Ode to Distant, Ancient, Wilderness: Firth River - Yukon - Canada (part 1)

 She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantments.

Boris Pasternak

John Evans, Canadian co-traveler on this adventure, was an artist.
His rendition of me looking at caribou crossing the mountain across the river from us.
With the usual cup of coffee in a gloved hand, looking through 45x telescope.
The caribou went by for at least 18 hours (and it doesn't get dark in the summer)!

Visitors come for various reasons, the thrill of rafting the cold, white-water sections of a Class IV river, the rare experience of encountering abundant wildlife and diverse Arctic flora, or simply to embrace the natural rhythms of an utterly primitive, less hurried place.  Above all, traveling down the Firth River provides an unrivaled showcase of a Canadian panorama that can be found almost nowhere else, a glimpse of what a mountain landscape would look like had glaciers never scoured it.  

A cyclone, with winds reaching 85 miles/hour (140km/hour), found us mid-way through our trip so we had to hunker down. While staying put longer than planned in one area, we got to see the migration of about 15,000-20,000 caribou, mostly females with their newborns.  Who can ask for a better silver lining.

Glaciation never happened in this area because it is a polar desert, receiving less than four inches (10cm) of precipitation per year.  This means the landscape is very different and special and the Firth River is considered Canada's oldest river.

Flight from Edmonton to Inuvik on 737-300 with Canadian North. 
See their Inuksuk logo, usually a type of cairn made of stones in the far north.

Lat/long of Inuvik, Yukon, Canada

Lake close to Arctic Chalet where I spent the night before the Firth River trip.

Same lake, notice the tipsy white spruce trees as they lean in all directions
as the permafrost melts.  Fireweed in the foreground.

Prickly roses are everywhere.
With such a short warm season, everything seems to bloom at the same time.

River Beauty or Dwarf Fireweed. 
Much shorter, but with larger flowers, than regular fireweed.

Large-flowered wintergreen in boggy areas.

Labrador Tea - very small here. 
Part of the rhododendron family.

Our Lady of Victory - Inuvik
Roman Catholic Church in shape of igloo.  Built in 1958.

Scheuchzer's (or White) Cottongrass. 
A sedge with a 'cotton' that was twisted together to make wicks for oil lamps.

Twin Otter (Kenn Borek Air) that will take several trips to get all of us, and our gear,
to Margaret Lake where the Firth River trip begins. 
One hour and 20 minute flight.

Swiss-Cheese-like landscape.
Thousands of lakes and puddles crisscrossed by rivers. 
Better traveled in winter when everything is frozen solid.

La Biche River among all these lakes and puddles.

About an hour into the flight, the landscape is changing.  No more lakes.

Plane flew between 2,000 and 4,500 feet (610-1370m) to avoid the winds higher up. 
Mountains are pretty bare.  We flew very close to some of these peaks.

Firth River

Excerpts from A Guide to the Landscape of the Firth River Valley, Ivvavik National Park

Ivvavik National Park preserves more than 3,860 mi² (10,000 km²) in the western portion of Yukon’s North Slope.  In 1984 this pristine wilderness became the first national park in the country to be established through an aboriginal land claim agreement between the Inuvialuit (Western Canadian Inuit) people and the Government of Canada.  Ivvavik is cooperatively managed by Parks Canada and the Inuvialuit to ensure the long-term integrity of the wilderness, the health of wildlife populations, and the preservation of cultural resources.  The settlement agreement also ensures that the Inuvialuit can continue to practice their traditional lifestyles, which include hunting, trapping, and fishing, within Ivvavik. 

In the indigenous language of Inuvialuktun, Ivvavik means ‘a place for giving birth, a nursery’.  That name is entirely appropriate, since the Park protects the Canadian portion of calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herds as well as protecting this biologically and culturally rich area from development.

Despite its national park status, Ivvavik is isolated and devoid of roads and other infrastructure.  There are no facilities, services, or established trails and campgrounds.  The Parks Canada station at Sheep Creek is only occupied periodically in the summer months.  Access is limited to wheeled aircraft landing at a few primitive and unmaintained airstrips, or by float plane on one of the few small lakes of sufficient length for landing. Most visitors come to traverse the Firth River by raft from Margaret Lake to Nunaluk Spit at the Beaufort Sea coast.  A permit is required and only twenty days each year are set-aside for private parties to do the trip (meaning only about 40 people a year get to experience this amazing place).

