In July of 2022, I was lucky enough to travel north of the Arctic Circle in Nunavut, on my quest to ride through all the provinces and territories of Canada in a single journey. A look at the map quickly shows you can’t actually cycle or drive into Nunavut as there are no roads from the rest of Canada. So, can you actually cycle anywhere in Nunavut?
While researching, I found there were some gravel roads around the capital of Iqaluit but that was along flight from Ottawa and I really needed somewhere further west nearer Yellowknife, the furthest I was riding north in the Northwest Territories. By chance, I came across an article describing a Google project to map gravel roads around a small settlement on Victoria Island called Cambridge Bay. Apparently, at the invitation of a local cartographer Chris Kalluk, Google dispatched a human-powered tricycle fitted with its multi-headed cameras. Excitedly, I opened Google Maps, dropped an icon on a road in Cambridge Bay and was able to make a virtual cycle tour of the places they had mapped. From my on-line ride, I determined the roads were manageable, possibly on a gravel bike with 38mm tires and certainly on a mountain bike with 3-inch tires.
I had hoped to ride an arbitrary minimum of one hundred kilometres in each of the thirteen territories and provinces but this target was going to be hard to achieve around Cambridge Bay. I measured about 20km of road that terminated at the Ovayok Territorial Park east of town. The western periphery seemed to be defined by some summer homes at 15km before you climbed into the Augustus Hills. Two shorter roads ran north and another trail ran south around the inlet to the original site of the settlement. This would be enough.
At Yellowknife, I took my Specialized Diverge gravel bike apart and packed it into a standard carboard bike box. I was flying on an Air North Boeing 737 Combi plane, a version converted to carry freight and passengers, so there was plenty of room for the bike. Cambridge Bay has a daily service that is subsidized by the Federal Government under the Remote Air Services Program. This is the only way most goods get into the settlement as the dock is only ice-free for a brief window in summer when bulk fuel and oil get delivered by tanker.
When our flight was called, I traipsed out to the aircraft with about twenty other passengers boarding via the rear door. There were only eight rows of seats, all at the back of the plane facing a bulkhead covered in a huge black and white photo incongruously depicting a couple on a sailing boat. All that freight was in front of us.
We took off to the northwards over a wilderness of lakes and stunted trees. Those trees thinned rapidly until we were over tundra that still held pockets of un-melted snow. A tiny settlement perched on the edge of the continent appeared and then receded behind us as we headed out over the sea. Within a few minutes, Victoria Island appeared ahead as we crossed the Dease Strait separating it from mainland Canada. The Strait forms part of the Northwest Passage which Roald Amundsen was first to sail through between 1903 and 1906. Nowadays, the Passage is navigable by cruise ship for a brief period in late summer once the ices floes break up.
West of Cambridge Bay, we banked to the right, lined up briefly on approach and almost immediately the pilot threw the aircraft down onto the gravel airstrip, hard to ensure the pre-selected thrust reversers activated in time to slow us down. With additional wheel braking, our machine stopped at least 400m before the end of the runway giving us plenty of room to turn around and taxi back to the teal-green terminal building. Cambridge Bay was signed in both English and Inuktitut, although I never heard the name Ikaluktuiak used while staying there.
After a five-minute drive, we pulled up outside our accommodation, the three-story Enokhok Inn & Suites. A flight of steps led up to the front door on the second level that faced directly south towards the bay. Showing us our room on the northwest corner, our host, Rachel, pointed out the sun would shine through the window all night so be sure to use blackout blinds to get some sleep. A further tour took us to the top floor with its spacious sitting area and fully-equipped kitchen. Windows wrapping round the south and east aspects gave a better view over the unruly rooftops of buildings leading to the shore a couple of hundred metres distant. To west coast Canadians, used to having gardens with greenery, the landscape, lacked the softening effect of vegetation, and appeared both harsh and unforgiving. Boulders and rocks transitioned to gravel roads and to functional buildings with no great change in the pale grey colouration. Some buildings were painted in solid greens or blues but the overall appearance was monotone.
