Storyline: Hiking in Nunavut August 1-12, 1998
Dinner in the hotel last night was beef stew (lots of onion, and it didn’t taste like chili!), rubber chicken with a tomato-based sauce on it, boiled potatoes, rice, and corn. There were fresh-made cookies and a blueberry coffee cake for dessert. We talked to some people who were on a 10-day air tour of the arctic. The co-pilot, a stereotypical grey-bearded curmudgeon, told us that each of the 10 vacationers aboard the twin Otter (all senior citizens or approaching that status) had paid about US$10,000 to be ferried to notable and interesting points in the arctic—Lake Hazen on Ellesmere Island, and the magnetic north pole to name two that weren’t communities. Hope they were enjoying it…they didn’t appear to be. Didn’t see any of them crack a smile over dinner.
At about 8:15 we got the word that we’d be taken to the boat at 9. We sit in the TV lounge and wait, not wanting to climb into the provided bulky but warm and relatively safe one-piece red Mustang Floater survival suits until the last minute. We get the call at 8:45 as I emerge from the washroom, and scramble into the suits. Down at the shore, we put our bags on a komatiq (dog sled) at the water’s edge and wait. The tide is coming in, and we soon have to move the bags to higher ground. At about 9:30, our guide, Peter Aglaq, and his son come down to the beach. I think the son has been involved in a performance at the visitors centre for the tour-plane group. They paddle a skiff to their boat, about 20’ with a cuddy cabin and two 70hp motors. They beach the boat broadside-on and we load the backpacks into the cuddy then hop aboard
As they wait for the waves to lift the bow so they can push the boat off the beach, it becomes apparent that our added weight is going to make it difficult. Tim jumps overboard to help, and the rest of us move to the seaward side to get our weight over the water as much as possible. After several minutes, I jump out to help. We get the boat afloat and I get a soaker in my right boot. On one engine we weave through the boats anchored in the harbour. When our guide tries to start the second motor it balks. A few quiet words are directed to the son sitting in the stern who takes off the motor cover and tries to start the motor with a pull rope. Nothing doing. Our guide moves back to have a go. Nothing. A few more quiet directions and the son is in the cuddy, reappearing with a length of fuel hose that is quickly installed. Success! And off we go, skirting one of the big icebergs and heading off into the 2´ swells The boat planes neatly across the waves as we head towards Bylot. To our right a glacier drops between sunlit peaks. To our left the sun shines on a lower shore. Ahead it looks gloomy and cloudy. We are headed a little northwest of Sermilik glacier to be dropped off near two cabins owned by Pond Inlet locals. A kilometre or so from shore the starboard engine dies again so we limp up the shoreline to the cabins and disembark on a sandy beach. I doff my Floater suit and as I struggle into my gaiters (planned to do it at the hotel, but we got rushed out before I could) Tim, Jim & Michael help our guides refloat the boat. We head up the beach toward the cabins as our guides struggle to start their motors. I still don’t know if they fixed them and made it home or overnighted at one of the cabins.
By now it’s 11:30 p.m. We hike uphill under overcast skies to a dry spot about 100’ up. Michael, who had disappeared ahead, returns sans backpack to tell us he has found a perfect campsite at some hoodoos (columns or pinnacles of weathered rock) upstream. We trek about another kilometre across tundra so different from the boggy marshy stuff we have seen on Baffin that I’m amazed. The mayor’s dog, a big, white wolfish beast, trails us. We have been told that he is friendly, but he keeps his distance, like the weasel that chattered at us from safety below a sheet of corrugated metal by the cabins. We reach Michael’s perfect spot to find it’s 300’ above the hoodoos (an amazing sight) and the only visible way down is to half scramble, half slide down a 60° sand hill. Tim goes down and runs back up to “show how easy it is” (I wish I had his energy and enthusiasm). Big smile on his face, and slightly out of breath, he announces that he knows we can do it! Oh oh!. But it is actually easier than it looks. We zig-zag down a rock-strewn area and onto the sand beach below an amazing sight. The hoodoos reach up, 80’ above us; wind and water-carved into minarets and spires. I spy a face in one. Marian points out one that looks like a camel.
Another looks like Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars. After some discussion as to preferred campsites, we settle on a beach nestled out of the wind in a hoodoo cove. Michael pitches quite snug to the face of the hoodoos. Jim and I choose the slightly safer but also slightly more exposed area further from the risk of falling sandstone. Time to break out the hot chocolate. Jim wants to use his stove (doesn’t like the whisperlights that Michael and I have). So we wait somewhat impatiently for the water to boil, finally breaking out a whisperlight to finish the job. Something’s not quite right with the Peak 1.
Michael, Marian and Lindsay head for their sleeping bags. Tim, Jim & I stay out a while longer to drink and chat. Jim is the first to notice the white speck a few miles upstream on the far bank of the creek. At first, I think it’s the mayor’s dog coming around from a hunt. Jim says “no, it isn’t moving like a dog”. I don’t know how he can tell that about the pinhead-sized spot in the distance, but I’m near-sighted and wouldn’t even be able to see the spot without my glasses, never mind identify it. Jim gets out the binoculars and says, quietly “It’s a bear”. My heart sinks and my knees turn to jelly. What now? The most feared predator in the arctic is headed down the valley towards us. At one point, still a couple of miles off, it stops and enjoys a roll in the tundra. Then it continues on towards the creek mouth. Michael doesn’t believe us at first when we tell him to get up. But this is no joke. It will have to pass us, although on the other side of the creek. Jim and Tim have the bear spray out and ready. We discuss routes to retreat into the hoodoos, and we wait. On comes the bear. Through the binoculars, it seems to be looking right back at me, but its eyesight much weaker than mine so it’s just my imagination and fear. I put my wet hiking boots back on. No more jokes about only having to run faster than one of our group in order to be safe.
The bear is now plainly in view across the creek. A 20’ cliff will make getting down a little difficult for it, but we aren’t relying on that barrier. Lindsay has the big pot and lid. I hold two tin cups and I don’t remember what the others were holding, being too focused on the bear, steadily growing as it approaches. It eats up ground in an easy four-legged ramble. We start banging our pots together, making enough noise to startle the bear. It seems to become aware of us for the first time, stops and looks toward us. We keep banging and hollering, and the bear finally turns tail and runs back up the valley. The cove we’re in magnifies and amplifies the sound, and projects it across the noise of the creek, disturbing the bear and sending it back up the valley. Fifteen minutes later it’s almost out of sight.
Marian disappears behind some hoodoos and returns several minutes later. “I have a name for the bear”, she says. “Laxative”.
Tim volunteers to stand first watch while the rest of us, exhausted from the time of night (it’s now about 3 a.m.) turn in to get some sleep and warmth. I’m still trembling fifteen minutes later as I lie in my sleeping bag trying to get the cold of tiredness and fear out of my bones. Tim turns in at about 4:30, having scouted the valley, filled the pots with water for breakfast and probably climbed several almost impossible cliffs.
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