The Current ... and Igloos

This is a current picture at about 5:00pm or so. This picture was taken just outside Taloyoak - to the west of the town I think. Notice the Arctic Hare to the right of the little shack. The left of the photo is the frozen Arctic Ocean. Looking on a map, Taloyoak is within Spence Bay which is a small inlet on the East side James Ross Strait. On the East side of the Strait is the Boothia Peninsula and on the West is King William Island. At the bottom of King William Island is the closest community to Taloyoak, Gjoa Haven (pronounced JOE HAVEN). I'm sort of on tangent right now, running between the computer a map of Nunavut I have on the fridge. Oh well, I'm getting to some interesting stuff.

I was talking with one of my students this last week about getting to Gjoa Haven. A lot of people will make the trek from this community across the ocean when the sun gets nice and high. We're almost at that point right now. I think we're dealing with around 12 hours of sunlight - gaining 20 minutes a day. She told me that it would take about 8 hours on ski-doo, depending on how fast you like to drive! Coming up soon will be the Classic Hockey game between the two communities. The ice in our arena is pretty sketchy right now, so apparently we might not host a game - but Gjoa Haven's rink is doing well. I'm told everyone and their dog hops on a plane and zips over to watch the game. Once the tickets are sold out many will gather on their ski-doos and kamatics and drive on over. Kamatic is a sled that is towed behind the snowmobile. It's a big sled made from 2x4s - the sled runners were traditionally caribou skin attached to probably a big whale bone or any other wood that could be found. Today the sled runners are a hard plastic that you can buy at the co-op!

Anyways, that picture up there is of the ocean.

So it seems like the warm spell we were getting not too long ago was some sick joke. The last two weeks have been quite cold and there are no signs of it slowing down. Not to be too misleading, I should mention that the cold up here is a dry cold. As some of you may have recall my great interest in the difference between dry and wet colds before I left to come up, there is a major difference. Our lack of humidity makes a big difference in what we call -50 here versus Ontario. Someone once explained the North to me as a sort of desert. It's a huge frozen desert, no humidity - thus barely any precipitation.

The snow that we have all came in the early winter. Since around December there hasn't been much snow fall at all. In the picture on the right I'm standing with one of the elders in the community, Nauyak, he taught Shawna and I how to build an igloo. The stick that he's holding is used to measure how deep the first layer of snow is. A good amount of snow for igloo building is about 3/4s of the way up that stick. To bring this all back together before I go on about the igloo - the point is that the cold weather causes the snow to harden and create layers. The first layer varies in size, but is anywhere between 1 foot to 3 feet thick or so.

The first step in building the igloo is to fin a nice flat spot where the snow is good and thick. The snow can't be too hard or it will cause the blocks to break when you pull them out - and the snow can't be too soft of the blocks won't hold together at all. The circle that you can see in the picture on the left is how you plan out the basic size of the igloo. The one we are about to build is suitable for 2 adults to sleep, probably 4 to sit in comfortably.

Technically you should be able to build the whole igloo with just the blocks inside the circle that you draw - but if the blocks start to break then you can always get some snow somewhere else - there's no lack of it! We cut the blocks out of the snow with a tool called a Pana - which is the man's knife. We also use regular wood saws to cut the snow too. You can see the saws in the back there. There's a process to cutting the first block - but it's too much to type out.

The thickness of the blocks that we cut out are good enough to stay in overnight for a a few nights. If you planned on staying out on the land for a long time or the entire winter then you have to get really thick ones. The really crafty igloo builders can make some intense little operations. I've been told of igloos with ice windows, multi-room igloos -- though I don't think they've tackled the two story operation. Perhaps that's in the near future. As you can see when we are first stacking the blocks on top of each other there are a lot of gaps between the each. That gets filled in with extra snow at the end. Also, Nauyak let Shawna and I cut out a lot of the blocks and put them in place, so needless to say - it wasn't a pro's job.

On the right hand side beside Shawna you can see all the botched snow blocks. The majority of those are my fault. You have to be really patient when you cut the blocks out of the snow to a) make sure you are cutting in a straight line, b) make sure all the edges are cut away from the outside snow well, and c) pull the block out of the snow evenly and slowly. It took me a while to get the hang of that. Plus, the blocks were heavy, so heavy that Shawna couldn't pull them out. Well, I think she could pull them out, but she was too satisfied seeing me butchering them to do it too.

Also, I should mention that the hole there is the door to the igloo. Usually you don't cut the door out until the very end. Quite literally, you cut a hole out while you're inside because if you build the igloo properly you use all the snow from inside it's quarters for the walls and roof so by the end you've built a perfect circle around yourself. Due to my botched blocks we had to cut the door early to get out and get a hold of some more materials. The igloo floor is probably about a good foot and a half below where Shawna is standing.

I'm going to wrap things up here and leave you with a bunch of pictures from finishing up the igloo and then from later that weekend when we went out to the igloo with our friends Phil and Isabelle. The plan was to go out with a stove and firm up the igloo. Within a day or so of building the igloo you need to light a fire with a stove or something inside the igloo to the blocks and the snow on top have a chance to melt, then freeze together to build strength. That's the key to the whole thing. If you don't light the fire then it will collapse eventually. As you will, there is a gaping hole in the igloo in the later pictures. Some fierce wind, or bored kids, caused it it fall in.

All in all the basic process for building an igloo is outladishly impressive and those who know how to do it well have a serious grasp in masonry, some form of engineering - I suppose civil? Fournier brothers comment here. The whole thing spirals up and holds itself together, and is so strong, I'm told, it can bare the weight of a full grown polar bear on top of it. I don't think mine could do that. But a good one could!