Yellowknife man finds peace during 1,700 km snowmobile ride to Arviat
CBC
The distance between Yellowknife, N.W.T., and Arviat, Nunavut, is about 1,000 kilometres as the crow flies. But as the snowmobile drives — it was more than 1,700 kilometres for Neco Towtongie.
The 44-year-old man, who is the husband of CBC Network reporter Juanita Taylor, finished the seven-day journey on Wednesday. He said it was inspired by the words of his father's late uncle.
"I used to talk to him all the time and get advice from him," said Towtongie. "He told me one time, in Inuktitut, he said: 'If you're not doing what you want, you're not going to be happy. And if you want to be happy, you have to do what you want.'"
Towtongie said those are words he lives by.
"You have to follow your heart, and my heart was in this."
Speaking to Loren McGinnis, the host of CBC's The Trailbreaker on Friday, Towtongie said he wanted to challenge himself and prove to himself he could make the journey. He also said he missed travelling because of the pandemic.
Towtongie, who is from Rankin Inlet in Nunavut, spent the first day of the trip planning his route and preparing himself in Yellowknife, where he has been living for more than a decade. He said he carried spares of everything — physically, or in mind — so his journey wouldn't turn into a search-and-rescue mission.
"Let's say I burned down my tent. What's going to happen? I know how to make an igloo, so that's my alternate," he explained. "I also had two sources of communication, a sat[ellite] phone and a [Garmin] InReach. I had two sources of heat. Two sources of light. Two blankets. Lots of food, enough gas, enough oil."
Towtongie said he carried 70 gallons of gas on his kamotik, an Inuit-style sled or sleigh. There were about 15 gallons left over when he reached his destination, after navigating landscapes with trees, mountains, rivers, open water and rocks.
"Being alone, it kind of really cleared my mind," he said. "With everything going on, with the war, with work, just it was so nice to just focus on what I had to do out there and not worry about anything going on in this crazy world we live in."
Instead, he focused on the challenges he encountered along the way.
For two days, Towtongie said he travelled through a blizzard. But after a friend helped lead him out of Łutselk'e following a day of rest, the biggest challenge was how little snow there was east of Great Slave Lake in the Barrenlands.
"I figured out a way to get around the lack of snow just by finding the drifts," he said.
Towtongie said the journey was a "pretty crazy idea," but it's one that's been on his bucket list for years. The COVID-19 pandemic, he said, gave him time to mull it over and plan.