The Land That Never Melts

THE far North has always fascinated me. Even as a young boy growing up in Gold Beach, Oregon, U.S.A., I used to pore over maps of Canada and dream of one day exploring places with exotic-​sounding names, such as Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake. So one day in 1987, my friend Wayne and I began plans to visit Auyuittuq National Park, Canada’s first national park north of the Arctic Circle.

Auyuittuq, in the Inuit language, means “The Land That Never Melts,” and the park was set aside to preserve an Arctic wilderness of jagged mountain peaks, deep valleys, spectacular fjords, and marine coastal wildlife. The park includes the Penny Ice Cap, a vast 2,200-​square-​mile [5,700 sq km] mantle of ice and snow drained on all sides by glaciers. No wonder Auyuittuq is affectionately referred to as the “Switzerland of the Arctic.”

Auyuittuq has three months of summer and nine months of winter, so we decided to go in August 1988, after the breakup of the ocean ice and after most of the biting black flies are gone. This is also before the September snows begin.