IQALUIT - Peter Autut's summer job with Parks Canada took him to the farthest reaches of the Arctic, for a nearly three-month stint under the midnight sun of Quttinirpaaq National Park.

Iqaluit resident Peter Autut explores the area around Lake Hazen in Quttinirpaaq National Park on Ellesmere Island. Autut worked in the park this summer, 500 km from the North Pole, for nearly three months of 24-hour sunlight. - photo courtesy of Peter Autut

At the north end of Ellesmere Island, Quttinirpaaq is the northern-most national park on the continent, barely 500 km from the North Pole.

"The location of where it is, so far north, I had to go." Autut said. "I know people who've been going up there for a couple of years and I always had an interest in it."

Along with four other staff, Autut looked after the hiking trails and counted the wildlife he saw such as wolves, muskoxen, hares, Peary caribou, ermines and gyrfalcons.

He didn't worry too much about polar bears. Few bears had been seen in the park so far north in recent years.

Autut's primary duties were to patrol the land and anticipate where visitors might get into trouble, such as where a bear might have been spotted or where a trail wasn't stable any more.

Autut, who grew up in Chesterfield Inlet and has lived the last few years in Iqaluit, was amazed at the mountainous landscape of northern Ellesmere Island.

"Everywhere you look, it's beautiful," he said. "It's nothing like here or the Kivalliq You get the feeling you're in Banff or Jasper."

In his off-hours Autut spent most of his time doing the same thing he did on the job: hiking in one of the most breathtaking landscapes in the world.

He said at one point his judgment failed him and he ended up on a tricky mountain pass a five-hour walk from headquarters. He was carrying a satellite phone, but if he had fallen and been unable to use it, he might never have been found.

Still, the fact that he completed the hike stayed with him.

"It was the same as when you score an overtime goal, that rush," he said with a smile.