May 12, 2008: Most of the fuel has been flown into the lodge for the season along with the remainder of the freight so we have just about everything at the lodge now except the staff and a lot more groceries. The ice has not let go much at all in the past few days, we’re still just not getting good enough weather to melt all this ice. Since I’ve been back at the lodge it has snowed every day except today. Today at 8:00 a.m. it was warmer outside than it’s been for the past 2 weeks during the day and we finally have a clear sky! The forecast says it will be like this most of the week and our temperatures will get up into the teens (60’s) which is a huge improvement! We’ve been building a new dock on the ice and we’ve been cutting holes through the ice to put down the cribs. The ice is rotting from underneath and once we get through the top 4 inches of ice it’s all candled. I’ve taken a picture of candled ice so that people know what it looks like, but basically the ice becomes long thin shards that look like a candle that are packed together tightly until they can break apart. As soon as we get some movement on that ice when the water opens up along the shore and around reefs and that top few inches goes away then it will all fall apart very quickly. From what I’ve heard further south, the ice is there one day and completely gone the next, which is what I’m expecting here. Unfortunately we need more open water around the edges and another week of sun to make it all happen. The hard part is figuring out just when the ice is going to go. I’ll be updating again later in the week to show the progress. Here’s the new dock and what it looks like today. The guys are still driving the quad on the ice, but that won’t last much longer…..probably until Winston breaks through and gets soaked.