The Firth River traverses three physiographic regions along its course through Ivvavik National Park: the British Mountains, the Buckland Hills and the Yukon Coastal Plain.  They represent the topographic expression of the geological processes that have progressively shaped this land, forming, deforming, uplifting, eroding, and weathering its rocks to create the surroundings we find today.  These constructive and destructive processes have operated together over many hundreds of millions of years and are still active.

Where we started (blue arrow) near Margaret Lake - Alaska (left), Yukon (right)
End at Nunaluk Spit by Beaufort Sea - Arctic Ocean

Of the three regions, the rugged terrain of the British Mountains (see above map) covers the largest area of Ivvavik and forms the dominant element of the landscape.  These mountains are the eastward extension of the Brooks Range crossing northern Alaska, with ridges exhibiting a distinct NW-SE orientation indicative of the bedrock structure. 

A number of large rivers, including the Firth River, cut across these mountains in a northeasterly direction, often spawning tributaries that parallel the orientation of the ridges, perhaps along faults or linear zones of weaker bedrock.  The Aufeis, Mountain and Canyon reaches of the Firth River together make up 80% of total distance from Margaret Lake to Nunaluk Spit; they are also situated entirely within the British Mountains. 

With the exception of the Malcom River watershed, these mountains escaped the glaciations of the last two million years, as revealed by some of their particular characteristics.  The higher mountains in Ivvavik attain elevations up to 5,250 feet (1,600m), with ridge heights and valley depths ranging from 1,475 to 2,950 feet (450 - 900m).  Higher elevations experience less extreme temperatures, but greater precipitation, than adjacent lower terrains.  Nevertheless, foothills and mountains are affected by frequent freezing and thawing, as well as being underlain by a continuous layer of permafrost.

Can you see the two little red dots (middle left of this picture). 
They are the first two tents next to the first two rafts (blue dots) that arrived at first camp. 
Margaret Lake is at top of picture.  Camp is next to Firth River. 
Notice the straight and partly shiny area starting in lower left corner - that's the landing strip.

Missing one raft until next flight. 
Large coolers in the raft hold enough fresh food for two weeks for 15 people. 
Each raft holds four guests and one guide.

If not in grizzly-proof boxes, most things are in watertight bags.

Damp cottongrass by Firth River

Flight leaving.  Time to put up our tents and explore the area before the last flight arrives.
Have to stay within line of sight due to high number of grizzly bears in this area.

Kitchen area being put together. 
Someone wearing facial bug net.  However, bugs weren't that bad for this whole trip. 
Custom made coffee maker and Dutch Ovens are used.  They fit snuggly inside the rafts.

Mountain Death Camas - beautiful but deadly plant.
Due to 985 feet (300m) thick permafrost, melted snow/water
cannot seep in the soil, every low-lying area is boggy/wet.

Alaska Phlox after a rain.  Just above it is Lapland Rosebay
(a type of miniature rhododendron past blooming).

Arctic Willow. 
This area has 40 types of willows, most of which are only a few inches tall.

My favorite - a type of paintbrush flower that I haven't been able to identify. 
The closest I came was Elegant or Labrador Pale Paintbrush, but I'm not certain. 
 Beautiful.

Duck (I don't know which type) eggs - very close to the landing strip but hidden in the bushes. 
I unexpectedly scared the mother away and she pooped on her eggs as she flew off.

Part of camp set up.  Far left (grey object) is the biffy tent. 
The red ones are for humans.  Look at this scenery!

A mostly unglaciated landscape

The Quaternary Period spans the last 2.6 million years of Earth’s history, with global climate regularly alternating between long-term cooler and warmer intervals that each lasted many thousands of years.  During cooler periods, glaciations were caused by the build-up and advance of ice sheets across vast tracts of land, principally in the mid- and upper-mid-latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere.  These ice sheets subsequently melted and retreated during the warmer, interglacial intervals. 

The most recent glaciation occurred between approximately 80,000 and 10,000 years ago during the Wisconsin Glacial Stage.  Currently, the Earth is within a warmer, interglacial stage.  Almost all of Canada was covered by glacial ice at least once during the Quaternary Period, with most areas being covered multiple times.  The country’s various landscapes are therefore characterized by erosional or depositional landforms created by glacial movement and glacial meltwater-related processes. 

