{"id":10939,"date":"2016-12-10T17:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-12-11T01:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.nrs.com\/?p=10939"},"modified":"2017-05-12T10:39:44","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T17:39:44","slug":"finding-balance-place-extremes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/2016\/12\/10\/finding-balance-place-extremes\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Balance in a Place of Extremes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Arctic is a place of extremes\u2014hot or cold, windy or buggy, sunny or snowing, continuous daylight or complete darkness. This was my second extended canoe trip to the far north. Two years ago we paddled the Back River<\/a> through the Barrenlands region of Arctic Canada. The Back was a long and difficult trip in and of itself, but it was especially severe because we didn\u2019t bring enough food. We rationed and fished, lost weight and survived, but that was a mistake I didn’t want to repeat. This time, my husband and I planned a 26-day trip on the Horton River in Canada\u2019s Northwest Territories. We thought we had achieved the perfect balance between a long, strenuous, and logistically complicated expedition and a straight forward paddling trip. It was just the two of us, so our group dynamics would be predictable (we actually get along very well in the wilderness), and we packed enough food. Balance, however, is a hard thing to achieve in the Arctic.<\/p>\n

\"horton-1\"<\/p>\n

We chose the Horton namely for its beauty, but also because it doesn\u2019t have any lake crossings or long portages. It’s located in an arctic desert, so the weather is usually dry, another plus. We thought it would be the perfect single boat trip\u2014easy enough to make miles and still have time to hike and fish, but challenging enough to not get boring. For the first week, the Horton was all of these things, but I soon realized arctic adventures are way more interesting when they’re extreme. At the start the air was hot, the skies clear, the wind still, the sun never sank below the horizon, and the water was perfectly transparent. By the end of the trip we had endured arctic snowstorms and downpours, observed distinct changes in geology and plant communities, and watched with despair as the water changed from crystal clear to filthy with runoff from the naturally occurring coal deposits near the Arctic coast.<\/p>\n

We chartered out of Inuvik, a small town on the Mackenzie River delta. We departed late in the afternoon on July 7th<\/sup>, and after a three-hour flight we landed on Horton Lake around 8 that evening. We assembled our Pak canoe and paddled across the lake to make camp. We cooked and ate our dinner close to midnight with the sun still blazing into our cramped bug tent. After spending six weeks on the Back, the tundra, the arctic light from the midnight sun, and even the bugs, felt like home. However, this trip and place were different, and the next day we left the lake and the tundra and descended down the river through an entirely different sequence of arctic ecosystems.<\/p>\n

\"horton-3\"<\/p>\n

The upper canyon was hot and dry, and was indeed similar to a desert. The river was lined with rocky beaches and bare talus walls that resembled mountains. But scrambling to the top during our evening hikes revealed a flat, dry tundra plateau that stretched to infinity in all directions. We saw muskox wandering the tundra and they looked hot in their long thick coats. The weather was so warm, and the river was so placid, I worried I would get bored if the ease continued. With enough calories per day and readily making miles downstream, the trip was off to a luxurious beginning. We swam in the river every evening. I would dive down and open my eyes to look around in the most extraordinarily clear water I\u2019ve ever seen. The summer season in the Arctic is short, however, and a midsummer storm can chill the river water as fast as the midnight sun can heat it up. As soon as I started to worry our trip would turn out to be too easy, the wind changed and a storm blew in from the north. Our sweaty hikes, evening swims, and making easy miles ended as the weather deteriorated, first to rain, then to snow.<\/p>\n