That first afternoon, I had the bike assembled in thirty minutes and set off in mid-afternoon sunshine. The temperature was around 18°C, with no wind, warm enough to wear shorts and a light jacket. Setting myself a target of reaching the Old Stone Church on the other side of the bay, I wanted to find out how well a gravel bike with 38mm tires would run. Throughout the town, the roads were packed down well, dusty but smooth, and free running. As I rolled eastwards, I noted a couple of chapels, a small museum and a car rental outfit. The edge of town was loosely defined by a curving descent to a dry gully. Beyond the gulley stood the new Canadian High Arctic Research Station, its elegant form in stark contrast to the raw functionality of every other building. Burnished copper cladding reflected sunlight off the station’s curved walls that intentional mimics Inuit snow-building techniques. The copper itself is in acknowledgment of the host Copper Inuit people.
I continued riding past the research station and then further east around a curve in the gravel road that demarked the cemetery boundary. Yet further east, a low steel bridge took me over a brook, after which the road forked left towards Mount Pelly or right towards the original site of the town. Turning right, I found the going relatively easy on the gravel, though the terrain was stonier than in town. Further on, by the shoreline, was a cairn dedicated to Roald Amundsen expedition ship Maud that was used by the Norwegian during his attempt to drift to the North Pole. An ever restless explorer, Amundsen had already traversed the Northwest Passage and reached the South Pole by then so had little left to prove. The Maud never reached the North Pole and was eventually sold off, ending up at Cambridge Bay where it ignominiously sank in the shallows. Now, only the cairn remains as the hulk was raised and eventually returned to Norway for restoration in 2018.
Two hundred metres past the Maud Cairn, I reached the Old Stone Church that sits directly across the bay from the new research station. With its fern green roof and low stone walls, the church resembled a Scottish croft with the neat bell tower being mistaken for a stone chimney. Built in the 1950’s when the town was still on the south shore, the building stands in isolation today. Unused, it is maintained as a heritage building, providing an evocative feature in the landscape for visiting photographers. I returned back the way I had come noting I had ridden 15km, far enough for a shakedown ride and to satisfy myself that the roads were rideable.
I rose a little after 6am for my second ride. Despite the bright sunlight, the temperature on that windless, morning was a cool 9⁰C so I wore overpants and an undershirt below my Gore jacket. There were no bugs so it was the perfect day for riding. Apparently, black flies had been everywhere a week or two earlier but had since disappeared.
Cycling westwards, I quickly covered the ground to the airport and skirted its unfenced perimeter. The sea stretched beyond the airfield to the horizon. On the other side of the gravel road, a pair of Cackling Geese, the smaller version of Canada Geese, were bobbing on a pond. Their two fluffy goslings paddled nearby, while a half dozen terns wheeled and cried out overhead.
West of the airport , flatter patches of the stoney terrain held a skim of soil topped by carpets of purple Boreal sweet vetch. The road’s finely graded gravel became coarser and degenerated to a washboard of corrugations on gentle uphill slopes. Ironically the road was in worst condition at the entrance to the stone quarry where construction material was being extracted. The landscape opened out as far as the eye could see to a boulder-strewn plain punctuated with low ridges. In the far west, the Augustus Hills rose gently above the general level of the land. I was headed in that direction but on 38mm tires I knew would not reach the hills. The landscape undulated a few metres up and down but from the vantage point of a cycle saddle, vistas always reached the horizon, with the Dease Strait, flat calm on my left. I found I could cycle at 15 to 20kph with comfort but at 15km from town the gravel transitioned to a waterlogged, peaty track that ran down to a clutch of cabins hugging the shoreline.
I might have attempted to cycle further on fat tires, but couldn’t justify the wasted energy on narrower tires so stopped there. Gazing towards the shore, I spied a waist-high inukshuk erected on a stony mound pile and thought it would make a good photo. While I was setting up for the photo, a young boy silently left a cabin on the water’s edge and pushed out in a row boat, breaking the mirrorlike surface of the ocean.
