Home | USA | Europe | Bahamas | Caribbean | South America | India | South Africa | Contact

Akshayuk Pass Akshayuk Akutinga  
Glaciers once filled it and helped care out its deep U-shaped profile

 

Akshayuk Pass - Akshayuk Akutinga is a 100 km long ice-free trough that cuts through the mountains between Cumberland Sound and Dais Strait. Glaciers once filled it and helped care out its deep U-shaped profile, characteristic of glacier-formed alleys. Along the coast, the glaciers have incised the alley floors below sea level, creating deep, narrow fjords with vertical walls up to 900 m high.

Akshayuk Pass contains textbook examples of the work of glaciers. You can see these throughout the pass. The sharp mountain ridges and peaks of the mountains lining the pass were created by small mountain glaciers called cirque or alpine glaciers. Some large cirque glaciers extend down onto the floor of the pass on the colder north side of the pass.

The history of the park dates back about 4000 years to the Pre-Dorset period when Siberian peoples crossed the Bering land-bridge into North America. For centuries these nomadic people traversed across the Arctic. The Thule, ancestors of the present-day Inuit, moved into the area after about 1200 AD. Stone walls of Thule houses can still be seven at some sites. There is evidence that the Thules may have met and traded with the Vikings between the 13th and 15th centuries when the Vikings traveled from Greenland to visit the shores of Baffin Island.

 

In 1585, John Dais explored parts of Baffin Island and charted and named the Cumberland Peninsula just to the north of Frobisher Bay. Martin Frobisher in search of the Northwest Passage, it is said, discovered gold there. Although the Inuit were in contact with European whalers, missionaries and fur traders as early as the 17th century, their culture changed most dramatically in the 19th century when English and Scottish commercial whaling brought alcohol and disease. In 1858, William Penny, mapped the coast southeast of Broughton Island and Cumberland South. He noted that Baffin Island's population was only 350, compared with over 1000 when he had visited the island a decade earlier. When local Inuit were hired to work on whaling ships, hunting patterns were disrupted because traders encouraged them to use firearms and metal traps.

Canada guide

Canada brief history Topography
Climate
Forestry
Mining
Economy
Nunavut Territory
Ethnic Groups
Languages
Canada - US Border Fishing

Canada Transportation
Tourism and Recreation
Alberta
Edmonton City
Fort Ile-aux-Noix
Calgary
Vancouver Island
British Columbia
Victoria
Nootka Sound
Yukon river
Manitoba
Auyuittuq National Park Akshayuk Pass

Ho phone s in

Calgary
Edmonton
Kingston
Montreal
Ottawa
Quebec City
Vancouver
Victoria

Google maps