Cape Bathurst

 

The Bathurst Peninsula is one of the weirdest places I've seen on a map. Its prominent feature is Cape Bathurst on its northern tip, but it's equally distinguished by the meandering Horton River, with its many curves and oxbows. What's weird about it, though, is unlike most rivers and nearly every meandering stream, it doesn't flow directly toward the sea but instead runs for some 50 miles parallel to the coast. 

The low Smoking Hills along the cape's eastern shore may be preventing the river from reaching Franklin Bay to the east, but they're not all that big, and the river has even broken through at one point and created a delta into the bay, but the meander loops and oxbows continue to the north. 

My guess is that the river first formed on the mainland after the glaciers retreated but before Franklin Bay was formed. As the Horton River flowed north across the flat, newly ice-free mainland west of the low Smoking Hills, it developed its meander loops and oxbows  Sediment from the river was deposited into the Beaufort Sea to the north, where the currents swept the sediment to the west, forming Cape Bathurst. The mainland east of the Smoking Hills must have been at a slightly lower elevation, because at some later time, as the glaciers continued to melt and sea levels rose, that part of the mainland was flooded, forming Franklin Bay. In other words, Franklin Bay didn't exist when the river formed the oxbows and the cape. At some point after the Bay formed, one of the meander loops broke through the Smoking Hills and formed that delta that's now bulging out into Franklin Bay. 

And that, my friends, is the difference between a normal person and a geologist. Most people see a map of a minor feature of the Northwest Territories; I see a whole entire story.

Anyway, the reason I was looking at the map of the Bathurst Peninsula is because, after a day's rest riding out Wednesday's winds, making blueberry pancakes and even taking a cold polar plunge in the icy glacial waters, both Ella Hibbert and Tamara Klink have left snug Summer Harbor on Booth Island and have rounded Observatory Point on the northernmost tip of Cape Bathurst. In so doing, they have completed the Northwest Passage through the Canadian archipelago - friendly reminder that to date only 12 sailors have ever sailed the Passage solo, and now these two have just brought that number to 14. 

Both sailors are currently sailing tandem through the (relatively) ice-free Beaufort Sea west of Cape Bathurst. It's not a race, but right now Ella is about 15 miles ahead of Tamara. They are about 200 miles from the Yukon border and about 280 miles from the Alaska border, and in about 100 miles will pass the Inuit village of Tuktoyaktuk, where they might stop to pick up some supplies (I would). Tuk is forecast to reach a summer-like high temperature of 68° F tomorrow, with rain arriving on Saturday. The rain may be heavy, as there are coastal flood warnings in effect for the Yukon coast.

Anyway, congratulations to Ella and Tamara on making it through the Passage and on into the Beaufort Sea!