We generally spend 10 hours (give or take a few hours) on the move each day. This means we spend the rest of the day in camp. Now when I say this I don't mean that we are sitting around a warm fire having drinks and kicking our feet up. We are generally unpacking the sled, taking the dogs off the lead, setting up tents, setting up the stove, or making water while huddled around a tiny blue flame that makes a shred of warmth that ekes around the edges of the tea kettle full of melting snow.

We do have some downtime, such as now, where the tent is reasonably warm, meaning we can take our hats and gloves off, and we can change out of wet clothes or simply huddle around the tiny flame.

You would think that after being on the move for hours each day we would run out of things to say, but we pass the time telling stories or betting each other over trivial things, such as whose half of the tent is bigger or who ran the Seattle Marathon faster than a friend of ours (we realized that everyone in the race did).

After 5 days we are both adjusting to the cold nicely and a minus 10 degree day actually felt balmy and we could take our gloves off without wincing in pain.