Published May 5, 2004 12:00AM
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Week of April 11-18, 1996 Biking and hiking in Nevada Utah’s Fishlake National Forest Camping in the Hawaiian Islands Exploring Canada’s remote Ellesmere Island Low-budget snorkeling in the Florida Keys A family vacation in Jamaica Exploring Canada’s remote Ellesmere Island Question: Can I get dropped off on Ellesmere Island and roam around for a few days? Do I need permission? Check-in or get a permit? Thanks in advance. Larry Mishkar Minocqua, WI factman@newnorth.net Adventure Adviser: Not surprisingly, there’s no permit required to explore the tip-top of Canada; there’s little need for crowd control since so few people actually make it up there. Number one deterrent, obviously, is cost: Getting “dropped off” means taking a twice-weekly flight from Resolute to Grise Fiord via Kenn Borek Air for a reasonable $485 round-trip (819-252-3845). Getting from there to Ellesmere National Park–a remote (understatement, to say the least) swath of parkland on the island’s northern tip–is another ball game altogether. You will need to pick up a park permit from headquarters (819-473-8828); allow an hour for permit registration and be prepared to shell out $100 for a three-day pass. That’s nothing compared to the bags of money–$8,000 to be more exact–you’ll have to shell out for a round-trip charter from Resolute to Lake Hazen, the park’s main fly-in point (it breaks down to a mind-boggling $1,000 dollars an hour for a four-hour, one-way flight). Once you’re there, brace yourself for a mind-blowing range of terrain–everything from sand dunes to ice fields to fjords–and an equally impressive lineup of wildlife: musk ox, arctic wolves, caribou, to name a few. |