Warm welcome as team return to Umingmaktok after difficult paddle
Hello this Glenn on August 15th with the Arctic Voice Blog. We’re now back in Umingmaktok. We’ve had a very eventful few days – not least the weather and it made it quite a slog back up Bathurst Inlet. We managed to make good time when we were paddling but the weather has been pretty inclement most of the time lots of strong winds – gusting (Force) 5 and just making for difficult paddling – quite rough seas at times we arrived in Umingmaktok late last night about 11 pm but the village is more or less empty at the moment because everyone’s gone on a summer camp. There were three people in the village; Eddie, Martina and their daughter Alice and they welcomed us. We were soaking wet because when we arrived we’d been paddling 12 hours in pretty non-stop torrential rain. And they welcomed us into their cabin – it was absolutely fantastic – they gave us hot coffee, tea, caribou and fresh bannock, so it was really, really welcome as it was dark and other wise we would have had to pitch the tent and things would have been tricky. So it was fantastic and we really thank Martina and Eddie for that.
Martina is from Umingmaktok originally and Eddie is from Cambridge Bay and they’ve invited us to come and see them when we arrive in Cambridge Bay. The kayaks are performing very well. All four of our kayaks are Feathercraft K1 and they perform fantastically well in the seas we were getting yesterday. Most of the time the seas were breaking over the kayaks and we came into camp pretty much dry within the kayak so that was really good news. We’re using Lomo dry bags and once again they performed faultlessly so it makes a big difference on a day like yesterday.
We had a fly over yesterday from a twin Otter (plane) that is moving people around from Cambridge Bay to Umingmaktok and a pilot that we met in Bathurst Inlet dipped his wings to say hello. So that was good.
A couple of days ago we were coming after 40-50 kms journey into camp and it was a very hard slog so everybody was absolutely worn out so there was pretty much no chance of going anywhere else. And as we came into this bay we could see this bear on the tundra. Stephen fired every pyrotechnic known to man into the air – it was a bit like a firework display but the bear did absolutely nothing except look at us quizzically. Anyway there was no chance that we were going to go anywhere else so we came in and eventually it ambled off to the hills. But we slept slightly fitfully that night because we were so concerned that his bear would turn up and investigate us! It was quite a young one so it would have been on the inquisitive side I think.
A few days ago after we left Bathurst we were paddling through these islands on an absolutely mirror calm sea and the islands were a glacier worn pink granite and absolutely beautiful. The geology here is absolutely fantastic – you can see signs of massive earth movements with huge pushed up strata in the rocks and lots of colours browns and blacks greys and pinks. As I stand here talking I am looking out from Umingmaktok on a flat calm sea at this rock structure that must be absolutely ancient.
So all is well. Thank you once again to all our sponsors – we’re heading off on what looks like a flat calm sea and we’re going to head up into the Kent Peninsula and hopefully we’ll make Cambridge Bay in the next 10 days or so.
Alison making good progress in heavy seas
