Did A Pingo Eat Your Baby?
Trip Start
Jun 28, 2003
1
11
15
Trip End
Aug 04, 2003
Inuvik,
Northwest Territories,
Canada
Thursday, July 24, 2003
My first act in Inuvik was to locate a car wash. I'm not sure how many loonies I pumped into the machine before I was able to remove all the mud from my car with that high-powered water jet. A formidable pile of mud was left on the pavement when I pulled out of there. But at least I survived the trip and now I was able to park the car for a few days and explore Inuvik.
Inuvik has three notable landmarks. The first one you encounter is the "smartie box" townhouses.
Airport Lake
It's a development of townhouses that were all painted in very bright pastel hues. Those who have been to St. John's in Newfoundland will find them familiar. Amongst these townhouses are the best example of the town's utilidors.Inuvik was a planned community built in the late 1950s to replace the town of Aklavik, which the government believed to be too flood-prone (Aklavik refuses to die as over 800 people still live there). Part of the plan was a system of water and sewage delivery that had to be built above ground as the permafrost would wreak havoc with it if it were buried. So as you wander around Inuvik you'll note a lot of grey tin corridors winding their way between the houses. As well the road sometimes takes an unusual small hump. This is where the utilidor runs beneath the road. Utilidors also seem to be where the youth of Inuvik prefer to place their graffiti. Somebody in this town really like AC/DC.
The most remarkable landmark in Invuik is the Igloo Church. This Roman Catholic church is a stunning work of architecture made even more incredible by the fact that the Catholic fathers built it without blueprints. They had to backward engineer the blueprints in order to avoid demolition by the goverment. A short tour of the church is the mandatory event in this town as the interior is just as fantastic
Arctic Tundra
.After a quick walking tour of the town I headed to a local greasy spoon called To Go's for a late night dinner. It was there that I had my first taste of muskox. For 7 bucks you can eat a muskox burger. It's a dry meat and there is something about the texture that struck me as weird, kind of grainy. It was okay to taste but I'll take a buffalo burger before muskox any day of the week.
One other thing to note about Inuvik is that for a town of 3300 people there are a shitload of taxi-cabs. There is at least three cab companies in town and there must be 20 cabs on the move in the evening when the bars start hopping. All this in a town you can walk clear across in 30 minutes. I can understand this in the winter when you don't want to walk or even bother warming up your own car but at this time of year it's ridiculous.
Friday, July 18th - Latitude: 68 degrees North
Inuvik, NWT
When you drive up the Dempster you shouldn't make Inuvik your ultimate destination
Inuvik Sunset
. You will be sorely disappointed to drive so far just to see the town. Arctic Nature Tours offers a number of flights to various destinations even farther north - where the road doesn't go! I booked myself on a trip up to Herschel Island for Sunday afternoon and got on the waiting list for a half-day tour of Tuktoyaktuk on Saturday. The Saturday tours were sold out because my vacationing arch-enemies were in town: The Cross Country Caravan. Like the Happy Wanderers or the Rambles, the CCC is a group of 20 or more RVs that travel together in a pre-packaged trip. Thus when you find yourself in the same town as them they've booked up every tour. Worse yet you could get stuck behind a column of them on a busy two-lane highway.I spent the day getting to know the town a bit better and I decided that since I probably wasn't going Tuk I'd spend some money on a boat tour of the Mackenzie River with a local woman named Moe. I was supposed to meet Moe by the town's public docks at 7pm. She pulled up in her truck and informed me that the other 5 people who had booked all cancelled. The official tour was cancelled but I could pay the money and go out with a guy who was kind of training to help her out on the tour. I figured it could be ab adventure. I was right.
Brendan was a Newf
The Arctic Ocean
. Well, that's not so. He's from the extreme eastern part of Quebec right by the border with Labrador. He sure talked like a Newf. His first words were, "I dinn catch da name dere bye." Brendan's girlfriend Krystal joined us as well. We cruised down the East Channel of the Mackenzie and then in to the intricate maze of sub-channels and lakes that make up the Mackenzie delta (the world's 10th largest delta). We saw many muskrats, a beaver, a pair of nesting brown eagles with a youngster, a bald eagle, and a peregrine falcon. Everything seems cool right? Well, we had a little trouble with the boat. The battery died. When we stopped the motor to observe the eagle nest it wouldn't start again. After some frantic paddling to a boat landing, a borrowed cell phone, an emergency battery run out by Moe, a trip to town by Brendan because the second battery was dead as well, and the consequent return trip with the third battery we were back on our way. While waiting I did a little hiking around the lake we were in and managed to grab a great view of the local gravel pit. I also managed to get too close to the peregrine falcon nest and was dive-bombed by mama falcon.By the time Brendan, Krystal & I made it back it was 11pm. I hadn't eaten since lunch. But Brendan's Newfie hospitality took over. We went back to his sister's place where he promptly fed me 6 beers. We were going out on the town, you see
The Igloo Church
. I would experience Inuvik After Dark... err, the sun doesn't really go down so that would be Inuvik After Dinner I guess. We met Krystal at the local hotspot known simply as The Zoo (we took a cab, go figure). And you know what? It wasn't bad at all. There are many yound university students working summer jobs in the area and when the weekend comes they all go crazy at the Zoo.They also complained about how much the drinks cost but they were exactly the same price as in Toronto so I didn't notice. After getting a little tipsy I stumbled back to my campsite and ate some chili cold out of the can while watching the sun finally go down behind the horizon at 2:35am. It then proceeded to come right back up. I passed out soon afterwards.
