This month marks four years since we moved to Inuvik.
Here’s some more assorted northern stuff from 2023 (so far) that doesn’t fit into its own blog post:
Miscellaneous 2023
Written by: Faye
Author: Faye
The Endless Inuvik Pool Debacle
Written by: Faye
Inuvik has a fantastic swimming pool. Or at least it does when the pool is actually open…
The pool has had a multitude of issues ever since it opened. The pool closed in March 2020 due to the pandemic, and the town decided to use the opportunity to do some more substantive repairs. These repairs were supposed to take several months, but issue after issue resulted in the repairs dragging out much longer than anticipated. Here are some of the many anticipated opening date announcements that were made over the following years:
- Oct 2020: “at least 6 months”
- May 2021: “early fall [2021]”
- Sept 2021: “January 2022”
- Dec 2021: “March 2022”
- Feb 2022: “March 29 [2022]”
- Feb 2022: “late April [2022]”
- July 2022: “at least another month”
- Aug 2022: “at least October [2022]”
- Sept 2022: “this fall”
- Sept 2022: “after Thanksgiving”
- Jan 2023: “late February or early March [2023]”
- “The Town of Inuvik says this time, it’s for real”
- Mar 2023: “March 18 [2023]”
During this closure, I started the “Inuvik Pool Pool”, where people could place bets on when the pool was going to open again. It finally opened on March 18, 2023, after 3 years of being closed, much to the delight of local residents.
Of course, it was not to last. After concerns about the sealant coming off of the pool, the pool was closed again on May 10, 2023, less than two months after it re-opened. What was supposed to be a short closure to fix the sealant has already been extended until at least August.
R.I.P. Inuvik Pool.
Packrafting Trip Report: Hans Creek
Written by: Faye
Sam and I went packrafting a local creek. We hit up the largest of the creeks (Hans Creek). We paddled ~6km to Husky Lakes, and then hiked ~3km back to the car. The creek is pretty shallow, so wouldn’t be navigable in anything other than a packraft. There are a few trees, shrubs, and woodpiles in the creek; nothing particularly dangerous, but there are a few places where it’s easy to pin and swamp your boat (and lots of things that could puncture an inflatable boat). The shrubs that line the creek edge make portaging annoying, but it’s doable if necessary. Once you hit Husky Lakes, the terrain visibly changes and the temperature drops substantially. The hike out was a bit of a slog, at least until we got out of the marshy/shrubby area onto tundra. It’s possible to paddle around further on the lake, but we had a headwind and packrafts are not the best vessel for open-water paddling. The whole expedition took about 6 hours.