My outbound tire track was clearly imprinted in the fine gravel, when I turned back to town. With no traffic, it was possible to cycle on whichever part of the road you wanted to and the crown of the road was smoothest. Originally, I had intended to ride an additional loop to the north on a trail past the “Cam Main” Northern Radar Warning Station. The radome there looked like a giant golf ball on a tee that stood out as a landmark for Cambridge Bay whether you were way out to sea in in the Dease Strait or far inland on the featureless plain. Approaching the installation, though, I was confronted by a warning sign proclaiming it was a “Restricted Area.” Later, the locals told me: “Oh, yes, the road runs past the installation, just call at the guard post and let then know you are passing by.” The town was just waking up with people walking into work as I reached the suites.
Towards midnight, I prepared my bike for a short ride to the edge of town to see if the sun really did stay above the horizon. The temperature had dropped to 9°C but it did not feel chilly in the dry air as I rode east through the settlement. A wide-eyed six year-old stared back at me from her bike, oblivious to the time of day as I rode on by. Evidently, this place was not asleep that Friday night. Once clear of the buildings, I could see the sun hugging the northern horizon, so I cycled to a low rise beyond the Canadian High Arctic Research Station for a clearer view. From there I also had a good vista across the water to the Stone Church. At that latitude, on 22nd July, there were no hours of darkness or even technical twilight just twenty-four hours of daylight. In a few short days the first minutes of twilight would return, before the accelerating plunge into complete darkness in December.
For my final ride in Nunavut, I planned to cycling out to the east as far as Ovayok Park with its hill known as Mount Pelly. It was a warm morning, already 15°C, when I set off at 6:20am under a grey sky. Equipped with a huge bowie knife, bug spray and a satellite phone, I barely had room in my pockets for snacks. A local guide had lent me the knife telling me it would be more use than bear spray if I encountered a grizzly on the tundra. He assured me polar bears only crept into town in the dark of winter.
Leaving town, I rode past the familiar shape of the Canadian High Arctic Research Station campus and the low steel bridge before hanging a left and headed towards a line of low hills. The road followed a gravelly ridge that initially traced the left bank of a slow-moving stream. There were three or four isolated cabins strewn along the route but no signs of human life at that time of day. Grazing groups of eider ducks, dark females and white males, looked on nervously as I passed and I also spotted some greater white-fronted geese with a pair of goslings. Patches of white and purple flowers appeared in clumps to brighten the overall grey colour. I stopped at the sign for Ovayok Park to sip energy drink and chew a Clif bar before cycling up the gentle slope that skirted the northern slopes of Mount Pelly. The road ended, overlooking a lake the size of a football pitch. The trail beyond was unrideable on 38mm tires; possibly it was navigable fat tires.
With nowhere further to cycle in that direction, I returned back towards town but instead of recrossing the bridge, I continued past a defunct wind turbine and the Stone Church towards the southern terminus of that track. Beyond an abandoned wooden dogsled, the track ran gently down to a group of shacks at the water’s edge that were being used as summer cabins. Before I got there, dog caught scent of me and began barking so I stayed back, taking in the view of the town across the bay.
Returning back the way I had cycled, I encountered the first people that morning, a small column of six quad bikes being led by an experienced rider with weather beaten features. Behind him were his charges, research students concentrating hard on following and clearly unused to riding these machines. Bringing up the rear was another minder with a rifle slung over his shoulder; was I under-equipped? I nodded at the lead rider and he nodded back, looking more embarrassed at his task than concerned for my safety so I concluded I was ok and that the armed escort was just their bear protocol.
Municipal and other traffic was beginning to stir the dust by the time I made my way back to the suites for a second breakfast and rest. Gravel riding there was far more demanding than cycling on paved roads but I had enjoyed my time there in that fragile environment. Later, Brent Nakashook a local guide took Jane and me out in the bay and into the Dease Strait where the sea ice had almost completely dispersed. We never saw any muskox ashore but there were .. seals, skuas , loon and numerous types of gulls at sea.
Flying back to Yellowknife, we realized we had been given a glimpse of Nunavut at the height of summer at the warmest and sunniest time of year. I had achieved my aim of cycling on gravel roads that are exposed for less than half the year. But to understand Nunavut, you would need to return in the dark of winter.