I had quite a day today and managed to make 24,000 steps on my walk across Canada. The lights of hope are about ten thousand steps to my east and will be having lunch there tomorrow.

I was busy running around and almost forgot that the Somba K'e kayak club had a two hour pool session scheduled. Great fun managed to pull a few Eskimo rolls and help some new folks on their way to a roll. Great fun but tiring. I had time to grab a quick bite and then was back at the pool to help Kathy and crew with the roll session. Narwal Paddling offers Eskimo roll courses every spring and I like to help if they need a spare hand. Today the boats were all full and we had a lot of folks. Some were totally new and others were refreshing their skills.

Raffle ticket sales are a little slower than I would like but I think that they will improve, they better or we're in it deep. I have a bunch sold just a matter of crossing paths with the folks at the right time and today I had a pick up to do and ran out of time. Hard to be as many places at once as I seem to have to be. I can fix it Monday no problem and some of the mail in stuff should be there by then as well. Funny mail from Hay river must first travel south to Edmonton and then gets flown to Yellowknife. would be just a quick to fly it from Hay River but I don't run the Post Office, (probably a good thing as I have a hard time finding my glasses most days.)

Watched a great video clip of the ice pouring over Alexander Falls, these are located about 300 miles south of Yellowknife by road on the Hay river just outside of Enterprize  NWT. The falls are 107 feet high and really pretty wide. I think it was 2004 but maybe a bit later these falls were jumped by two crazy (but skilled kayakers) and at the Reel Paddling Film festival we just held we watched the video of the jump amazinf scary four minute video.

Hay River is preparing fpr the annual flood waters as the Hay River runs right through town, Ice jams can cause the water to back up and start flooding. I understand that we now have an open section of river at the Yellowknife River bridge, nothing huge yet but you can paddle it which is a good thing. The edges will go first as the river mouth expands its open area and we will be edge paddling along the shore as the ice in the bays begins to dissappear. There will be miles of open water on the lake while a big ice pan floats around the center of the lake slowly breaking up and heading down the Mackenzie River. I like paddlingin the andled ice and among the flows but you have to watch the winds as they shift and what was once open water behind you can all of a sudden be a huge amount of candled ice flows that seal off your retreat. Not a huge problem if you remember to watch for it. Like among the ice can make for some interesting paddling. I'm tired and rolled out so I'm off to dream of ice free rivers and lakes. Cheers Greg