I have been travelling again...
So I have survived yet another travel adventure, this time to Canada's Yukon and Northwest Territories. Read on, if you are interested in tales of the Aurora Borealis, driving on the Arctic Ocean, and Inuit fishing villages. Do not read on, if you are not interested in tales of the Aurora Borealis, driving on the Arctic OCean, and Inuit fishing villages.
So now that I've hit the highlights, here's the deal:
Myself, and three other graduate students in Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Anupriya Ankolekar, Andrea Klein, and Brian Williams... (henceforth refereed to as the Donner Party), embarked from Pittsburgh last Friday for an adventure to the frozen north. Our goal: to see the Aurora Borealis at it's 66-year peak, and to see to Arctic Ocean.
After a small delay at the border, we were on our way, with coats, gloves, mittens, hats, balaclavas, insulated boots, scarves, soy jerky, shovel, rakes, and implements of destruction.
We began in Whitehorse, Yukon, a town of 23,000 - by far the largest community along our journey. We stopped to pick up supplies -- fresh food which froze in the back of our SUV before we could eat most of it -- a shovel which came in instrumental multiple times -- and other such necessities -- before starting North.
After a two-day stop in Dawson City due to a road closure, we set off North on the Dempster Highway -- a gravel road, which due to snowbank encroachment was one to two lanes wide (not per side but total), covered with ice, and winding through two different mountain ranges, for 800 km with only one restaurant/gas station/truck stop the entire way. It was the most beautiful drive I've ever done -- also the most difficult -- I was extremely glad that our party of four had three experienced winter drivers to switch off at regular intervals.
On our way, I got out of the car to answer nature's call. I stepped into the snow and learned -- the hard way -- that it's very hard to tell the depth of a snow bank. I suddenly found myself chest deep in snow and had to swim back to the road. Later on, we had our first mishap of the trip, as Brian accidentally drove off the road at a sign marking the Arctic Circle. We managed to dig ourselves out after about fifteen minutes, and I learned that breath has a great deal of water vapor when my mustache froze solid.
After a stop in Inuvik, a mining community of 3000 people (largest community north of the arctic circle in Canada), we then drove on the MacKenzie River and Arctic Ocean to the Inuit hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk. Apparently the permafrost heaves so much every summer that it's cheaper to pave ice roads every winter than to repave the roads every summer, even if that means no summer roads. Disturbingly enough, the ice road was the best inter-city road we drove on the entire trip.
Tuktoyaktuk was beautiful, in a sparse way -- no vegetation at all.
We enjoyed playing tag on the arctic ocean, and met some of the warmest
people we'd ever met. It didn't hurt that we were the first winter
tourists to spend the night in memory. Tuktoyaktuk is fairly overrun by
tourists in the summer, but in the winter? Only we were hardcore
enough.
Unfortunately, Tuktoyaktuk is in a bad way these days. Drug addiction and alcoholism are rampant -- it was almost all anyone could talk about -- (how do they get drugs in Tuktoyaktuk?!?!?) and crime is a serious problem, with vandalism very obvious all over the place. The son of the richest guy in town had spray-painted his name everywhere. The postmistress, a southerner from Labrador City (latitude 54 North), told us she was looking forward to being posted elsewhere soon because the only thing the locals like to do is drink.
Many of the other arctic inuit/gwitch'in (a first nations/native american people who are ethnically different from the inuit but live in similar ways) hamlets we visited, such as Tsiigetchic, had strict prohibition laws and were in correspondingly better shape.
Amusing anecdote from one village (Fort MacPherson):
Us: Hi. Do you have a restaurant in town?
Fellow: Eh? Ha. Building One, by the Cooperative.
Us: Thanks.
Us: There's no restaurant here.
Us: Excuse me, where is Building One?
Another fellow: Never heard of it.
Us: Well, where's the restaurant.
Another fellow: Ha. You'll have trouble getting served.
On our way back South on the Ice Road, we got stuck in the snow again,
this time because an area needed to be replowed. After trying for a
half-hour to dig ourselves out, a tractor came by and pulled us out.
Brian points out that I conveniently forgot to mention who got us stuck this
time. Well, it was me. But I'd like to point out that I got us more stuck than he did... er, wait...
On our way back south, one more thing happened -- the clouds finally lifted for a couple hours, and we saw the Northern Lights! They were amazing! I can't even begin to describe them... but they were alone well worth the trip. Very ghostly and mysterious.