Travel
For the lucky few who can nab a spot on one of Parks Canada’s guided tours, Ivvavik offers out-of-this-world hiking and wildlife viewing from a fly-in base camp
Each year, about eight times as many people summit Mount Everest than visit Ivvavik National Park. Located in northern Yukon and accessed via air from Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, Ivvavik spans 16,000 square kilometres and is the first national park in Canada created through an Aboriginal land claim agreement. Parks Canada offers week-long, fly-in hiking trips to the park each summer, with departures limited to just 100 guests. If you can land a spot, prepare to hike some of the most magnificent terrain in the north, in Canada, or anywhere else.
From Inuvik, the Western Arctic’s central hub, I hop aboard a Twin Otter for the 75-minute flight over the Mackenzie Delta to Ivvavik. Beneath me are waterways threaded around lush alluvial islands, migrating moose and tundra swans. The Parks Canada interpreter onboard has an apt quote from children’s author E.B. White sewn onto her bag: “Always be on the lookout for wonder.”
If you’re looking for wonder, Ivvavik is the right place to find it. Bordered by the Arctic Ocean, Alaska, and Vuntut National Park, Ivvavik contains the British Mountains and Canada’s oldest river, the Firth, which drains north into the Beaufort Sea. This entire region is protected as calving grounds for the Porcupine caribou (Ivvavik translates to “a place for giving birth” in Inuvialuit). It’s also home to one of the world’s great rafting adventures. For day hikers setting out from Imniarvik Base Camp, Ivvavik promises backcountry glamping in comfort. We’ll have hot showers, flush toilets, prospector tents with queen or bunk beds, propane heaters, cooked meals, a screened sitting area, wildlife viewing deck, and an electrified bear fence. Visiting anywhere this remote doesn’t come cheap, but the destination is priceless.
It takes three passes before the plane safely lands in a rugged patch of open space affectionally known as Sheep Creek International Airport (don’t expect a luggage carousel). Our group consist of six hikers, two experienced Parks Canada interpreters, our cook, and a soft-spoken cultural host named Renie Arey. Among the guests are a retired couple from Whitehorse, a newly married couple from Alberta, an ER nurse from Halifax, and a doctor from Edmonton, prompting a visible sigh of relief that we lucked out with our own on-site medical unit. We will come to know one another very well as we explore the valleys and mountains, share delicious meals, feisty games of cribbage, Inuit cultural lessons, and short walks to the swimming hole. But the star of the show is undoubtedly the landscape.
Unusual for its northern location, Ivvavik avoided glaciation during the last ice age. Evidence of this is found on the banks of the bright-coloured Firth River, and the rocky outcrops — known as tors — that crest alpine ridges like the back plates of a stegosaurus. The taiga blushes with purple wild crocus, yellow poppies, and white Arctic cotton. Average daily highs of 14 C and 24 hours of sunlight also make for fine hiking weather. If we include the adjacent Vuntut National Park and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it is likely we are among the only humans in a staggering 94,500 square kilometres. Such remoteness quickly gets under your skin, and it often feels like we’re the last people on Earth.
Each morning after a healthy breakfast, we apply bug spray and head into the hills, escaping the sagebrush to bask in bug-free mountain breezes. Northern mosquitoes can be fierce in the short months of summer. According to the US Parks Service, a single caribou can lose nearly two kilograms of blood each year to mosquitoes, and up to 10,000 mosquitoes can feast on one caribou at the same time. Occasionally we’ll don bug jackets in the lower elevations before the wind can work its magic.
Porcupine caribou migrate between Vuntut and Ivvavik National Park in early spring to calve, and unfortunately, it’s too late to witness this great migration of the north. There is, however, other wildlife: Dall’s sheep, red fox, muskox, and timber wolves, which we don’t see but which are captured on the motion-activated trail camera outside of camp. On a day hike to the well-named Inspiration Point, we have a chance encounter with a rather large grizzly bear, spotted upwind and ambling towards us. Our Parks Canada guide Nelson, armed only with bear bangers, advises us to group together and remain calm. The bear stops, stands on its hind legs to get a better look at us, then suddenly takes off in the opposite direction. Nelson explains this is typically how a bear encounter goes.
“Hypothetically speaking, who would win in a death battle between a wolverine and a Tasmanian devil?” I ask the group as we trek along a series of ridges. Wolverines are on my mind, because we’ve just seen one scrambling across the valley, causing tremendous excitement. Nobody has ever actually seen a wolverine before, not even Terry, an Albertan who has worked in forestry for 25 years.
“I don’t know a single person who has ever actually seen one,” he tells us elatedly, “except now you guys.”
On another hike, after poking around the disintegrating remains of a trapper camp, we rest for lunch on the banks of the turquoise Firth River. Satiated with sandwiches, I doze off in the sunshine while Terry pulls out his fishing rod. Soon, Terry’s excited voice pulls me out of my stupor: he’s landed one! It’s a four-kilogram Dolly Varden, a beautiful fish that will feed us well tonight. Something tells me that however good the fishing gets for Terry in Alberta, he’ll never forget this catch of a lifetime.
Each day we arrive back in camp after a two to seven-hour hike, adjusted according to the physical shape and enthusiasm of the group. We soak our tired feet in the cold river, read on the patio, and listen to Renie discuss her Inuvialuit culture and traditions. The caribou is more than just a herd animal with one of the largest migrations on the planet. For Indigenous peoples in the Arctic, it has provided food, tools and clothing for millennia. While many caribou populations are declining, we learn that the combined conservation efforts of Arctic communities and national park organizations in both Canada and the USA has led to increasing numbers for the Porcupine herd in the north. As the Arctic experiences outsized impacts of climate warming, it’s a rare and positive story of cooperation and sustainability.
Finally acclimated to life under the midnight sun, our final hike is longer and more ambitious. Halfway to Heaven kicks off with a steep ascent up the ridge behind base camp, traversing along several ridges until we reach a limestone peak with a rock window gazing out across the sweeping valley. Layered hills disappear into the horizon, shrouded in lavender haze caused by distant wildfires in Alaska. It’s an unforgettable view, accompanied by the hiker’s triumph of achievement, and the knowledge that so few people will ever get the chance to see it.
Ivvavik National Park covers an intimidating amount of land, and yes, it’s not easy to access. That said, you don’t have be a hardcore backcountry explorer with years of outdoor experience to enjoy yourself. With their glamping base camp, fantastic guides, cooks, facilities and cultural interpreters, Parks Canada opens up a world of northern adventure for the rest of us.
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