Auyuittuq

The Land That Never Melts

Akshayuk Pass, Auyuittuq National Park. The backpacking trip of a lifetime.

Why Auyuittuq?

A bleak landscape with nothing but ice as far as the eye can see is the picture most people have in mind when they think of the Canadian Arctic. When in fact the landscape is absolutely breathtaking. The fiords, glaciers, mountains, icebergs and glacial rivers are outstanding. The sky goes on forever and the air and water is clean.

Traveling to the north is a bit of a challenge but the trip is well worth it. This is home to the muskox, arctic hare, arctic fox, snow geese, lemmings, caribou and the mighty polar bear.

The residents, the Inuit people are the friendliest people you could ever meet, always smiling and helpful. If you travel to the north country listen to these people when they offer advice, after all they have lived there for a thousand years and know how to survive in an often extremely harsh environment.

This is the home to the largest carnivore on earth, the polar bear. While black bears and grizzlies eat berries, grasses and fish to supplement their diet, polar bears only eat meat and we are on the menu. The Inuit know how to live with bears and how to avoid them. Heed their advice on bear encounters. Parks Canada have a brochure on polar bear encounters which is fine but talk to the local hunters and guides to get their advice. Don’t let the bears deter you from heading north because encounters are very rare and often at a great distance away.

Baffin Island is in the eastern arctic just to the west of Greenland. This is where we find Auyuittuq National Park. Flights to Pangnirtung just south of the park can be made through connecting flights from ether Montreal or Ottawa usually on First Air or Canadian North airlines.

My journey to the park has been in the works since I was around eight years old, now 55, when my grandfather told me of the time he went through the Akshayuk Pass, then called Pangnirtung Pass in the 1920's on dogsled mapping the area for the Government of Canada. He spent much of his life mapping the north country and lightweight backpacking was unheard of back in those days. He was one tough old bugger.

A little about my Grandfather

My Grandfather always had the time to stop along the way to his favorite fishing hole or scenic vista to point out the flora and fauna and geographic features to me, often we never made it to that vista but he didn’t mind at all. He just wanted to share his knowledge with one of his grandsons and I was the lucky one he chose.

Once when I was ten we came upon a rattlesnake and I just wanted to run the other way but not him. Gramps squatted down and pointed out all the features of the snake, where they lived what they ate and not to pick one up. Good idea.

Another time, I think I was nine, we met up with wolverine that growled and snarled at us and he told the beast to shut up while he was talking. He didn’t like being interrupted when he was trying to make a point. Gramps wasn’t nuts or super brave he just knew what he was doing in the woods. My mother thought he was trying to get me killed.

In the late 1920's while mapping the southern Northwest Territories the plane he was in had a bad landing in a lake. The pilot, co-pilot and my grandfather, the cartographer, patched up the plane as best they could only to find out that with the three of them on board the plane they couldn’t get enough speed to take off. So my grandfather said “I’ll walk back to Souix Lookout” which is in northern Ontario. No big deal. Four months later he showed up for work looking for back pay.

He always made his own knives, bows and arrows and canvas backpacks that rivaled anything you could buy in a store. My grandmother who was from Manchester England must have thought he was some kind of Davie Crockett or something.

I really miss the old guy but whenever a situation pops up in the bush I still hear him in a calm voice say “Now in a situation like this, you do this.” Thanks Gramps. You’ll be glad to know I’ve past your skills on to my son as well.

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