Mixed climbing / dry tooling by Campbell Lake near Inuvik NWT

Just some pix for a slide show I did for the Arctic Image Festival, during an unusually warm spell in Feb of 2015, of some of the mini routes I have on the crag I developed. As previously reported its a really decent limestone layer given that a lot of the outcrops around here are a bit chossy.

...and a link to an earlier post of a go pro video on the same day

http://inuvik2013.blogspot.ca/2015/03/climbing-by-inuvik-on-warm-weekend-in.html

Climbing by Inuvik on a warm weekend in Feb 2105

Down by Campbell Lake doing some dry tooling up a corner and over an overlap. Temp around -1 Celsius, blizzard the next day and back to -20.



...and the next day, blowing hard and snowing Sunday about 2 AM but then tapering off to just wind and clear skies - ground blizzard



Some pix of the road and the ridge I hiked up to get out of the ground blizzard. Not much traffic on the road, ie none

Weekend of Jan 15 2015

Interesting weekend in the Mackednzie Delta: I spent Saturday helping some friends cutting firewood just north of town, along the ice road to Aklavik / Tuktoyaktuk. We snowmobliled in then 3 of us cut while one person ferried loads of wood back to the trailer. I took a while to fine the chain for my chainsaw and at one point i thought it had been left down south but 2 chains eventually appeared after a trip to Arctic Rim to buy one – fortunately they didn’t have any 20 inch chains just piles of 18 inchers otherwise i would have ended up buying a new one then finding my chains at home, lol

We cut for about 2and a half hours and brought back approximately a full cord and a bit of wood. Lots of people think face cords are real cords, of course a face cord only 25% of a cord. I found some bigger trees which when cut (don’t really consider them to be felled as they are so stunted) looked to be in the 200 year range.

Sunday I headed over to my climbing area about twenty minutes south of town to break the trail in and check things out, snowy day but far less pack on the ground compared to last year. Things look good and time to start climbing now that the light is back.

Out on the highway by Campbell Creek Day Use Area, the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Optic Link project is forging south to connect a 48 strand line to Yellowknife so we don’t have to depend on the existing microwave link that is short on bandwidth and not all that reliable. The route will follow the 40 years old right of way that has been in place for the now defunct Mackenzie Valley pipeline and eventual highway. They have set a field camp at the creek and are plowing a right of way ahead of a commercial sized ditch witch which is laying the cable about 60cm down below the duff line.

For some reason a lone bike is residing out in the winter landscape.

Later that day took the sled out for a spin out to the Inuvik Satellite Station Facility (nice sundog emulating a rainbow) via the Shell Lake trails then back through Airport Lake then the channel, which is open in places (!) to the Mackenzie.

From there i headed past the docks where a house that was being moved in the morning was precariously left perched on the river bank for a number of hours – can’t imagine that the framing was doing too well in that position. The Canadian Coast Guard motor vessel Eckaloo is berthed for the winter nearby.

Lastly I went up towards Noel Lake. The trail had been groomed since last week and was good sledding on a smooth track, found some deep drifts to play in on some of the lakes. Nice sunset on the way back.

Back Climbing south of Inuvik by Campbell Lake

On Saturday, we headed down to the crags out by Campbell Lake, to do some proper first ascents of some of my routes there. I haven’t been down this way since December and the snow accumulation in this area is much more pronounced – I figured knee depth while in actuality it was mid-thigh to full thigh in places. We plowed a trench to the cliff, which we only did due to the short approach ( we could have put skis on if we really needed to).

I dug out a platform at the base of the routes as the sloughing from above has been persistent in my absence. Easy work as the snow is basically all metamorphosed into depth hoar with a surface layer of new accumulation. Cliff itself was covered in frost. The one route that traverses to the right of the large roof is hard to do as a solo so this was the first time I have been able to get on it. Good fun in being able to climb north of the Arctic Circle Feb 1st. Temps around -14!

Afterwards we went down the Dempster a bit to try and ski a riverbank cut by the territorial campsite. Steep enough but the depth hoar and wind packed surface layers made for challenging skiing even with AT gear. Basically on a turn you went right down to the dirt and whilst initiating the next turn the wind pack would try and grab the ski tips and submarine them. Speed is your friend on these sorts of conditions but then you increase the chances of grinding dirt into the ski base on the turns; not the worst but certainly not the best sking. As usual the best snow conditions were on the creek – which isn’t all that useful for doing turns.

Took some shots on the way back near the Campbell Lake viewpoint as everything was covered in frost feathers. Snow was over Kathy’s waist in places – good time to leave your gloves in the truck