Sirmilik National Park

Sirmilik means the place of glaciers, and the park covers about twenty-two thousand square kilometres on northern Baffin Island and Bylot Island. Bylot holds one of the largest seabird colonies in the Arctic, with hundreds of thousands of thick-billed murres and black-legged kittiwakes on the cliffs and a large greater snow goose colony inland. The floe edge, where the landfast ice meets open water in late spring, is the draw: narwhal, belugas, bowhead whales, seals and polar bears concentrate along it, and outfitters from Pond Inlet run camps out on the ice in May and June to watch.

History

People, beginning with the Paleo-Eskimo predecessors of the Inuit, have lived here for thousands of years. William Baffin and Robert Bylot surveyed the area in the 1610s and named Lancaster Sound and Bylot Island in 1616, John Ross's expedition of 1818 confirmed Baffin's charts, and the region was mapped from the air from the 1930s to the late 1950s; it became a bird sanctuary in 1965 for its seabird colonies and later a national park (Wikipedia, Sirmilik National Park).

What you'll find

• The floe edge - narwhal, belugas and bears where ice meets open water.
• The Bylot bird cliffs - hundreds of thousands of murres and kittiwakes.
• The glaciers - ice caps and outlet glaciers the park is named for.
• The snow goose colony - a large breeding concentration on Bylot.

When to go

May and June for the floe edge, which is the signature experience; July and August for open-water travel and the bird colonies. Access is only through Pond Inlet.

What to expect

There are no facilities, trails or services in the park. Polar bears are present and armed guides are standard. Costs are very high and weather cancels flights and trips routinely.

Nearby

Pond Inlet is the gateway community; Bylot Island lies across the sound.

Key facts