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Baffin Island Travel Guide



Baffin Island is often touted as the most beautiful island in the north, thanks to its spectacular glacier-capped mountains and breathtakingly indented coasts.[1] It is certainly a large island, the fifth largest in the world, and has a population of 11,000 people.[2]

Attractions
The island is very rugged and mountainous, with a number of peaks that exceed 6,000 feet, including the Mount Blanche and the Mount Asgard. The myriad lower cliffs that run in the range of 3,000 to 4,000 feet around the island also make it a popular place for base-jumping,[3] while simultaneously attracting ice climbers who look to tackle them and other mountains. Other visitors come to see the beauty of Baffin Island’s natural features as well as its arctic wildlife. The island is also known as the world center of Inuit Art. It is home to many Inuit artists with Cape Dorset, in particular, harboring many who are world-famous. Inuit art revolves heavily around prints, soapstone carvings, and the use of scrimshaws, which are objects such as ivory plied from the waters by whalers and delicately etched.[4]

The wildlife on Baffin Island feature polar bears, lemmings, walruses, beluga whales, narwhals, arctic wolves, hares, and foxes, herds of barren-ground caribou, and bearded and ringed seals. Summer is also a great time to come bird-watch as you’ll be able to spot various types of birds including Canada, snow, and brent geese, snowy owls, phalaropes, murres, glaucous gulls, ivory gulls, coots, mallards, loons, and arctic ferns.[5]

Tourists also come to watch the polar night and the midnight sun. This is a phenomenon during the summer when the sun is visible all day and doesn’t ever set. Conversely, during the winter for a period of three months, the sun never rises.[6]

References:
“Baffin Island.” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baffin_island>

Simpkins, Mary Ann. Canada. New York: Prentice Hall Travel, 1994. ISBN: 0671882783.

[1] Simpkins, 286
[2] Baffin
[3] Id.
[4] Simpkins, 286
[5] Baffin
[6] Id.







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