The Ice Road to Tuktoyaktuk

The Arctic Chalet is not even a minute away from the start of the Ice Road to Tuktoyaktuk and Aklavik, both very remote communities that are accessible by the ice road after the river freezes or by plane in the warmer months. Tuktoyaktuk is our destination today to meet our local host and guide – Eileen.

Next year is the last year to drive the ice road, before the all weather highway is completed – cutting the distance from 185km to about 137km. This road is called the Ice Road because it is literally made from ice – more specifically the frozen Mackenzie River and parts of the Arctic Ocean. The ice can be up to 10 feet thick and easily supports the weight of fuel and container trucks. It is not slick like a sheet of ice, you can walk on it without slipping on your butt. You still need to pay attention when driving otherwise you’ll be sliding into the snowbank. The Ice Road is pretty wide – as wide as 6 lanes at some sections.

Heavy truck on the Ice Road

Cracks on the ice road

The drive for the first few kilometres was kind of strange – seeing all the large ships docked on solid ground and some of them are even frozen stuck to the ice.

Ships frozen stuck in the river

The drive there took almost 3 hours as you should not drive above 70km/hr – but of course many people were just flying down the road.

It was quite cold that day, we reached -35C at some points, the SUV never did really warmed up and we saw a lot of vehicles with a sheet covering the front grill. Jeff tried to stick a cardboard in front of the radiator to keep it warmer, but it was so cold that the cardboard snapped like plastic, oh well, I guess we won’t bother with that then. Interesting things we saw along the way include a fox, abandoned vehicles and a tent. Tent? What the heck is someone doing camping along the Ice Road under such extreme cold conditions?

The word on the street is it is some Japanese guy doing the ice road on foot

The obilgatory photo on the Ice Road to Tuk

When finally arrived in Tuk we looked for our guide’s home. As we were doing the cultural tour of Tuk, we experienced the local “cuisine”. On the menu: caribou stew, whale blubber, muskox, smoked white fish, smoked whale and eskimo donuts. We paid good money for this tour, so you bet your bottom dollar I tried everything. I didn’t fancy the fish and blubber. The meats – tastes just like gamey beef. Ashleigh didn’t feel too good having the caribou stew – must be the non-meat diet that is causing her to feel uncomfortable. Anyways, you won’t see us visiting any eskimo restaurant anytime soon.

Clockwise from top left: Smoked white fish, smoked whale, whale blubber, pan fried muskox

After lunch, Eileen showed us their collection of pelts – muskox, seal, martin, caribou (the winter, spring and summer collection), foxes etc. She even had polar bear pelt/fur pants her husband Billy wore for hunting – not to forget matching polar bear mitts. She has a pretty neat coat from her mother with the sunburst design made from the ruff of a wolf so that it furls outward and upright.

The styling of the wolf fur around the face is known as the sunburst design

Eskimo snow goggles to prevent snow blindness

Next on the agenda was the tour around town. As we stepped out, she said we arrived on the coldest day, -40C with windchill. I think Tuk is a community in a giant chest freezer, everything is covered in frost including the power lines!

Frosty power lines

The narration around town was very interesting, she showed us the churches and spoke of the residential schools that she and her husband attended.

Houses in Tuk

Most of the homes in Tuk are owned by the housing cooperation that rents it to the people. Rental is determined by your pay check – if you don’t earn much, you don’t pay much rent. You can’t get a job there unless you pass a drug test. She mentioned that seniors pay $35 per month to rent a home. There are no restaurants or hotels. The community has a health centre which does not have a doctor on staff all the time, a community hall / rec centre, a seniors home, a cemetry, a school, a couple supermarkets, an airport and that’s about it.

Kilometre- Zero North – Arctic Ocean Trailhead of the Trans Canada Trail

After the tour, we headed back to Inuvik and had dinner at the Mackenzie Hotel, I guess it’s the “fanciest” hotel in town.

The next day we headed back to Dawson City – we drove the Dempster Highway in about 10 hours with a lunch stop at Eagle Plains.

We drove through snow drifts at a high point of the highway and we even had cellular signal at the Richardson mountain range! (We have some more videos of the drive along the Dempster Highway, but unfortunately I can’t post it as I don’t have any means to download and process it on the iPad. Stay tuned!)

Snow drifts

Sunrise, Richardson Mountains

As we approached the Arctic Circle we saw the bright sun and two bright spots on the sides – we were quite confused not knowing what exactly is was, thinking it was probably a rainbow. Apparently this is called sun dogs – “are an atmospheric phenomenon that consists of a pair of bright spots on either side on the Sun, often co-occurring with a luminous ring known as a 22° halo.”

Sun dogs at the Arctic Circle

We arrived in Dawson City just before 6pm, hungry and eager to stretch our legs. We decided to try a different restaurant and walked for about 10 minutes in -21C temperature only to find out that the restaurant is boarded up. So much for trying something new, so we headed back to our hotel’s restaurant and feeling the pain in our face from walking in the extreme cold..

Our hotel was fully booked that night as Dawson City is one of the pit stops for the Yukon Quest – 1000 mile dog sled race from Eagle, Alaska to Whitehorse. Unfortunately we could not stay for that, just a photo of the check point. It would be quite neat to see the dogs coming in…

Yukon Quest. Dawson City was buzzing with activity as the support crews have arrived ahead of the dog teams

We left Dawson City at 10am this morning for Whitehorse. There was no need to leave early as we won’t be able to check in the hotel anyways. We saw a pair of caribou about 80kms away from Dawson City and that was pretty much it for wildlife spotting on this leg of the journey.

We have a full day in Whitehorse tomorrow – not too sure what else we will be doing besides going for a soak at Takhini hot springs.