What is "komatik"

Usage examples of "komatik".

In the south of Labrador this would be quite out of the question, as there the bush is so thick that it does not permit the snow to drift and harden sufficiently to bear dogs, and the use of the komatik is therefore necessarily confined to the coast or near it.

The weather was bitterly cold for men so thinly clad as Easton and I were, and the snow was so deep that we could not exercise by running, for we had no snowshoes, and while we wallowed through the deep snow the dogs would have left us behind, so we could do nothing but sit on the komatik (sledge) and shiver.

From his komatik box he produced a bottle of port wine and made us each take a small dose of it which he poured into a tin cup.

Once or twice we turned over, but the drivers never lost their hold of the komatik or control of the dogs.

Then, for fear that Edmunds might not understand the urgency of his immediate returns they kept firing at intervals all night, stopping only to pack the komatik box with the clothing and food that Edmunds was to bring to us.

This was when they first arrived at the Post with dogs and komatik and they were dressed in their native costume of deerskin trousers and Koolutuk, their cheeks red and glowing with the exercise of travel and the keen, frosty atmosphere.

The farthest I ever traveled myself in a single day with dogs and komatik was sixty miles.

The use of lashings instead of nails or screws permits the komatik to yield readily in passing over rough places, where metal fastenings would be pulled out, or be snapped off by the frost.

On the Atlantic coast from Nachvak south, mud is never used, and there the komatiks are wider and shorter with runners of not much more than half the thickness, and as you go south the komatiks continue to grow wider and shorter.

They permit the animals to swerve well to one side clear of the komatik when coasting down a hillside.

When there was a hill to climb we pushed on the komatik or hauled with the dogs on the long bridle to help them along.

When we had a descent to make, the drag—a hoop of walrus hide—was thrown over the front end of one of the komatik runners at the top, and if the place was steep the Eskimos, one on either side of the komatik, would cling on with their arms and brace their feet into the snow ahead, doing their utmost to hold back and reduce the momentum of the heavy sledge.

Sometimes the ice hills are piled so high here by the tide that it takes a day or even two to cut a komatik path through them and cross the river, but fortunately we had very little cutting to do.

Its bed forms the chief part of the komatik route to Nachvak, and therefore our route.

This made the going exceedingly hard and ground the mud from the komatik runners.