July 13th, 2010

Today was my birthday and the plan was to go up Auyuittuq pass for 5 days. We waited for the boat for several hours to leave pangnirtung. The tide went in and out dramatically each day. When the tide was out all the boats on the dock were literally stuck on hard ground far from water. When the tide came back in all the rocks became hidden and the boats were in deep water in the port. It is said that the tide here goes up and down atleast 7 meters each day. It moves very quickly as well, you can see the water rapidly move in or out. We finally left around 6 PM and arrived on the west side across from overlord shelter which is the first shelter into the pass. The scenery was breath taking. The ancient cliffs are very high and incredibly steep with glaciers scattered everywhere and waterfalls were plentiful. The mountains from a distance look as if there is a nice field of grass at the base of them which cradles the river. As you get closer it becomes apparent that it is not a grassy field, it is a very moist bog full of Mosquitos.

We began to hike up the pass with our heavy backpacks. It was very deceiving how far things were. Often we would see a landmark and it appeared no more than 10 minutes away because the terrain was very flat and easy to hike. But sometimes it would take us hours to get to these landmarks. There were countless creeks that we had to cross, some were very easy to cross whereas others we had to put on our water shoes and cross with great care. There were many segments of the hike were we had to go over unstable rocks and go up hills that clearly had avalanches as recent as the night before. We hiked for several hours before setting camp near a bog. We had to set camp because the flies were unbearable.

It was a very interesting experience to see how the constant sunlight messes with our biological clocks. I constantly found myself thinking that we must rush to find a place to camp before it gets dark. It was some sort of instinctual signal saying find safe place before night. But there were no nights. We had absolutely no sense of time. Sometimes we would hike till 1 AM and we estimated that it was close to dinner time. My dad had his biological clock really thrown off, in fact it was actually frustrating! We set up camp at 1 AM and after a long hike I was hoping to get a good nights sleep. My dad woke up at 3:30AM thinking that we slept in cause it was light out. He did this twice on our hike. When he woke up he tried to make scrambled eggs from freeze dried food but the food was horrible and it had more flies than eggs in it. After he woke up he started packing up and we then continued on the hike despite having only a few hours at most of very uncomfortable sleep. Eventually we got to crater lake which was beautiful. The lake reminded me of wedge mount and the crater gave us shelter from the flies because it was windy at the crater ridge. The view was amazing from here as well. We decided to stay here for a day because the view was awesome and the river we had to cross next looked impassable. Eventually we both decided that we should not go further up the valley from here. There was a series of large rivers we had to cross and it looked like a never ending bog from the top of the crater.

When trying to cook meals here the oven did not work because the wind was too intense. We were eager to have a meal now that there were no flies around. We ended up burning a towel to generate heat to make a freeze dried meal. It tasted amazing after eating nothing but meal replacements and beef jerky for a few days. When we went to sleep it was cloudy so we could not see all the mountain tops. When we woke up the clouds cleared and we could see all the mountain tops with massive glaciers sitting on top. It was quite a sight.

We decided to head back early to try to catch an earlier boat back. Due to the fact that we could not go any further and we were very satisfied with the trip, we felt it was best to head back early. Shortly after arriving at the drop off point we saw a boat! We did everything to flag the boat down and they saw us. The boat did not pick us up though, they went further up the beach and dropped off two men. Then the boat drove off while they waved goodbye to us. It turns out the people they dropped off were park rangers. They had a radio and they called in to ask a boat to come get us at the next high tide. We were told that our outfitter Charlie would be there at some point between 5-9PM. Considering it was 10AM at the time that means we had a lot of time to burn at that location. Another group came to that drop point in hopes of being picked up that night also. Their boat came earlier than ours and we were not allowed to go in that boat because their outfitter does not like our outfitter and we are supposed to not go back with a different out fitter. It was very frustrating because at this point we were not even sure Charlie got the message. We asked this outfitter if Charlie knew but he did not give us a definitive answer and he just drove off. Just as we were becoming resigned to the fact that we may need to set up camp and stay an extra night we saw a boat in the distance. It was Charlie and he came right at 9PM.

On the boat ride back the scenery changed dramatically. The waters were clear on the way too the pass several days before but on the way back the waters were full of icebergs. The boat had to slowly navigate through the icebergs back to the dock. The boat certainly needs a new paint job after that ride. I am very glad that we came back when we did because sometimes what happens is that the boats get trapped due to sea ice and we would have been stuck in the pass with no contact to the outside world. We could have potentially missed our flights due to such a delay.

Written by Adam McLeod

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