Red/Cyan 3D glasses are needed for viewing photos in this post.
The Ingraham Trail(The Northwest Territory’s Highway 4) Starts in the capitol of Yellowknife, traveling east for about 70 km. And, that’s about it. The plan was to create a road that connected east side of Great Slave Lake, and encircled the entire lake, but that fell through. There is a small Dene community, Dettah, connected to the road, and a few cabins and homes, but not much else as far as communities or services. There are several Territorial Parks, mostly offering trails or lake access. There are two Territorial campgrounds on the trail(excluding Fred Henne Territorial Park right beside the city of Yellowknife), and Prelude Lake Territorial Park is definitely the better developed of the two. It has boat and cabin rentals, and a beautiful beach.
The Prelude Lake nature trail starts in a sparse forest with sand underfoot(remnants of the glacial period).
After a short walk through the sand, you get to terrain more common for the region: The Canadian Shield bedrock. On the north side of Slave Lake, it is mostly composed of pink granite, lightly covered in mosses and lichens. The predominant tree is Jack Pine, growing in the crevices of the shield. The trail is fairly easy to follow over the bare rock.
and after a gentle climb to the top of a small hill, there are beautiful views of Prelude Lake.
After this, the trail descends, looping back to the beginning.
2D picture time: One last point to mention about the Ingraham trail. The common knowledge is that there are no roads into the territory of Nunavut. Technically speaking, that’s not quite true. A winter ice road east of Yellowknife services mines in the (and this will sound like an oxymoron) northeastern Northwest Territories. The road goes from the end of the Ingraham trail as far as Contwoyto Lake in Nunavut. There is no way to connect to the rest of Nunavut, as it only goes to the diamond mines near the NWT border. There are also no communities along the road, it’s only open during the coldest period of the year, and the only services available are those brought in while the road is running. Still, there’s one reason I want to drive it; I could be one of the few people to say that I drove to Nunavut. I did see the start of the road…
but it was ‘too wet’ to drive any farther.
Parallel Views 