MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall Winter 2018

62 MLCM FALL/WINTER 2018 The danger of falling into a crevasse is one thing, but from an Inuit perspective the fact that no game exists in this windswept zone of rock and ice makes it a very impractical place to be. Why go up on a glacier where there’s no hunting? If they can’t harvest “country food” in an area, they see no point in going there. The seal, narwhal and polar bears hang out on the sea ice, not up here. However, the three of us are travellers, not hunters. We seek out the new, the fresh, the wild — and there’s no place fresher and wilder than this raked and raw terrain. T h e B i g B l o w I wake up to our tent wall flattened against my knees and pressing over Dave and John’s faces. It was dead calm when we set camp halfway up the Coronation. But around 3:00 a.m. the windstorm hit, and it hit hard. John and I lose the ubiquitous rock-paper- scissors match to Dave, who remains inside as ballast while we venture out into the icy blast and eternal spring light. We work quickly, fingers numbing in the minus 30-degrees-Celcius wind chill. We anchor guy lines to shovels, snow stakes, and sleds until the tent stands firm again and we can scramble back inside with hopes of returning to dreamland. Dave grins at us when we step back inside. “What took you guys so long?” he asks, then proceeds to fill his pee bottle in front of us. As with the Inuit families of yore living in igloos, no privacy exists in this tent. The next day, we take turns breaking trail, fighting through pinning headwinds to top out on our high point on the Penny Ice Cap. Named after William Penny, a whaling captain from Scotland who pioneered over-wintering with native Inuit in the area during the 19 th century, the expansive ice field stretches away from us forever to the north. There’s a brief pause for a photo, but not much else as the biting wind reminds us that movement is paramount to staying warm. From here it’s all downhill to Akshayuk Pass and we ski onward with the help of gravity for the first time in nine days and 115 kilometres. With blue skies and good spirits, we drop through a slot in the Baffin Mountains that leads from the Penny Ice Cap to the Turner Glacier, our pulks gliding easily over a skiff of wind-drifted snow. As we flatten out onto the Turner, we’re stunned by views of the backside of Mount Asgard. The twin, flat-topped summit is aptly named after the home of the gods in Norse mythology. Thousand- foot walls gleam in the dipping sun and it’s easy to imagine a few deities kicking back and looking down upon the earth from up there. All three of us come to a full stop and stare slack- jawed for a few minutes. The scale is mind-boggling, like something crafted for the wistful fantasy of a Wes Anderson film — it hardly seems real. We want to linger for the evening and bask in the mountain’s splendour, so we set up camp right at the base. Over freeze-dried food and beef jerky we watch the light play on the walls of Mount Asgard as the sun circles around us in a tantric springtime dance. John McClelland at the toe of Coronation Glacier. Auyiuttuq National Park, NU.