Hiking at the top of the world

Fewer than 100 brave souls will journey each year through Nunavut’s Quttinirpaaq, North America’s northernmost national park. When you’re standing amid glaciers and icecaps 900-m (2,953-ft) deep oozing over jagged peaks, the diminishing drone of your plane’s engine sends a fleeting tremor through you. Suddenly, it’s clear that you’re truly alone. And in the middle of nowhere.
“We’re going to bring ‘er in even if we have to do a barrel roll, so hang on,” our bush pilot calmly announced as he bucked buffeting winds and dropped our Twin Otter plane towards a bumpy, grass-covered runway.

My intrepid hiking buddy Philip Kibler and I had just flown four hours from the remote Inuit community of Resolute to Lake Hazen on Ellesmere Island, NU for a two-week hike at the top of the globe in Quttinirpaaq, the world’s northernmost national park. Fewer than 100 adventurous souls annually hike into this out-there Nunavut wilderness during the brief summer season between late May and late August. Most come on guided trips through an experienced outfitter, but we were up here on our own; we had the surreal honour of being the only two people trekking through the 37,775 sq km (14,585 sq mi) of Canada’s second-biggest national park. When you’re standing amid glaciers and icecaps 900-m (2,953-ft) deep oozing over jagged peaks, the diminishing drone of your plane’s engine sends a fleeting tremor through you. Suddenly it’s clear that you’re truly alone. And in the middle of nowhere.

Setting off in 20 degrees C (68 degrees F) sunshine through fields of yellow Arctic poppies and pink wildflowers buzzing with bumblebees and butterflies, it was hard to believe we were just 720 km (447 mi) from the North Pole. Quttinirpaaq is a polar desert drier than the Sahara and relatively warm, due to a bowl-like cradle of mountains and 24 hours of sunshine from April through August. But the weather can be dangerously fickle, and by the following morning, a staccato of ice pellets were pinging off a tent we wouldn’t leave for the day during a not-uncommon July 15th blizzard.