A Tundra Trek

Braving the wilds of Arctic country

It all started last year when I was visiting friends, Marsha Ablowitz and Laura Chapman in Vancouver that I stumbled upon their plans of hiking this summer at Baffin Island above the Arctic Circle. When they mentioned the details of the trip to me my ears pricked up like a little dog's. "Yes, yes. I want to make this trip with you all too."

For the next couple of months Marsha kept faxing me the various routes, plans and other information I required for the trek. This was the first time I was going to undertake such a long and difficult camping trip. In the past it had always been an overnight or a two day hike. This was to be for two weeks.

Laura and Marsha went a week ahead to explore another island in the Arctic, while I was finishing choreographing work with the students of Galludet University for the hearing-impaired in Washington. My flight path from Vancouver flew me over Yellow Knife, Ranking Inlet and finally to Iqualit - all part of the sprawling Northwest territories in the Arctic region.

Marsha and Laura were there to receive me on that windy day. Prior to my arrival the weather had been really grim - it had been raining and there had been snow storms. The town of Iqualit, is the hub of activity for the Innuits - as Eskimos are now known, and a centre for civil servants who run the day-to-day activities of the territories.

While walking through the town, one was taken aback to see the number of churches of different faiths. Iqualit was a town of 5000 people that catered to the needs of a shifting miner population. There were a good number of hotels, colleges and hospitals, the visitor's centre was very impressive, helpful and full of information, that was available on video too.

We had an overnight stopover in this town before we flew off in a small six-seater aircraft to Pangnirtung, next morning. We registered at the visitor's centre there and took a boat and went through the fjord to arrive at the Auyuittuq National Park Reserve. The boat ride was spectacular. Initially when we took off, Pangnirtung with its homes were a sore sight. This country is for the outdoors people and therefore the towns are very functional and dull. But then ahead was a beautiful expanse of mountains.

The boat ride took an hour and we landed at the foot of Mount Overlord, where the huge and majestic mountain looked down at us. We were surrounded by a number of towering mountains that were not that high and the tide was in. But when the tide went out it was something else -- you just saw these huge rocks and the fjord.

We camped for the night here.

At the Arctic Circle the days are very long and it was light till two on the morning and then again at four the sun was up again. The next morning we started off with our backpacks, each weighing 50 pounds, containing food, sleeping bags, stoves, cooking gas and basic toiletries.

Our destination in the park was to be Summit Lake which was a unbelievable 60 kilometres from Overlord. The weather was rather harsh, the sun was playing hide and seek and the entire 10 days that we camped in these parts, the sun showed its presence for just two-and-a-half days. Rest of the time it was windy, rainy, grey and in the early hours of the morning, there was snow. We would know it had been snowing the night before because the mountains would look as though icing sugar had been sprinkled on them.

The tundra is very deceiving. When the ground looks solid before you it is actually unstable because the rain keeps the soil muddy and we kept sinking in. As Marsha pointed out to me, when you walk on the tundra you look not for solid ground but for the dry patches because there the soil is firm. While we were trekking on the first day, we encountered many streams that had to be crossed.

The cardinal rule, while tundra trekking is to avoid getting your shoes wet because it takes one hell of a long time to get them dry again. So every time we reached a stream we had to take our shoes off and put on some rain shoes and wade through the freezing water. And we crossed a stream three times every half an hour, which meant going through this exercise of unpacking your rain shoes, wearing them, crossing the stream, re-packing your shoes and pausing a few minutes while your toes unthawed. Quite a choreography.

Though it was cloudy and cold most of the time, as you trudged ahead one would feel hot and start peeling off layers of clothes. But then after a little while, the wind would begin to blow again and we would have to scramble into our backpacks and pull out the garments again. The mercury levels fluctuated between 2 and 16 degrees celsius and at night often the temperature went below zero.

There were not that many hikers around. I recall seeing one or two everyday and always coming from the opposite direction, returning from Summit Lake or beyond. Our destination on the first day was to be Windy Lake. But we were going rather slowly and not making much progress as we were carrying too much food - - soup packets, rice, cheese, porridge. Provisions for 16 days that made our backpacks rather heavy. So Marsha, who is a veteran camper and climber, suggested we unload some food. We took off six days of food and hid it behind a rock, we marked, and prayed that it would be there when we returned a few days later.

Photographs by Astad Deboo