pingo time

The title of this post is “pingo” time, not “bingo” time, although I should probably write a bit about bingo some time. Bingo is played 4 nights a week here and is broadcast via radio signals that you can pick up with tv antenna. If you get a bingo you have to phone in.

I am not supposed to be writing about bingo. This post is about pingos!

For those of you haven’t heard of a pingo before, they are large mounds of ice that have been thrust up from the permafrost. They look like large mounds covered with shrubs. I will post a picture when my email access is better. The Tuktoyaktuk area is one of the few spots in Canada where pingos actually form. Furthermore, the second largest pingo in the world is right outside of Tuk. I look at it every day from Rebecca and Ning’s back porch.

All summer I had been trying to make a trip out to see the big pingo (it is called Ibyuk). Although it looks so close to town it would take at least a few hours to walk there from town – plus, I can’t go alone because you never know if you will cross paths with a bear. Earlier this week there was a polar bear spotted in the southern part of the Mackenzie Delta. No one has ever seen a polar bear in that area at this time of year – or rarely ever in that area since it is below the tree line and far inland from the coast. (If you want to hear more bear stories, check out the latest updates from the ArcticVoice guys because they have been seeing 2 or 3 bears a day).

I finally made it out to Ibyuk today. I went with a friend of mine from last summer named Jody because she really wanted to go as well. She hasn’t been out there in the summer since she was young (during the winter a lot of people go out there with their skidoos but in the summer there aren’t any simple routes to get there). We were going to canoe there but ended up taking a 4-wheeler (ATV) instead. Seeing as the weather ended up calming down, we should have taken the canoe after all. The challenge with the canoe is that we would have had to cross ocean water and if the wind is up at all there are big waves. The 4-wheeler was fun and a bit challenging because the terrain is very bumpy. We ended up walking for the last bit, which was nice because I haven’t had much exercise this summer at all. Sadly, we encountered a wide river/stream that prevented us from being able to walk up the pingo. The river/stream is almost like a moat that wraps around Ibyuk. After returning to town we found out that we should have walked in the opposite direction (i.e. left istead of right) and eventually we would have reached a spot to cross. So alas, we got to look at but not touch Ibyuk. There is a second large pingo right near Ibyuk but there is a moat around it too. Parks Canada and the Inuvialuit have been negotiating plans to turn the area around these two pingos into a Pingo Park that is protected under the Canadian Parks system. Currently, this land is owned by Inuvialuit so in order for the federal government to gain control of it they need to trade a parcel of land that is of equal value. If anyone is interested in more details on this let me know because that is all that I am going to write about it for now.