On Our Way

I woke at 5.30 am and peered outside the hotel window to see if the blizzard had gone. There was snow everywhere but no sign of any raging wind. All our sledges were packed and we were ready to go. I was apprehensive but didn't fancy waiting another day in the Discovery Hotel in Iqaluit. We ferried the sledges to the airport and were relived when we found out that the flight was due to leave at the scheduled time. It was the smallest plane I've ever flown in and when the pilot walked past me he didn't look old enough to drive a car let alone a plane. I managed to get a window seat and spent the flight looking through the clouds down at the icy landscape. I felt as if I was flying to the edge of the world. There was no sign of any life below, just a large expanse of white. It was mesmerising. Our first stop was Pangnirtung where we had to leave the plane and wait in the small airport lounge. Well, it wasn't really a lounge, just a space with some chairs. I got chatting to some Inuit women and they painted a depressing portrait of life in Pang - as it is known. One said that 70 per cent of the population hunt, but that hunting is increasingly hard. This is due to the fact that the sea ice is changing so rapidly that they are having to travel farther and farther afield for any wildlife such as caribou and seal. Before I'd embarked on the trip I'd spoken to an Inuit Hunter at the Pangnirtung Hunters Association who had told me that the hunters were facing a lot of problems in the area due to the melting sea ice. Experienced hunters could no longer read the state of the ice and were having accidents. He also told me that they had killed a Polar Bear that very week.
After our short stop at Pang, we flew on to Qikiqtarjuaq (Broughton Island), the start of our trek. But before we could go anywhere we had to go to an 'orientation' with the Park Ranger.
The subject turned to Polar Bears again. As I sat there listening to the ranger's advice on what to do if we saw a Polar Bear I couldn't help but wonder whether I was in the middle of a dream, or nightmare. We were warned that Polar Bears might carry Rabies which was one of those additional facts I wish I had not been told. While we weren't allowed to carry a firearm we were advised to take some Polar Bear flares which sounded rather like a token weapon. The fact my brother is in the police and knows how to handle firearms meant he could have been the perfect Polar Bear assassin. But I also know he'd come to the Arctic to escape violence and crime. Before we left I handed him a newspaper cutting detailing the high levels of crime and violence in Nunavut. He pored over the figures like the true expert he is, pointing out the high crime and suicide rates among the remote communities such as Pangnirtung and Broughton Island. It was strange to think that only a few days before we'd been in the comfort of suburban England and there we were on the edge of the park...