Snow castles and ice roads

It’s been warming up as of late, a sign that spring is on it’s way! The warmer temperatures have allowed for some great weekend activities. A few weekends ago, we skied across Yellowknife Bay to the ‘untouched wilderness’ on the other side. We sat around in the snow for a bit enjoying the beautiful sunshine. We realized how much more work skiing in ungroomed snow is, especially when there are big snow drifts.

We headed over to the Snowking Castle that weekend as well. The Snowking Festival runs most of the month of March in a snow/ice castle that is built out on Great Slave Lake. They had been building this year’s castle (the biggest one yet!) since not too long after we arrived in YK, at the end of January. They held a snow carving competition a few days before it opened, so we headed over to check out the sculptures. Team Alaska won this year.

Putting the final touches (well, the final wall) on the castle.

A reminder that there is in fact ice below our feet.

We then hit up a local cafe and when we came back to our car, we got to see a Cessna on skis take off right in front of us on the lake! We had seen this plane sitting on the lake since we were living with Gustavo when we arrived and were excited to see it fly!

and it's off....before it even hits the runway.

We saw/sat in one of these at the Bombardier museum in Valcourt Quebec a while back.

We decided one day to go for a drive on the ice road linking YK to Detah on the other side of Yellowknife Bay. Driving to Detah on the “normal” road is about 23km; on the ice road, it is only 8km.

This past weekend, was another warm one. We met up with a friend from Guelph who was passing through YK on her way to Ulukhaktok (Hi Colleen!). We met at the now open Snowking Castle and wandered around the small craft sale and explored all of the nooks and crannies of the castle.