Deon's Arrival and Another Ice Road Trek

This past week was a busy one, I spent the week in Inuvik for the ILAC (Inuvialuit Land Administration Commission) meeting. Deon arrived on Thursday afternoon, and Christina and I picked him up at the airport. That morning I had the new bumper put on the truck, and as we pulled into the airport, we went sliding into a snowbank. Luckily, the bumper was intact.

Deon was overwhelmed when he got here, the landscape is quite different than Gjoa, and he didn't expect Inuvik to be as large as it is. He did all of his HR paperwork while I caught up on emails from the week that I'd missed while at my ILAC meeting.

Friday morning, the plan was to head back to Tuk because I had to train the newly hired Gravel Checkers for ILA at 2pm. We drove about an hour and a bit when we got to Bar-C (an old DEW line site, the halfway marker essentially for the ice road). There, someone with a GNWT highway patrol vehicle flagged me down, and told us that the road was closed off up a bit further because it was all drifted in, so we might as well turn around.



We did turn around, and even though it was quite annoying, it provided us a chance to see something not many people get to see up here, some Arctic wolves that were out by the road. I later asked my Commissioner from Tuk, Lennie, whether he sees a lot of wolves, and he said no, he was tempted to take his skidoo out to try to find them.



So we headed back to Inuvik, where I did the gravel checker training by phone, and then we started back out towards Tuk. This time it was nice and sunny, and we finally arrived in Tuk at about 6:30pm. I took Deon on a tour of the town, including the dump, the aptly named Sh!t Lake, Reindeer Point, and the other points of interest.



Friday night we went with my friend Dave to adult games, and a fundraiser. Deon got to meet some people, including Barry and Kendyce from work. Saturday we spent getting Deon settled in, as well as going for a walk around town. Last night we went over to Christine and Andrew's for some Wii fit.

The weather this weekend in Tuk was rather windy, at points there were whiteouts. I didn't think that the ice road would even be open for me to drive back to Inuvik today... however, it cleared up, and as I write this I am sitting in the Inuvik airport waiting for my flight to Yellowknife for a GNWT workshop tomorrow. If all goes well weatherwise, I'll be back to Tuk on Wednesday afternoon.

It sure has been a busy time for work travel...