The New Land 2013 expedition is following the route of Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup across Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. This blog was written by John Huston.

A few days ago we passed the quarter pole of this expedition. And, in honor of that occasion, we have a bunch of fun facts about our trip and our life on the ice that we want to share with you.

First, though, I’ll give a quick recap of our totally amazing day yesterday coming down from the height of lands between Trold Fjord and Bay Fjord, Nunavut. On the way, we went through this cool rock-carved canyon with about 40-feet (12.2-metre) walls. In many places, it was only 10 to 15 feet (three to 4.6 metres) wide. And then it widened out until we got into a kind of a riverbed that was a braided stream more or less.

On the way down, we saw 28 rabbits, three musk ox skulls — all with their horns, two of which were attached to all the bones of the dead musk ox. Who knows how long they’d been lying there. Yesterday, we also saw five wolves, two of them howling to our dogs as we exited the height of land near our campsite, which is kind of a big open valley area. And then three more ran past our camp only 40 yards (36.6 metres) from where we camped right when we pulled in at the end of the day yesterday. So that was quite exciting. Today we had a real simple day: very straightforward travel back on the sea ice, and we’re now headed northwest and then north up to Eureka.

Okay, here are the fun facts about our trip: