Peter Qayutinuak Jr. was snowmobiling 140km with a group of five friends from Taloyoak, Nunavut, to a volleyball tournament in Gjoa Haven when a blizzard separated him from the others.
“My skidoo got stuck,” he told the CBC.
The route from Taloyoak to Gjoa Haven.
Abandoning his machine, he decided to continue to Gjoa Haven on foot in the -30˚ temperatures. For three shelterless, foodless days, he walked, navigating by the stars and walking at night in the hope of seeing the lights of Gjoa Haven. He made a point of taking brief catnaps because he didn’t want to get so tired that he would fall asleep from exhaustion and never wake up. The short naps rejuvenated him enough to keep going.
Peter Qayutinuak Jr. Photo: Samuel Wat
When his teammates reached Gjoa Haven and realized their friend was missing, one of them notified the authorities. Search-and-rescue officials used a mobile sensor that locates a lost person’s cellphone.
After they eventually pinpointed where Qayutinuak was, search crews went out on snowmobiles to retrieve him, despite the continued blizzard. But he was napping on the cold ground as they passed, and they almost missed him in the poor visibility. When he heard the snowmobiles, he at first thought he was dreaming. But when he stood up, they turned toward him immediately. They brought him to Gjoa Haven aboard one of the komatiks, or wooden sleds, dragged by a snowmobile.
“I was thinking of my kids…my mom, my siblings, my nieces and nephews, everyone that I love, kids at school, my hunting buddies…but most of all my family kept me going,” he wrote later on Facebook.
A few days later, on Sunday, April 19, he and his team won the volleyball tournament in Gjoa Haven.
Gjoa Haven. Photo: Wikipedia
