Occasionally, when the ice is close or winds too high to go on the open waters of the Inlet, we hike from the lodge or take the boat around Peregrine Point to a place called Canso Bay. From here, we hike up to some gorgeous stone meat caches, built of fine-grained sandstone slabs. Long ago, the caribou passed by this point in their thousands. The people hunted them with bow and arrow from shallow blinds called taluit, dried the meat and stored it until their return in the fall.
We continue our hike up the Bathurst Ridge to a saddle where there are several taluit, and on along the ridge. If the weather is dry, we often hike to the “Nose” (Kingaun) (elevation 1250 ft.), where we can see for many miles across the Burnside Delta, and up and down the Inlet. We scan for musk ox and caribou, and often spot a peregrine, roughlegged hawk or golden eagle soaring below us.
The Bathurst Ridge is a fairly challenging hike, not for everyone, but those who don’t want to climb the ridge often hike up on Peregine Point, where we can often watch the peregrine falcons and roughlegged hawks soaring in a westerly breeze, ravens ducking in to feed their young, or may encounter an arctic hare, red fox, or willow ptarmigan, even a wolverine. We then return along the beaches to gentle slopes covered with tundra flowers, watching in the willows for nesting white-fronted geese, or tundra swans sleeping on the sandbars.
