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Picture Book: Driftwood on the beach, Arctic Ocean, Yukon, Canada.

Driftwood on the beach. July 2006.

The beach is full of driftwood. The tree trunks look small but the bigger trees are 10 to 20 meters long. They drift in following the clockwise current in the Arctic Ocean and could come from anywhere. This area is now dry but during storms it is overrun with water, typical for a "spit" and the logs get stuck here preferentially. A favourable place to find big logs of wood.

I did not see any plastic bottles or fishing nets. All cleaned up by the Parks Canada Rangers? On Ellesmere Island I saw lots concentrated in certain places, especially near Eureka.

There is sufficient wood to build a log cabin. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, an early 20th century explorer of the Arctic, did this and lived here with his Innuit wife for a few years. I am taking this picture with my back to his cabin. This is one of Canada's historic sites but few people will ever be able to see it as it is so remote. We saw the cabin already from a very far distance drifting down the Firth River and used it as a landmark to find the camping spot with a 300 m run way for Twin Otters to land.

Later on I am sitting on another large driftwood log, I am staring at the icebergs in the Arctic Ocean [1]. Back after 17 years, same blue sky and same strong wind but in the Western Arctic it is much warmer than on Ellesmere Island [1], 15 C in stead of only 4 C. We saw a herd of 20 musk-ox's today, with binoculars at a large distance.

Tomorrow a Twin Otter will land here, on the gravel bar with a rough 300 m landing strip [1], and take us back to Inuvik after a 12 day rafting and hiking trip down the Firth River.

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