tuktoyaktuk
INUVIK, NT
Last Sunday, I ventured out on my first ice road trip. Yes, while we Southerners are accustomed to stern, well–intentioned warnings to stay off the ice, in the North frozen waterways are an essential supply route to dozens of isolated communities.
Our particular destination was Tuktoyaktuk. The hard–hitting staccato of the Inuvialuktun morphemes (meaning, in this case, "looks like a caribou") were particularly exciting to drum off the palate because Tuk is: a) at 69º15'36", the most northerly point I have yet travelled; b) home to an enormous communal freezer dug into the permafrost; and c) located on the Beaufort Sea! Forget the latitude—I was going to stand at the end of Canada's contiguous land mass and look out over the Arctic Ocean.
Tragically, the town no longer opens its communal freezer to tourists, so we didn't get to descend the thirty feet into the permafrost, but this lost opportunity did little to diminish the spectacular impressions of the trip. Aside from the photographs below, I snapped a preposterously large panorama of the town from the nearest pingo. See if you can spot the DEW Line station (explanations of the terms pingo and DEW Line).
All the best.
Our particular destination was Tuktoyaktuk. The hard–hitting staccato of the Inuvialuktun morphemes (meaning, in this case, "looks like a caribou") were particularly exciting to drum off the palate because Tuk is: a) at 69º15'36", the most northerly point I have yet travelled; b) home to an enormous communal freezer dug into the permafrost; and c) located on the Beaufort Sea! Forget the latitude—I was going to stand at the end of Canada's contiguous land mass and look out over the Arctic Ocean.
Tragically, the town no longer opens its communal freezer to tourists, so we didn't get to descend the thirty feet into the permafrost, but this lost opportunity did little to diminish the spectacular impressions of the trip. Aside from the photographs below, I snapped a preposterously large panorama of the town from the nearest pingo. See if you can spot the DEW Line station (explanations of the terms pingo and DEW Line).
All the best.
posted by simon at 2:27 AM
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