However, this is not the case in much of northwestern Yukon and the majority of the interior of Alaska, which have never known glaciers.  The cold, dry climates of these regions (polar desert) inhibited the local formation and build-up of glacial ice, and they remained far from other major ice accumulation zones located towards the south or southeast, which were also on the other side of mountain ranges that acted as barriers.

The geomorphic features found in Ivvavik testify to this absence of glaciers in most of the area.  The Firth Valley lacks the distinct landforms shaped by powerful rivers of ice, such as U-shaped valleys, cirques, hanging valleys, aretes, and truncated ridges.  Nor does the area contain those depositional landforms left by retreating glaciers such as moraines or a widespread, thin veneer of sediment known as till.

Instead, the local mountain landscape is dominated by strongly-developed fluvial and physical weathering features that would have been heavily modified or destroyed by glaciers.  Such features include tors (rock pinnacles in the mountains), bedrock terraces, and pediment surfaces along the valley sides.  These mountains also include V-shaped valleys and deep weathering profiles, the result of uninterrupted stream incision and mass-wasting of the valley side slopes, which act together to maintain the straight-sided, tapering form.

Many of the hills, mountain-tops, and side-slopes in the Firth River watershed are made up of deeply weathered and disintegrated rock.  There is a general roundness and smoothness to the landscape, as freezing and thawing processes have slowly transported this loose material down various slopes. 

Had glaciation occurred, it would have eroded the slopes causing widespread exposure of un-weathered bedrock.  

Bog Rosemary (close-up - very small plant).
About the size of my small finger.

Prickly Saxifrage (see the very small dots all over the petals?)

Moss Campion

Arctic Sandwort

Alpine Forget Me Not in a bed of lichen

Butterwort, a semi-carnivorous plant.  Yellowish leaves give it its name.

Pedicularis (Lousewort) next to horsetail.

Trying to fit everything in these 18' self-bailing rafts.  Miles of tie-downs needed.

Our Team Leader Andy Preto.  When not rafting, he is a teacher. 
A walking encyclopedia, he knew so much.  And we begin our journey. 
At back, Dana, the owner of the company.

Arctic Char fish - six caught by two fishermen in about five minutes. 
Had enough for three delicious meals.

Craggy peak with lone, and very vocal, eagle, not used to seeing humans

More cragginess with small spruce trees.

From above - the white area river-right is called an Aifeus. 
The rock in upper right is a tor.
When subterranean water is pushed up and freezes and keeps being pushed up and freezes some more.

Always on the look out for wildlife or danger. 
There are very sharp rocks to watch out for in the Firth River.
Because of that, it is nicknamed the cheese grater.

Ecosystems

Three major vegetation types occur along the Firth River Valley: Taiga, Arctic tundra, and Alpine tundra.  The plant communities within these ecosystems all have one thing in common: they are able to flourish in the short summer growing seasons and tolerate long, harsh winters.  A bonus for summer visitors for there are so many plants blooming at the same time…

Taiga consists of open stands of stunted spruce and balsam poplar marking the transition between boreal forest and tundra ecosystem – the northern limits of the treeline.  In Ivvavik, white spruce and balsam poplar trees grow to within 19 miles (30km) of the Beaufort Sea coast, representing some of the northernmost woodlands found in Canada. 

Arctic tundra vegetation is made up largely of dwarf woody shrubs (including willow, birch, and alder), heath plants (including Labrador tea), and a class of flowering plants known as forbs (including alpine sweet vetch).  Lower and flatter vegetation occurs in the alpine tundra of higher elevations, which harbors rock lichens, mountain avens, and heather.  Towards the moister coastal plain portion, sedge-moss vegetation like tussock dominates.

A large portion of eastern Siberia, northern Alaska, and the Yukon – including Ivvavik – was never covered by ice during the glacial episodes of the last two million years.  When climate change caused sea levels to drop significantly, this landscape, known as Beringia, extended continuously across the area now submerged beneath the Bering Strait.  At a time when most of the continent was covered by glaciers that could be more than a 0.6 mile (1km) in thickness, Beringia became a refuge for many plant species.  Consequently, the diversity of plant species in Ivvavik is high relative to glaciated areas of the western Arctic, despite the harsh growing conditions of the region.  Examples of Beringian plant species found here include bear flower, boreal wormwood, Scamman’s spring-beauty, northern larkspur, pink dandelion, and Siberian trisetum.

