My friend Jimmi and another teacher named Arnaituq went for a fishing excursion on a beautiful sunny day in late September. The area we visited took us 1 1/4 hour to get to by honda (that's northern talk for any ATV machine). We left at nine in the morning and while it was a very bumpy ride, especially for the poor white guy sitting on the back, the views were spectacular.
Of course there were no roads to get to where we had to go and anything in the way just had to be overcome. I was amazed by how quickly these two saw a way and just went for it as with this body of water.
A pic from my vantage point. Soon after this shot the mechanism for the honda's rear wheel drive hit a large rock and gave up. I figured we would pack it in since we still had half the distance to cover still and it could no longer pull itself up the steeper inclines. Nope. It was just too great a day to turn back according to these two and off we went with yours truly moving to Arnaituq's machine and helping Jimmi push his honda from time to time.
We finally made it and the scene was incredible. We had to leave the broken honda up on the ridge beacause it would not have made it back up. Jimmy and I walked down while Arnaituq motored down. This valley was massive and had sheer cliffs on the opposite side. It appears to me that water filled up the whole valley at one time and sediment has built up over time so that now there is only two small arteries flowing. Incredible sand dunes can be found upstream. I only saw one because we did not have the other ATV but apparently there are so many of the these formations that the Inuit around here joke that this is their Egypt. Who knows all the different marvels there are up here in this territory the size of France? (with a population of 11000 I might add).
This was a fairly big steam flowing down the side of the mountain. I can attest that this was the best water I have ever drank.
No comments:
Post a Comment