Have you ever wondered What Canada's Arctic is like?
If so, this episode is for you!
Last fall we did something incredible. We were one of the very first people to
drive the new Inuvik to Tuktoyaktok highway in Canada's Northwest Territories.
This is Canada's first all season road
to reach the Arctic Ocean and even though it wasn't opened when we were there,
we got special permission as part of Canada's Road to 150 series.
Once accessible only by air, water or winter ice road. Tuktoyaktuk is about as
isolated as it gets in Canada, and it takes a true adventure to make it there.
Especially if you go by road, which is what we did. We went all the way to the
Yukon, up the Dempster Highway and then we were escorted by a construction crew
on the new highway up to Tuktoyaktuk.
This is a fascinating area and it's so different from the rest of Canada.
First of all, it's above the treeline and it's quite flat
and it's very visible to see that tree line where there's trees and no trees,
so there's no trees up there but there's plenty of pingos and some of them are
protected as a Pingo National Landmark.
And What are pingos? Tell us Matt.
It's a funny name!
Other than being an awesome word, they are a mound of earth covered ice, found
only in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions. And it can reach as high as 70 meters
tall and up to 600 meters in diameter. We even got to climb one there for amazing
views of Tuktoyaktuk and the surrounding area.
It looks like a pimple on the Earth.
Pretty much...but nicer!
So getting to Tuktoyaktuk was a lot easier than
the Dempster Highway but unfortunately due to the weather, it was
raining, there was a lot of potholes...
the construction crew didn't want us to ruin the road,
so they wanted us to come back in the same day
so we only had half day to explore Tuktoyaktuk,
but we made the most of it.
Yes! And it was totally worth it.
So, we climbed the Pingo as Matthew mentioned, and also a local took us to his house,
so we got to try traditional food, wear some traditional clothing and of
course, dip our toes in the Arctic Ocean.
It was super cold!
And I actually jumped in the Arctic Ocean because I had this mission on the Road to 150 trip to jump
completely into all three Oceans that neighbor Canada, and surprisingly
the Arctic Ocean was warmer than the Atlantic but then again
we jumped there in May.
Yeah! Quite a difference on time.
But anyway, I guess if you're up there, you really gotta dip your toes... at least.
Traditional food up here is made up wild game
such as caribou and beluga whale, and we actually got to try
some Muktuk, which is basically the skin and blubber of beluga whales.
And usually eaten raw and it was rubbery but I kind of liked it.
No! Not for me and it felt kind of weird
after having a wonderful time with them snorkelling in Churchill,
but anyway that's the way life is up there and it has been for centuries.
It was also a cool experience to try on some of the traditional clothing
I'm not sure what exactly ours was made of but traditionally they're
made out of caribou hides and then trimmed with a kind of a rough of like
wolf or wolverine fur.
Ours was actually made of wolverine, you could even see the claws in the front.
It was pretty cool! They're very warm in which you
definitely would want up here for the cold winter months because it can get as
low as minus 70 with the windchill, so you definitely want something to keep you warm.
Another cool feature about this place is that there's no chain of
restaurants or hotels, so there's only locals that own guest houses and
accommodate you or locals that take you around for a tour,
and that's what we did, so it was a shame that we didn't have more time
to spend in Tuktoyaktuk but that give us an excuse to come back one day.
Tuk, like the locals say, is truly a very cool place, so if you're up to live a very cool northern adventure
I highly recommend adding both, Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik to your Canadian bucket list.
Pretty much the most challenging part about driving up to Tuk is the
Dempster Highway, a 737 kilometre dirt road in the middle of nowhere.
It's an amazing drive though we're going to be talking about that in our next video.
So, if you love Canada, you want to come to Canada and learn more about Canada
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