Lake Hazen


Lake Hazen is a freshwater lake in the northern part of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada, north of the Arctic Circle.
It is the largest lake north of the Arctic Circle by volume. By surface area it is third largest, after Lake Taymyr in Russia and Lake Inari in Finland.
The area around the lake is a thermal oasis within a polar desert, with summer temperatures up to.
The lake itself is covered by ice about ten months a year. It is fed by glaciers from the surrounding Eureka Uplands—Palaeozoic rocks north of the lake, rising up to above sea level—and drained by the Ruggles River, which flows into Chandler Fjord on the northern east coast of Ellesmere Land. The lake is flanked by the Arctic Cordillera.
The lake is long and up to wide, with an area of. It stretches in a southwest–northeast direction from to. The lake is up to deep and has an estimated volume of 51.4 km3. The shoreline is long and above sea level.
The lake has several islands, the largest of them being Johns Island, which is long and less than wide, also extending in a southwest–northeast direction like the lake itself. Other islands include Gatter Island, Clay Island, Whisler Island, and Dyas Island.
Lake Hazen is often called the northernmost lake of Canada, but detailed maps show several smaller lakes up to more than farther north. Turnabout Lake is immediately northeast of the northern end of Lake Hazen. Still further north are the Upper and Lower Lakes, with Upper Dumbell Lake southwest of Alert, Canada's northernmost settlement on the coast of the Lincoln Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean.
The northeastern end of Lake Hazen is southwest of Alert.
The lake is part of Quttinirpaaq National Park.
Artifacts of the Thule civilization were discovered near Lake Hazen in 2004. These included ruins of a stone dwelling near the Ruggles River and discarded fish bones, suggesting an overwintering fishing camp where the strong current resisted freezing over. The Thule were ancestors of the Inuit. In 1882, Adolphus Greely was the first European to discover the lake during his 1881–1883 expedition. He named the lake in honour of General William Babcock Hazen, who had organized the expedition. Camp Hazen was established on the northern shore of the lake in 1957 as part of Operation Hazen during the International Geophysical Year, and has been used by various scientific parties since then.
Lake Hazen is populated by two morphotypes of Arctic char, a larger and a smaller. Studies in the 1990s indicated neither char morphotype is anadromous, but Inuit traditional knowledge states otherwise.

Named inflows

All named rivers and creeks are listed in a clockwise manner, starting in the south:
At the southwestern end :
  • Very River
  • Adams River
On the northwest coast :
  • Turnstone River
  • Henrietta River
  • Ptarmigan Creek
  • Blister Creek
  • Skeleton Creek
  • Snow Goose River
  • Abbé River
  • Cuesta Creek
  • Mesa Creek
  • Gilman River
At the northeast end :
  • Turnabout River
  • Salor Creek
On the southeast coast :
  • Cobb River
  • Traverse River

Tourism

Hikers can start their hiking trips at Lake Hazen itself, or from Tanquary Fiord warden station at Tanquary Fiord Airport southwest of the lake.

In popular culture

Lake Hazen is the setting of a major story plot in the novel Good Morning, Midnight, published 2016. A film adaptation of that book was released in 2020 under the title The Midnight Sky, although the actual filming was done in Iceland.