Bits and pieces from before I was out of town for a week.

The old theater / restaurant / party shack finally burnt down after 5 tries. People had been getting into the empty building from underneath and reportedly a small fire inside got out of hand and up it went. They brought in a hoe from Northwind to knock the structure down, where it still sits to this day.

Few more birds in and around town and such. The barges are all getting ready for summer traffic and the hotel barge is now anchors in the river to receive guests for the petroleum show and the Inuit Circumpolar conference.

The tugs and pushes are starting to being taken out of winter shut down, though the gangway over to the pisuryak kootook leaves much to be desired. Workers had the engines fired up and seem to be getting ready to move the vessel somewhere.

Birds are migrating through with plenty of paired ducks looking for nesting sites. One has to question their strategy of situating in water that is near roads as locals find them rather tasty.


Also some shots near the territorial viewpoint – thunderheads are rather frequent this year, which is a bit peculiar for the Arctic.

..and a beat up chevy, how it got here from Alberta is anyone's guess, though it is sitting in the NTCL yards

I hiked over to the base of the large cliff that is part of the Territorial viewpoint. I haven’t been over that way since the fall when the lake was starting freeze over. The summer access entails locating a treed gulley that leads down to the north of the main structure. While the gulley looked to be open terrain in the fall, from a vantage point at the bottom, it was rather choked with brush and downed trees – nothing drastic but surprisingly thick for here – likely due to water being funneled down it promoting more growth.

Regardless a quick trip to the base of the cliff revealed that it was much more chossy that it looked in the Fall. Certainly climbable rock but would require extensive cleaning, hence pointless. The south end is much more solid but also much less steep and discontinuous. Essentially the climbing area that I developed has turned out to be the best accessible rock around. There are lots of Falcons and other migratory birds nesting along the cliffs in general as well. I found a nice Falcon skull at the base of one section.

The lake is high and the base of the cliff on the south side is flooded. Campbell Lake exhibits a reverse Delta in the Spring as the level of the Mackenzie rises and spills into the lake as opposed to the lake draining into the Mackenzie. No walking along the shore right now. The water is tolerable and a quick dip is not out of the question if there is no wind.

Lots of crocuses and other flowers are now blooming and happily not many bugs at all even though it was +22 on Saturday.