- Where
- Kugmallit Bay, Arctic Ocean
Northwest Territories, Canada - Coordinates
- 69.4454° N
133.0342° W - The road
- Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway
138 km of gravel, opened 2017 - People
- 937 (2021 census)
(Wikipedia) - Pingos
- About 1,350 in the region
(Parks Canada) - Ibyuk Pingo
- 49 m high, 300 m across
(Parks Canada) - Advisory
- Canada Level 1
The gravel road ran out at a grey sea, and the wind off it was cold in the middle of summer, under a sun that would not go down. Across the flat green tundra, among ponds in every direction, sat smooth round hills like puddings turned out of their bowls. I took off a sock, put a foot in the sea, and wrote it down properly.
The short answer
Tuktoyaktuk is an Inuvialuit hamlet on Kugmallit Bay, near the delta of the Mackenzie River, in the Northwest Territories of Canada. It lies north of the Arctic Circle on the Arctic Ocean, at the northern end of the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway, and is known to most people by its first syllable, Tuk. Wikipedia gives its population in the 2021 census as 937, almost all of them Inuvialuit. A few kilometres west of the hamlet, Pingo Canadian Landmark protects eight pingos, among them Ibyuk Pingo, which Parks Canada gives as 49 metres high and 300 metres across its base, the tallest in Canada and the second tallest in the world. Parks Canada counts about 1,350 pingos in the surrounding region, the greatest concentration anywhere.
Why it's worth knowing
For most of its history Tuktoyaktuk could be reached in summer only by boat or plane, and in winter by an ice road across the frozen channels of the delta and the sea. Construction of an all-season highway began in January 2014, and the road opened on 15 November 2017: 138 km of two-lane gravel from Inuvik, with eight bridges and, by Wikipedia’s count, 359 culverts, laid over permafrost. Wikipedia describes it as the first all-weather road to Canada’s Arctic coast. At the end of it, the territory’s Department of Infrastructure has put up an Arctic Ocean sign, and since a consultation with the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation the sign also carries the Inuvialuktun Nunaryuam Qaangani Tariuq, which Cabin Radio reports as meaning “ocean at the top of the world”. Many visitors take their shoes off there and step into the sea.
The hamlet’s name is its own. Known as Port Brabant under British rule, it became in 1950, Wikipedia records, the first Indigenous settlement in Canada to reclaim its traditional name. Tuktuyaaqtuuq means “it looks like a caribou”: by local legend a woman watched caribou wade into the water here and turn to stone, and reefs said to look like them still show along the shore at low tide.
The English word “pingo” is borrowed from here. Wikipedia records that the botanist Alf Erling Porsild took it from the Inuvialuit in 1938, for the conical hills of this coast, and that it has since become the scientific term.
The field notes
Hills with ice inside
Parks Canada explains that a pingo forms in a recently drained lake. The ground under the old lake bed is unfrozen, surrounded by permafrost; as it freezes from the edges, water in the saturated sediment is pushed towards the centre, and the pressure lifts a thin skin of ground into a dome over a growing core of ice. The pingo keeps rising until its whole core is ice. Pingos can live for about a thousand years, Parks Canada says, before they begin to collapse. The best measurements of the process were made by the geographer J. Ross Mackay, who surveyed the Tuktoyaktuk pingos for decades; his surveys of Ibyuk between 1973 and 1983 found the lower half of the hill unchanged and the summit rising by up to 2.3 cm a year. Wikipedia’s article on pingos gives Ibyuk’s age as about a thousand years. Its name means “thick” in Inuvialuktun, by Parks Canada’s account, and Parks Canada records that the Inuvialuit and their Thule ancestors have used the pingos for at least seven centuries as nakataq, navigation landmarks, and as lookouts.
A landmark kept by agreement
Pingo Canadian Landmark was created in 1984 by the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, the land-claim settlement for the Western Arctic, and covers about 16 square kilometres. Parks Canada manages it together with the Inuvialuit Land Administration, the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, the Tuktoyaktuk Elders Committee, the Hunters and Trappers Committee and the Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation. A boardwalk with viewing platforms leads to the pingos; Parks Canada says it can be reached only by water, and that licensed outfitters in Tuktoyaktuk run motorboats to it in about twenty minutes. Walking up a pingo from its base to its summit is prohibited from 15 April to 31 October, and recreational drones are banned throughout the landmark. The surrounding tundra holds Arctic willow, Labrador tea, dwarf birch and cloudberries, and grizzly and polar bears, wolves and foxes range across it, according to Wikipedia.
A coast on the move
The hamlet’s history includes hard years that the reference layer records plainly. Wikipedia notes that between 1890 and 1910 many families were wiped out by influenza brought by American whalers, and that in 1947 Tuktoyaktuk became the site of one of the first government day schools designed to assimilate Inuit children by force. Today the shore itself is moving. The CBC has reported the hamlet losing up to a metre of coastline a year to storm waves and thawing permafrost, and several homes have been moved inland; in 2023 the Government of Canada announced more than $53 million to protect the shoreline and Tuk Island, to give the community time to plan for a possible move to higher ground.
The Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula from Landsat 7: thousands of thaw lakes in the tundra beside the Beaufort Sea. North is to the right.
Photograph: NASA Earth Observatory (Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon) · Public domain · cropped
The exposed core of a pingo near Tuktoyaktuk: a wall of solid ice under the peat. A researcher stands for scale.
