August 8th

Blog post from August 8th:

Well rested and full of energy after sleeping late into the morning, we enjoyed a delicious pancake and bacon breakfast in the cozy Nester 1 kitchen. We left the camp around noon and headed for a site called Wapusk 1, a wet region of land that was (fortunately) bug-free and beautiful! We were lucky, and able to observe a group of 6 or 7 caribou (both adults and their young) run across the distance. We ate our lunches in the early afternoon, sitting on the comfortable cushion-like tundra. We resumed our work after eating and hiked back to Nester 1 around 5:30 in the afternoon. While dinner was being prepared, we made a significant amount of progress entering data that we collected during our first week here in the Arctic. Dinner was incredible! We set up tables and chairs outside near the tents and ate out there while the sun was still in the sky. Jill and the Junior Canadian Rangers prepared a delicious meal that consisted of arctic char, spruce grouse, duck, geese, and for dessert we had fried bannock with cinnamon and brown sugar, which many of us enjoyed with Nutella as well. Upon observing that the sun was going down, we rushed up to the observatory deck. We listened and danced a little to music while we took pictures and took in the beautiful sunset. A male caribou with large antlers graced us with his presence, running next to the lake with the orange and purple sky as the backdrop. There is no doubt about Wapusk’s beauty! After that, we settled into chairs and couches and listened to a presentation by Jim Roth, a professor at the University of Manitoba, who spoke to us about arctic mammals. All in all, a great day!

-Maria Nallim, Kelvin High School grade 12