Hamm Bay Hike

I'm a few days behind with the blogging, but it's a foggy day here (planes haven't flown in for 3 days; the store shelves are getting bare) and we aren't venturing too far so it's a good time to catch up a bit. The girls and Bob are working on our boat motor so we can hopefully spend a bit of time on the water (close to shore; very close to shore). We popped into the high school today as well and had a look around and a quick visit with some staff. (The principal is from Nanaimo!) More on that another day. 

Last Friday we took a taxi ride out of town and then hiked our way back in. It was a lovely day; cold, but very sunny and there was little wind. The next day we ended up going to the same area to stay in a cabin, but more on that in another post. Here are some photos from that day. 

(And there have been a few requests for live animals, instead of bones. Believe us, we'd be posting them if we were seeing them, but the Inuit are, of course, hunters. They hunt and eat seal, walrus, whale and caribou, and other animals, and have for millennia, so there are naturally going to be a lot of bones and skin around. The bones and body parts are interesting in themselves, but we'd also love to live whales or walruses to show you (there are no caribou on Igloolik Island and so far this year, no polar bear, although that will apparently change soon as the ice starts to move back in). We were hoping to have a guide take us to see walrus down the coast, but hunting and other things (a funeral and a search for a lost 15-year-old boy, which ended happily) naturally take precedent. We have been seeing birds, such as loons, snow geese, snow buntings, golden plovers and more, and, of course, there are lots of "Canadian Eskimo Dogs," the unique breed of sled dogs.

Remains of one of the three sod huts in the area. They would have had a roof of whale bones covered in skin and sod. (See illustration below.)

Remains of a sod hut. You can see the horizontal rocks for sitting and sleeping. 

Cross-section of a sod hut. (From House of Snow, skin and bone.)

Many people have small cabins they use on weekends. This is one of a colleague of Bob's. 

An arctic char net. One end is anchored to shore, the other is put out in the water so the net is perpendicular to the beach. We've been the recipient of several char from local fishermen. 

Bowhead whale skull at Hamm Bay camp. 

Frame from a wooden kayak with sinew lashing. This would have been covered in skin. Wooden boat frame in behind (with whale ribs on top). 

Walrus cache. A large pit is dug, the walrus is butchered and wrapped in a large "sheet" of hide to make a large sort of "sausage." This is then fermented in the pit until December. It makes the delicacy, igunaq, fermented walrus meat, which the region is known for. (Walrus hunting is good here, plus the gravel on the beaches make caching fairly easy.) These walrus caches are also one of the things the polar bears love to dig up and one of the reasons Bob is here! 

Looking back to Hamm Bay. We hiked a large part of this shoreline. 

The Igloolik Airport. Keep off the runway!