I’d never slept on an eight thousand dollar couch before. Our friend Steve who we met in one of the hunting cabins picked us up from Harry’s. He and his fiance Deanna offered us beds for the night. They’d just refurnished their house, including a new couch they’d bought in Winnipeg, a thousand miles to the south. When they missed freighting it up on the last ship of the year, they flew it up at a cost of five and a half thousand dollars. Whatever the price, it was better than a tent.

We got up early, to take advantage of fresh northerly winds. We planned to head to Whale Cove, a hamlet of 300 people 80 kilometres to the south. Our sleds were on the wrong side of town, a problem fixed by Steve, who tied them to the digger on his giant earthmoving machine and towed us across town to our start point. The sight cracked the locals up as they watched us slide by.

In contrast to Churchill, the sea ice between Rankin Inlet and Whale Cove was fast and smooth. Finally we found the kind of surface we’d hoped for, and we shot down the coast, stopping to talk to a few snowmobilers heading up to Rankin. Three and a half hours later we put our kites down on the outside of town and hauled our sleds in, with an increasing entourage of small children.

Whale Cove was sleepy and small. Huddled amongst the rocks, it mixed northern fishing village with the laid-back feel of a polynesian village. Dogs lay in the snow. Bits of snowmobile sat in piles next to bits of frozen Caribou and Muskoxen.

As usual, Dave and I sat down and waited to see what was going to happen next. A ute pulled up. Out hopped a middle-aged Inuk with one tooth, grinning and jumping around like a young boy. Solomon was his name. He asked us where we’d come from and where our snowmobile was. We’d come from Rankin, we said, and we didn’t have a snowmobile. Dave explained we’d come by kite, waving his hand through the air in a universally cryptic gesture signifying “kite”. Solomon looked at both of us, sizing us up, then burst out laughing.

“Whooh boy, you glided down here? how long did that take?”

“About three and a half hours.”

“That’s almost as fast as my wife!”

Dave later got to ride a snowmobile with Solomon’s chain-smoking, sixty year old wife, an experience he described as “terrifying”…

more to come…..