Saturday, July 19th - Latitude: 68 degrees North
Inuvik, NWT
In my drunken stupor I somehow remembered to set my alarm for 8pm so I could run down to Arctic Nature Tours to find out if I had snuck onto their Tuktokyaktuk tour. As luck would have it they had a raft of cancellations (those CCC wimps). Everything happenned so fast I didn't have time to realize that I was hungover
The Utilidor System
.For the tour we would take a 35 minute flight north to Tuk and then be given a two hour tour of the hamlet. I would be flying with a couple from Durango, Colorado named Arch & Audrey. Arch was the kind of loud American tourist that really makes me laugh. He was cracking bad jokes constantly and even had a good backslap action down pat. He was telling this old conservative Swiss couple who barely spoke English that he was there to fly the plane. They did not appear to relish the idea.
The flight gave us a great view of the barren tundra and as we approached Tuk some pingoes came into view. Pingoes are volcano-shaped mounds in the tundra. When a lake on the tundra dries up the water seeps into the ground. The ground then freezes. Since water expands when it freezes the ground is pushed upward. The average pingo rises 4 inches a year. One outside of Tuk is believed to be the second largest in the world and has been growing for over 1200 years.
At the airport we were met by our guide Ricky Mac. What Ricky lacked in professionalism (track pants, constant smoking, kicking plants we asked about) he made up in character (stories about partying with Metallica)
Tuktoyaktuk
. You may remember Tuktoyaktuk as the setting for Molson's huge beach party contest in 1995. Five hundred winners were flown there to watch a concert by Metallica, Hole, Moist and Veruca Salt. I may have criticized Metallica's money-grubbing these past couple of years but in 1995 they were still stand-up guys. They toured the town as well and moved by what they saw there completely paid for the local youth centre.The quick two hour tour of Tuk includes a visit to some of the older buildings, a dip in the Arctic Ocean, a look at the DEW line station, and a general lecture about life in the town. Most people who live there are subsistence hunters. It's something that's hard to fathom when you live in Toronto. The local Anglican church was built in the 1890s and has been hauled across the Arctic to a number of locations before it finally settled permanently here in the 1920s. You can still see the moss stuffed between the logs for insulation. The services are in Inuvialiut. Ricky even showed us the prayer book as rendered in the language. Then he added, "If you think those words are weird looking you should go to Nunavut. They get even bigger over there."
Unfortunately, I was only on the half-day tour. If you take the full-day tour you get to stay for a meal (caribou soup, dried herring, dried jackfish, and whale blubber)
Where I Been
. You also get some free time to wander the town and during your meal some local elders regale you with tales of life on the Arctic Ocean.Once the trip was done and we were back on the plane to Inuvik Arch turned to me and said, "That guy spoke real good English. Sometimes the tour guides don't speak English good."
Arch was a fountain of unintentional comedy.
In the afternoon I checked out the Northern Arts festival. It's an annual gathering of artists from across the north (Alaska, Yukon, NWT & Nunavut) where you can view and purchase their works as well as watch them in action. There was some absolutely beautiful work on hand and it could be damn expensive. I was taking a long look at an alabaster sculpture of a polar bear when I noticed the price tag -- $4000. Yikes. The best part was when one of the festivals curators wandered over and tried to sell it to me. Here I was covered in mud, haven't shaved in 2 weeks, blood guts in my hair and hungover like crazy. I must have looked like hell and he thought I had 4000 bucks to spend.
I decided right then and there that I needed a nap. I must be hallucinating.
After my nap I decided to have a shower. That's when I discovered the flaw of the Happy Valley Campground... the showers only have hot water. Usually it is the opposite, only cold. I can stand a cold water shower but this water was unbearably hot. Scalding. It hurt.
I didn't have anything planned for the evening. The only reason I was sticking around was for that Herschel Island trip the next day. So I just took a long walk around the town again looking for unusual things to photograph. Most of my pictures took on a theme of decay. You'll notice this all over the north. Things are just left to rot and because it's so cold for so long each year things don't break down as quickly. I couldn't help but record the amount of rusting machinery about town -- cars, bulldozers, cranes, barges, oil drums, tires, water towers. It felt like the present wasn't what was promised 40 years ago.
Sunday, July 20th - Latitude: 68 degrees North
Inuvik, NWT
Disaster strikes. Someone on the Herschel Island tour cancelled. The tour needs a minimum of 4 people to break even. We had three. The other two guys didn't want to chip in to buy the 4th seat. This was the one tour I had really set my heart on. The latest the flight could leave was 3pm. Hopefully in 5 hours someone would walk through the door and want to take the same trip.
I ended up just killing time about town. The highlight being witnessing a local drunk attempt to shoplift 2 very large bottles of Listerine under his jean jacket. He kind of escaped the store security and he and his crew of mouthwash boozers hid under a house while the RCMP made their way over. It wasn't a very good hiding spot.
3pm arrived and the tour was officially cancelled. Damn. My most northerly point would now officially become Tuktoyaktuk -- 69.24 degrees North. I missed out on 70.
I now was heading south back down the Dempster. Double damn.
