Sunday Musings

Here are our sleds, our sole albity to find release from the normal confines of town. Now, we just have to figure out how we're going to deal with the other 4 months of the year.


This is the "shortcut" behind the school, it travels about 15 minutes behind the school and delivers you about 4 houses down from the school. Total walking time, under five minutes, total ski-dooing time 15 minutes. Not exactly a shortcut but a lot more interesting than driving along the road.


This is the cliffs across the river from Tsiigehtchic taken from the ice road.

This is a trail on the Inuvik side of the river, As you can see the trails aren't exactly wide, meet someone on the trail and one of you has a desicion to make, and if you meet me on the trail, you have a desicion to make, cause I'm staying right on the trail.


One thing I can assure everyone is that I am not a good enough photographer or snowmobile driver to be able to focus while driving. I did find a setting that works okay, but my throttle hand is also the hand I would like to use to take the picture, add that to the fact I tried to stand up to clear the windshield and this photo isn't exactly what I hoped. This truck is just leaving the ice road and making land on solid ground.


This vista is taken from the Fort MacPherson side of the MacKenzie river. with the lack of tree's I'm betting there's a lake here, but I won't know for another 4 months, so stay tuned.


Christopher's new hat and shirt from Grandmom. Can you guess what Christopher's favorite color is. I think this year we'll send him out at halloween as a frog.

Hello everyone,
It official, Inuvik is running out of fuel which means they're starting to truck fuel into Inuvik via trucks on the ice road, which I'm using as a poor transition statement into a discusion or ice road travel. For most vechicles the ice road is a very safe and fast way to travel, Its not often you get to travel on a 75 foot two lane road. However, for trucks and heavy equiptment the risk of the road are singular. The ice is thick enough to support the weight of almost any vechicle, the danger arises when you actually have to move these heavy vehiclces across the ice. They must keep their speed's very low because they produce a pressure wave in front of thier vechicle due to their weight, if they catch upto their pressure wave they will crack the ice beneath them with obviuos tragic results. This is not a daily event but neither is it rare, some drivers who carry extremely heavy loads wear survival suits throughout their journey. These speed are usually limited by the weight of the load, how would you like to drive 500 miles at a staggering speed of 5 miles a hour, Its a lot of time to have your nerves on edge, and if you lose concentration and speed up, terrible thing will happen.
Our weather has finally warmed up, hence you can now find photo's again on this blog. You may not be so lucky if you try to find me at home, the sleds are getting a lot use since the freeze ended. Today has been a gloriuos warm day with many out and about across the land, across the river we have a herd of Caribou as well as a large pack of wolves and some moose. Thats where Christopher and I are heading in a few minutes to see what we can see. We're working on finding a source for country food in this town, starnge being that we know a lot more people than we have previously by still are having difficulty finding that kind soul who has a good stream of country foods.
Looks like in a couple of weeks I'm going to be able to see the land south of 60 as I'll be going to Winnipeg for a week at the beginning of March for a conference. Nothing like Winnipeg in the beginning of March, it'll be just like the tropics (not).
Take Care
CG