Ivvavik National Park June 2-10

Ivvavik National Park was the first to be established in Canada as a result of a land claim. It protects a portion of the range of the Porcupine caribou herd which migrate through Ivvavik and the Richardson Mtns on their way to the calving grounds on the coastal plain of the Alaska Nat'l Wildlife Refuge.

Much of the park is part of Beringia, an unglaciated land mass extending from eastern Siberia and across the Bering Sea during the last ice age. Beringia was a refuge where plants, wildlife and people lived during the last glacial period of 30,000 to 14,000 years ago. The Firth River flowing through Ivvavik is probably the oldest river in North America. It is also a premier rafting destination; most of the 200 annual visitors to the park are river rafters. The rest are parks staff and researchers.

Ivvavik is a large park, at 9,750 sq km, with stunning landscapes. I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to accompany a group of high school students to Ivvavik on a biology field trip. The national parks here are so remote that many of the Parks staff don't get out to them. We camped at the warden station where Sheep Creek flows into the Firth River. In addition to biology field studies, we enjoyed hiking, jumping into Sheep Creek for a brain freezing experience, to Nellie's, stories about life on the land as a girl in what is now Ivvavik National Park, and Louisa's cooking!

I loved camping under the midnight sun. The view from my tent was incredible. The landscape is so large it's so hard to get a sense of scale. Nellie, with her sharp and experienced eyes was on the lookout for caribou across the Firth. 'Tuktu! Tuktu!', she'd call when she spotted them. I wouldn't have seen them if they walked right up to me. All I saw were little white dots that must have been 3-10kms away across the river. The view was much better through my spotting scope. Both Nellie and Louisa, Inuvialuit elders, had a good laugh at my attempts at wildlife spotting. However, they both wanted to make sure I saw my first caribou on this trip. Thank you! We had a closer view of a young grizzly bear that was perhaps a little too close behind our campsite. He moved off, but not before I got a pretty good photo of him. We also saw Dall's sheep at high elevation, moose in the valley, Smith's longspur, golden plovers and a flycatcher that called cheerfully all night long from a tree just outside my tent.




http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/yt/ivvavik/index_e.asp