Breakup Excitement

Apparently a very exciting time in Inuvik is waiting for the breakup, of the ice in the river. During this time, there is no road connecting Inuvik with the outside world so all groceries are flown in and everything becomes very expensive.

Three of us went for a walk last night to check out the river. After walking a few kilometers outside of Inuvik we turned around and headed off the road down a trail towards the river. We encountered a number of large puddles in the trail which we avoided by hiking through the woods. Finally, we got 20 meters away from the bridge which would take us into the town. The 20 meters was covered in water.

Left of the trail was high, dry ground, we left the trail and made our way almost to the edge of the puddle. There we were faced with an impassable 30 meters of lake between us and the bridge. Since the bridge was slightly to the right of the path, we retraced our steps and tried the right side of the path.

To the right of the path were clumps of small trees sticking out of water stretching as far as we could see. For nearly 30 minutes we zigzagged from dry clump to soggy clump avoiding the water between. Finally, there were no more clumps. To get any further we took off our shoes and socks, rolled up our pants and headed into the knee deep water to get closer to the bridge.

Squishing through freezing mud is not my favourite thing to do, and when we attempted to cross to the next patch the water got even deeper. We had to admit defeat, walk back the kilometer plus we had come and get home an hour later, instead of 5 minutes later.

Today, we went back to the river at a different location to see how high it was. So many people were also out walking and driving their cars to check it out. Did I mention how exciting breakup season is here? The water was about 10 feet higher than normal and had flooded an entire section of road which goes alongside the river.

We also took a look at the place we'd attempted to cross last night, I think we only would have succeeded in reaching the bridge if we had swum. It was DEEP!  On our way back from the river we went up a hillside to avoid the washed out road. I broke a piece of the front wheel on the baby stroller. Thankfully a friend came by and picked up the boys so they didn't have to walk home, and even treated them to ice cream!

In case you were already jealous of how exciting my life is here. Some people were out attempting to have a bbq and caught some grass on fire, which started to spread quite quickly. Thankfully a few firefighters arrived to put it out with a big bucket of water.

Since then I've spent a pretty relaxing afternoon on the patio, getting up from my computer every few moments to pull the 1 year old back from the stairs before he walked down headfirst.