This is when things start to get really good...I naturally woke up at 0700 and laid in bed for about an hour. Yellowknife is north of 60 degrees and the days are SHORT so the sun really didn’t come up until about 0930. I strolled down the stairs around 0800 and had a cup of coffee trying to psych myself up to go on a run outside. I don’t think I have mentioned what the temperature was like in Yellowknife yet…it was -51 degrees Celsius…NEGATIVE FIFTY ONE! (which for all of us southerns that go off Fahrenheit...-60). That is not a typo or a joke....-60!! I attempted to go on a run and THAT was painful. I had three layers on up top, two on bottom, gloves, a facemask, and a beanie. My junk started to go numb after one mile and my hands felt like they were on fire. It was hard for me to see anything because my eyelashes kept freezing shut! My batteries on my cell phone and GoPro died almost instantly when I went outside, so at that point…I knew I was getting what I came up here for, an experience of a lifetime!
I thawed my body by the fire and had some fruit with my coffee and then I geared up to go driving over the Dettah (Pronounced like “BETTA”…”nothing is better “betta” in Dettah” -Graeme) ice road into the town of Dettah. Another task I was foreign to was plugging my car in over night and I am not talking about an electric car. Cars batteries need to be plugged in over night that far north so the battery doesn't die. My car started fine…on this day…so I took off over the ice road, that went over The Great Slave Lake, to Dettah, a native Inuit community, then to the Ingram trail. This alone was an exhilarating experience because The Great Slave Lake is one of the deepest lakes in the world and I was driving over it while seeing visual cracks all over the place, apparently the cracks were normal and not a big deal. I drove to the Hidden Lake, about 45 minutes away from town, and tried to go hiking, but my body was still not fully acclimated and I could only handle about 30 minutes outside at a time. I would say it was pushing -50 F at that time outside the car and probably around -10 F inside the car, even with the heat blasting for hours inside. I ended up driving back to the ice road and took pictures on the frozen lake. I got back to the house around 1500 and it quickly got dark shortly there after.
I relaxed and thawed my body until 1800, then walked down the street to old town to the NWT Brewery. This place was a legit brewpub that I ended up visiting more than once! The brewery, or brewpub as all the locals called it, had an authentic northern feel with all the western luxuries. The beer was crazy good and could rival any popular microbrewery in the states. This brewpub was extra cool since it is the most Northern brewery in the world. I started off with the Winter is Coming CDA and then a White IPA. I am a huge game of thrones fan so of course I would start with a beer called Winter is Coming! I ordered some food after a couple of beers and had the mushroom toast and a sweet potato and pork belly skillet. The beer and food were five stars all day and I wished I had a local place like this where I lived! The mushroom toast was definitely memorable…so memorable I may have gone back a few days later to have it again…!
I had a great conversation with a guy named Richard from Manitoba and he worked for the Canadian government. We mainly talked about his travels with his job, which I thought were really cool since he got to go to all the remote isolated parts of Canada. His job was to have meetings with the rural local tribes and try to get them to start commercial fisheries and employee them with government subsidies. He was well traveled in the area showing me pictures from all over northern Canada. I asked him about eating with the tribes and he told me stories of eating whale, seal, and he said he did not like it very much, he said it was like eating rubber erasers but it was a delicacy so he was respectful and did what he had to do. Richard also said he ate some phenomenal Arctic Char up north but the sides were usually frozen veg because it is hard to get anything else up there. He talked about how the grocery stores are so over priced, and how just recently the government stepped in and subsidized some of the costs for essentials like milk, bread, and eggs. It was really funny because when I walked in the brewpub I noticed someone’s pants hanging up on a coat hook by the bar and I said to myself, “who the hell hangs up pants in a bar” and it turned out those were Richard’s pants! He said, “I never thought I’d hang my pants up in a bar but here we are.” Everyone wears so many layers up north that you have to shed them inside or you would die of heat exhaustion. We briefly talked about his wife and two sons and how they play hockey. Richard along with several other Canadian men are really into US College Basketball…
I walked back to the Air bnb and socialized with Kim and Graeme as well as their friend Kate. We talked for at least an hour at there dinning room table, mainly about my job and what I do. I found out Kim also worked for the government and she turned hard copy medical records into electronic records. She told me the NWT only went from paper to electronic records in 2015, which drove home how different paced everything was that far north. She also told me a story about her uncle that shot a polar bear in self-defense when the bear broke into his cabin and I thought to myself…you can't make this shit shit up and she had pictures and a news article to prove it. She also explained the priority system for jobs up north. P1’s are natives, P2’s are whites (anyone not a native) that has lived there for more than 10 years, P3’s are white’s that has lived there for more than five years, than P4’s were everyone else and she said you aren't getting a job if you are a P4 unless you have a unique trade. Kim’s friend Kate told me about a town called Church Hill, Manatoba where polar bears frequent the town and it is a law that everyone has to keep their doors on the cars unlocked so anyone can quickly jump in a vehicle if a polar bears comes after them. That was just a fun fact that came out of a conversation where i said I wanted to capture a polar bear on camera. I headed to bed to end my first full day in Yellowknife after listening to all those crazy cool northern stories that I completely ate up and loved hearing. Day one in Yellowknife....complete with no frost bite!
