Visiting Inuvik

Getting There

You can take an airplane or a helicopter to Inuvik all year round, but most people think that half the fun of a trip to the Canadian Arctic is the long drive on the Dempster Highway. After all, Inuvik—460 miles and about 20 hours away from Dawson City in the Yukon, at the highway’s other end—is as far north as you can drive on a public road in North America!

The Dempster is an adventure all by itself: It’s a two-lane strip of gravel, dirt, crushed shale and rock that covers the permafrost and passes through some of northern Canada’s most magnificent scenery. Since it’s such a long and occasionally treacherous road trip to Inuvik, many experts suggest that travelers pack like they’re going camping, with plenty of water, food, extra gas and spare tires. (The rocks on the roadway can be so sharp that many people also recommend wrapping gas tanks and transmission housings in rubber or metal guards.) In the summer, drivers on the Dempster take ferries across the Peel and Mackenzie Rivers, and in the winter they drive right across the frozen water. In the spring and fall, however, when the rivers are thawing and freezing, it’s too dangerous to cross at all. During those seasons, most of the highway is closed.

Things to See and Do

Most tourists come to Inuvik in the summer, and the town is ready for them. Every August, musicians from all over Canada gather in Inuvik for the End of the Road Music Festival. At the summer solstice each year, the town holds a Midnight Sun Fun Run and Half-Marathon, a golf tournament and a number of all-night jamborees and craft sales. There are parades, pancake breakfasts, fashion shows, fish fries and all kinds of dances and performances. But the town’s most famous festival is probably the Great Northern Arts Festival, which has celebrated Inuit, Inuvialuit, Gwich’in, Dene, Metis and other First Nations artists and performers for nearly 20 years. (If you’re shopping for art but you can’t make it to the festival, you can visit the town’s Northern Images Cooperative anytime.)

The town has many amazing year-round attractions too. One of the most popular things to see in Inuvik is the sprawling Our Lady of Victory Roman Catholic Church, which looks like a massive igloo in the center of town. People also visit the Ingamo Friendship Centre, the largest log structure north of the Arctic Circle. In the town’s old Quonset-style hockey rink, there’s now a huge greenhouse—since the permafrost keeps people from planting flowers and vegetables in their yards, Inuvik’s greenhouse serves as a big backyard garden for the whole town. On the first floor, it holds 70 raised gardens and flowerbeds for individual gardeners; on the second, it holds larger planters for big families and community groups. There’s one for the elementary school and one for the high school, for example, and the town’s women’s shelter and day care center are also represented.

Sports are a big part of life in Inuvik. Summer visitors can go fishing for char, grayling and trout in one of the region’s 100,000 lakes. As long as they’ve dressed warmly, winter visitors can ski, skate, sled and even practice their curling at the town’s ice rink.

Where to Stay

Inuvik has more than 300 hotel rooms, from the luxurious Mackenzie Hotel to the budget-friendly Eskimo Inn. There are also a number of B & Bs and campgrounds in town, along with several RV parks.

Related

• About Inuvik