were done, another relaxing day was spent here in this lovely spot. This is a good thing, as we plan a substantial trek tomorrow. I do have a concern that our intended route may be snow blocked, however we intend to give it a whirl, and as a last resort we could always return back here for another night at this gem.

Breakfast on a cool morning.

Climbing up towards the pass.

Kick stepping through the snow.

Summit of the pass. We are now in Labrador.

Looking down towards Olivier lake.

Fixing the tent.

A very pretty setting.

Kitchen rock.

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