Misadventures on the land higher than usual

SARA MINOGUE

The first part of 2005 has been one of the busier years for Iqaluit’s search and rescue group, says Jimmy Akavak, the RCMP search and rescue spokesperson.

Akavak was also out on the ice this past weekend. At this time of year, he says, “if there’s a crack behind you, it will more than likely be coming off.”

Two weeks ago, four women were rescued on Monday after they didn’t show up to work that morning.

The women were camping at a cabin and ran out of fuel to get home after driving around Frobisher’s Farthest in foggy weather on Sunday and getting disoriented. They made it back to their cabin and waited for help. Searchers found them by noon after checking out two places the women usually visited.

This month, another Iqaluit man found himself underneath his skidoo when he went through the water just past the breakwater.

On May long weekend, John Vander Velde and three others spent an extra night at a cabin in Ward Inlet after finding they couldn’t cross a lake that had been frozen solid just two days earlier.

That group had three GPS receivers and two satellite phones. Instead of fighting through ice and slush, they used the phone to charter a helicopter to bring them back to town, and left their snowmobiles behind for the summer.

Vander Velde’s advice to anyone going out on the land is to plan for an extra few days, tell people where you’re going and take a satellite phone and GPS, or even a cell phone.

His traveling companion also reminds anyone with a GPS to drop by the wildlife officer to upload the coordinates of the cabins around Iqaluit.