The Aklavik Mad Trapper Rendezvous

The day begun with some chilly temperatures, but some bright sun, and a beautiful drive on the ice road.

This morning, Mom and I hoped in the truck with Amy and Wade, and drove over to Aklavik, where it is Jamboree time. (Uh oh, cats outta the bag...my one-eyed-classy-Eskimo is my Mom!)Every spring, each of the communities take turns hosting their Jamborees - basically a festival of games and food for the whole community to participate in. Aklavik's Jamboree is a four day festival filled with dog mushing, dizzy stick racing, plank walking, egg tosses, flour packing, ice chiseling, snowshoe racing, talent shows, BINGO, jigging competitions - the list goes on. We got to Aklavik by noon, just in time to see the eager yelping dogs take off on their sleds for the 10 km race with 1000 bucks for first place. Then after taking a short drive around town, we went down to the jamboree site on the river, and waited for the games to commence with a bowl of homemade chili and bannock in hand. There is a picture above of one of the dog teams in action, and following that, a picture of a wall tent where Annie the elder was giving out caribou soup to other elders and visitors (regulations up here do not allow Inuvialuit to sell the caribou that they have hunted - they can only give it as gifts). Seeing as I had come over from Inuvik, Annie let me try some of her yummy caribou soup.

There were a number of people from Inuvik that I knew at the games, which was nice, because it meant Amy and I could enter the four legged race! And, although Amy, Jon and I came in dead last place, I laughed my ass off. There were a number of other hilarious competitions that we all had a hoot watching. Like dizzy stick races, where you have to spin around a stick 10 times and then race to a pylon. There was a lot of falling going on!

So as pristine as you and I might think that the Mackenzie delta is, there is still a fare amount of litter bugs in the North. It takes about an hour and 15 minutes to get to Aklavik on the ice road, but today, the ride home took almost three hours. We stopped and picked up each and every bottle and can along the ice road that we could see. Amy and Wade will get a pretty penny for picking up the litter of others! (You get money for recycling almost everything up here). There was a ton of cans and bottles in the back of their truck by the time we got home.

All in all, a good chilly day was had by all. I now know what a Jamboree entails, and I love the good clean hilarious fun of it all. I'm looking forward to Inuvik's Jamboree, it's next weekend!