The Beringia refuge also supported unique communities of large mammals that are now extinct, including woolly mammoths, saber-toothed cats, wild horses (of which we found a skull – see next post), camels, long-horned bison, and giant beavers.  The ecosystems in Ivvavik still support a number of large mammal species.  The Porcupine caribou herd, numbering between 90,000 and 150,000 (I was told it is now thought to be around 210,000) animals, migrates each spring from north-central Yukon to their calving grounds within Ivvavik and along the coastal plain in Alaska.  Towards mid-July, large caribou herds start moving southeast back through the park before finally leaving the area by September for the fall migration to their wintering areas.  This is the herd we got to see passing us by for about 18 straight hours one day, and across river the following day while we were rafting down its clear water (map and photos next part II, next post).

Other large mammals in Ivvavik are Dall’s sheep in the mountains, muskoxen on the coastal plain foothills, and grizzly bears, moose, wolves, and foxes.  Arctic ground squirrels are common as are the following two game fish: Arctic grayling and Dolly Varden char.  

See just how clear this water is! 

Stopping at the Aifeus to get some ice to keep the coolers as cold as possible.
Explained below.

Two of our guides (Tyler and Rich) gathering ice.  See how blue it is.

Not very rounded rocks like when glaciers have gone through a valley.

Fog and snow. 
This area has never seen glaciation (too dry to create ice - it's actually a polar desert)
 We are looking at an area that hasn't been disturbed by glaciers for 8 million years. 
Oldest river valley in a way.

Macoun's Poppies.  Great splashes of yellow on hillsides.

Narrow-Leaf Saw-Wort (Saussurea) - looks like fireworks.

I can't say enough about how captivating this ruggedness is.

We are approaching a Class IV rapid.  Only our guides will go down this rapid. 
We will walk alongside the river.  The guides are checking the rapid by land before rafting it.

Stunning!!!

Here's the Class IV rapid we had to wait one day to let the water go down before rafting it.

While we waited for the water to go down, we hiked to where Andy, our guide, got married.

And got to see a plant that only grows in this area.  Boykinia or Bear Flower.

Pasque Flower

Most plants here are VERY low to the ground. 
This Dwarf Alpine Hawksbeard (yellow one) is a good example.  Next to white Saxifrage.

This plant is only a few inches tall.  Dianthus (carnation).

Can't forget Bistort.

Aufeis - Ice formed from leaky ground. 

Aufeis is ice formed from ground water that freezes as it seeps from springs during the winter months.  It can be found along reaches of many Arctic and sub-Arctic river and stream valleys where winter springs are present beneath the stream bed or adjacent channel margins.  Aufeis generally forms where seeped water becomes obstructed and rises above the level of the existing ice cover.  The overtopping water will flow onto the ice surface and eventually freeze, producing a thickened and possibly more extensive ice cover.  Continued overflows of seeped water over the winter can build-up multiple ice layers and create an ice sheet up to several yards/meters thick. 

The term ‘aufeis’ specifically refers to the ice material, while the process of aufeis formation is known as an ‘icing’ and the resulting ice sheet landform is known as a naled or aufeis field. 

Aufeis is not to be confused with the glacial ice that is common to many alpine areas.  This ice, formed and maintained by annual snowfalls that eventually compact into ice, is much thicker than aufeis. 

At some aufeis fields, unfrozen pools of spring water form important aquatic habitats where Dolly Varden char can overwinter within a river system that otherwise freezes to the river bed.  These pools are locations of traditional winter sources of fish for Inuvialuit within the Ivvavik area.

River fluctuations are a daily occurrence as the daytime melting of aufeis is not seen on the river until after evening.  The river will rise each night and you will need to be careful of what is left along the shore.  Also, due to the extensive permafrost under the surface, even a light rain can bring rapid water level rises and floods have been noted from very light rainfall.

See the stone cairn in the lower left corner? It used to touch the water.
Now it shows how much lower the water is running from yesterday's height.
We are now good to go down the rapids.

Panorama of the upcoming rapid.  More in part 2.