Photograph: Lorenz King · CC BY-SA 4.0 · cropped
Pingos above the tundra and its lakes near Tuktoyaktuk, on a rainy August day.
Photograph: Gertrudius · CC BY-SA 4.0 · cropped
The Arctic Ocean sign at the end of the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway.
Photograph: DrReload · CC BY-SA 4.0 · cropped
- Book the boat out to the hills with somebody who grew up on this water, and leave the decision about today to them.
- Keep to the boardwalk and off the slopes, however much the hills look made for rolling down.
- Pack something warm for your hands, whatever the calendar says about summer.
- Add the hills to the list one at a time from the boat. There were more of them than there was page, so the list went round the margin and up the side.
- This is somebody's home coast. Buy your lunch and your crafts in the hamlet, and point your camera at the sea and the hills.
Ibyuk Pingo. A smooth, round-shouldered hill of peat and tundra plants standing alone above the drained lake beds west of Tuktoyaktuk, 49 metres high and 300 metres across at its base, with a core of solid ice. Its name means “thick”. It is the tallest pingo in Canada, and measurements over a decade found its summit still rising by a couple of centimetres a year. Visitors see it from the boardwalk below; in summer, nobody walks up it.
Tally, in the marginFiled under hills, then moved to the shelf for things that are mostly ice wearing a coat, then moved back again, because it seemed unkind to demote anything that tall in country that flat.
Getting there
How to get there. The gateway is Inuvik, which has an airport with regular flights from Yellowknife and from the Yukon, and is the end of the 736 km Dempster Highway, according to Wikipedia. From Inuvik, drive the 138 km of the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway; Spectacular NWT, the territory’s tourism board, puts the drive at about two and a half hours and warns that the road can be rough and is mostly without mobile signal. To see the pingos close up, book a boat with a licensed Tuktoyaktuk outfitter to the landmark’s boardwalk, or paddle the 30 to 40 minutes from the day-use area beach in calm weather, as Parks Canada describes.
When to go. Parks Canada opens the landmark’s day-use area, with its boat launch and pavilion, from June to September, and the sea around Tuktoyaktuk is open water only after the ice has gone. The Dempster Highway’s river crossings close through much of May and November while the rivers break up and freeze, Wikipedia notes. Summer days are long: Wikipedia gives Inuvik, south of Tuktoyaktuk, an average of 56 days of midnight sun.
What to arrange ahead. A boat tour with a local outfitter; a full tank and a spare tyre in Inuvik; and slack in the plan, because Parks Canada warns that weather and water levels can force a change of route, and Cabin Radio and the CBC have reported the highway closed by washouts after heavy rain.
Safety. The State Department has Canada at Level 1, exercise normal precautions, its lowest level, noting only that petty crime is common in popular tourist areas.
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Common questions
Where is Tuktoyaktuk?
Tuktoyaktuk is an Inuvialuit hamlet on Kugmallit Bay, on the Arctic Ocean near the Mackenzie River delta in Canada’s Northwest Territories. It stands at the northern end of the 138 km Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway, and Wikipedia gives its population in the 2021 census as 937.
What is a pingo?
A pingo is a hill with a core of ice that grows in permafrost country. Parks Canada explains that pingos form in drained lakes, where freezing pushes water towards the centre of the old lake bed and lifts the ground into a dome over a growing block of ice. About 1,350 stand near Tuktoyaktuk in Canada’s Northwest Territories.
How tall is Ibyuk Pingo?
Ibyuk Pingo, in Pingo Canadian Landmark near Tuktoyaktuk, is 49 metres high and 300 metres across its base, according to Parks Canada, which makes it the tallest pingo in Canada and the second tallest in the world. Surveys by J. Ross Mackay between 1973 and 1983 found its summit rising by up to 2.3 cm a year.
Can you climb the pingos at Tuktoyaktuk?
Not in summer. Parks Canada prohibits walking up a pingo from its base to its summit in Pingo Canadian Landmark from 15 April to 31 October, and asks visitors to see the pingos from the boardwalk, which is reached by boat from Tuktoyaktuk. Recreational drones are banned throughout the landmark.
Can you drive to the Arctic Ocean in Canada?
Yes. The Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway, opened on 15 November 2017, runs 138 km over gravel from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic Ocean, and Wikipedia describes it as the first all-weather road to Canada’s Arctic coast. Inuvik is reached by the Dempster Highway or by air.
What does Tuktoyaktuk mean?
Tuktoyaktuk is the anglicised form of the Inuvialuktun Tuktuyaaqtuuq, “it looks like a caribou”, after a legend of caribou turning to stone at the shore. Wikipedia records that in 1950 the hamlet, then called Port Brabant, became the first Indigenous settlement in Canada to reclaim its traditional name.
When is the best time to visit Tuktoyaktuk?
June to September, when Parks Canada opens the day-use area of Pingo Canadian Landmark near Tuktoyaktuk and boats can reach the pingo boardwalk. The Dempster Highway’s river crossings on the way to Inuvik close for much of May and November, while the rivers break up and freeze.
Is Canada safe to visit?
The U.S. State Department has Canada at Level 1, exercise normal precautions, its lowest level (advisory dated 5 June 2026). It notes that petty crime such as pickpocketing and car break-ins is common in popular tourist areas.