Welcome to my gallery describing an 845km (525 miles) hike in the Canadian arctic.  My route was through the west of Victoria Island – the eighth largest island in the world – during July 2023.  I created this gallery to permit others to experience the beauty of this rarely visited region.

Only 2,200 people live on the island, all found in two small towns on the southern coast. There are only short windows when you can safely hike.  In winter, the island is covered in ice and snow, alongside 24 hour darkness.  In spring the warm sun creates a deluge of thaw water, generating deep canyons and large river deltas.  Most of this water disappears by early summer, at the time of this hike, leaving the canyons nearly dry, and exposing large flat deltas.  It is then possible to walk across the west of the island.

During my 24 days of hiking I saw nobody, and there was rarely evidence of humans anywhere.  The local populations travel on snowmobiles in the winter, and ATVs in the summer.  They rarely travel more than a day or two outside the towns.  Tourism is extremely rare – winter hunters, and summer fishing dominate.  I only crossed one river that could reliably be canoed – the Kuujjua – typically only a few canoe groups make the effort to get to it each year.

I am grateful and very lucky to have been advised and assisted by the Kuptana family ahead of this trip.  Agnes and Robert Kuptana are some of the last people to be born on the ice, into nomadic families, from Victoria Island. Their fascinating and impressive life stories are inspiring.   Travis Kuptana, their son, manages the excellent family hunting and outfitters company.

My initial plan had been to make a winter hike across the island, but I got caught out by early May winds and warm temperatures which far surpassed anything in the last 20 years of weather history for the region.  My equipment wasn’t up to it. Lessons learned, I changed plans and opted for a summer hike.  Travis had arranged for two barrel drops by snowmobile in the winter – those contained food and supplies.  I carried 28kg (62lb) of food and equipment, and on July 7, 2023 I set out.

In 2022 I hiked across Banks island. A gallery of pictures from a hike across Banks Island is here.
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Journey

1. Kujjua

The Kuujjua River ("big river" in Inuktitut) originates in the center of Victoria Island and flows about 350 km in the  Minto Inlet on the island's west side. Beginning as a shallow stream, the river flows smoothly across rolling tundra, gaining speed and volume as it drops through rugged landscape, cutting canyons through basalt cliffs.

2. Minto Inlet

Minto Inlet is located east of Amundsen Gulf in western Victoria Island, at the southern end of Prince of Wales Strait in the Northwest Territories. It is 75 mi long and between 8–25 mi wide.

3. Adventure Mountain

In 1850 the British ship, the Investigator, become lodged in ice for the winter in the Prince of Wales Strait.  The captain and some crew from the ship hiked across the ice to Victoria Island, and climbed to the nearest peak looking for the Northwest passage.  In their diaries they report a spectacular view of the strait in very clear weather, and they concluded it almost surely reveals the Northwest Passage, but they decided they needed to verify the findings by sledge once the ice was thicker.  They named the hill they climbed “Adventure Mountain”.

4. Viscount Melville Sound

Viscount Melville Sound, formerly Melville Sound, is an arm of the Arctic Ocean in the Kitikmeot Region, Nunavut and the Inuvik Region, Northwest Territories, Canada.

5. Collinson Inlet

Richard Collinson Inlet is a large inlet on the north side of Victoria Island, Northwest Territories, Canada. It opens into Viscount Melville Sound to the north.

6. Back to Ulukhaktok

Formerly known as Holman, this Inuvialuit community of about 500 wraps around the head of an Arctic inlet on the west coast of Victoria Island, the ninth-largest island on Earth.