August 2, 2025 – fly from Dawson City, Yukon to Inuvik, Northwest Territories
2025 Yukon & Northwest Territories
Yesterday, our tour director told us we are restricted to 20 lbs for baggage on this flight to Inuvik. This isn’t much to work with, but I have no problem taking less with me since we will only spend two nights in Inuvik. I remember when I was restricted to 14 lbs in a single small bag when I was on safari in Botswana. Our bus driver kindly offers to store our big bags in his room, since he will be staying in Dawson City while we are up north.
Our Air North Flight 327 on an ATR 42-320 2-engine turboprop departs from Dawson Airport at 11:30am Pacific Time. It is a cloudy but bright day, and the clouds clear as we fly north over Yukon’s big mountains and rivers into the flat landscape of the Mackenzie River valley in the Northwest Territories, crossing the Arctic Circle. Flight time is 1 hour 15 minutes, and we land at Inuvik at 1:51PM Mountain Time.
Once we are checked into the Mackenzie Hotel, there is time to explore the town. I don’t go far, but walk around the iconic igloo-shaped Our Lady of Victory Roman Catholic Church. The local grocery store is open, but most of the town is closed for the civic holiday weekend. We have a group dinner at Mamaqtuk, the hotel’s bar & restaurant. My beer cost $10.87, the food was mediocre, and the service was exceedingly slow.
I pop up my DJI Mini 3 Pro drone at 11PM in front of the hotel to take an HDR panorama from 50m above ground. Of course there is still lots of light at this late hour since we are so far north and it’s summertime.
