A Guide to Iqaluit's Natural Escapes 🌿

Iqaluit sits on Baffin Island at the head of Frobisher Bay, about 300 kilometres below the Arctic Circle, and there is no road to it — everything and everyone arrives by air or by sealift. The name means place of many fish in Inuktitut. Here the land itself is the attraction: treeless Arctic tundra that turns to wildflowers and berries through the brief intense summer, some of the largest tides in the country, and light that barely leaves the sky in June.

🏞️ Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park – Tundra at the Town Edge

A short walk from the centre of Iqaluit, the Sylvia Grinnell River runs through a valley of open tundra over falls and rapids to Frobisher Bay. The park protects the ground around it: Arctic willow growing ankle-high, purple saxifrage and Arctic cotton through the summer, ancient Thule sites, and char running the river. Caribou and Arctic fox pass through, and gyrfalcons and snow buntings nest nearby. Known in Inuktitut as Iqaluit Kuunga.

• Walking Distance
• Tundra Valley
• Arctic Char
• Thule Sites

Source: Nunavut Parks

🌊 Frobisher Bay & the Apex Trail

The trail to the small community of Apex runs about five kilometres along the shoreline from Iqaluit, past the bay's enormous tidal flats. The tidal range here is among the largest in Canada, over eleven metres at times, which means the water withdraws far enough to walk out across ground that will be well under the sea a few hours later. Watch the tables rather than the water. In winter the bay freezes and the route becomes snowmobile country.

• ~5 km Shoreline
• 11+ m Tides
• Tidal Flats
• Winter Sea Ice

Source: City of Iqaluit

❄️ Sylvia Grinnell in Winter – The Land Under Snow

For most of the year this landscape is white, and that is when the people who live here use it hardest: snowmobiles out on the sea ice, fishing through the ice for char, and the aurora overhead through the long dark months. The park stays open and the river valley is walked and skied all winter. Anyone visiting should go with local guidance — the weather changes fast, and there is no shelter out on the tundra.

• Ice Fishing
• Aurora Season
• Snowmobile Country
• Go With a Guide

Source: Nunavut Parks

🏔️ Auyuittuq National Park – The Land That Never Melts

Further north on Baffin Island, reached by air and boat from Pangnirtung, Auyuittuq covers roughly 19,000 square kilometres of granite towers, glaciers and fjord. Akshayuk Pass runs 97 kilometres between them, and Mount Thor carries the greatest purely vertical drop on Earth at about 1,250 metres. The name means the land that never melts. This is expedition country rather than a day trip, but it is the reason serious walkers come to Nunavut at all.

• ~19,000 km²
• Akshayuk Pass 97 km
• Mount Thor 1,250 m
• Expedition Travel

Source: Parks Canada