The NWT’s Great Slave is a big lake with a deep secret:
Beneath its whitecaps lies a mysterious, watery abyss unrivaled in North America. At a point not far offshore from the community of Łutsel K’e on Christie Bay the lake-bottom falls away two-thirds of a kilometre, making it the deepest lake in North America and the sixth deepest on Earth. Put in context, Great Slave could sink the CN Tower. To drop an anchor to the bottom, a fisherman would need more rope than he could lift.
According to John Ketchum of the Northwest Territories Geoscience Centre, there are debates about what’s behind Great Slave’s great depth. Some have said it’s an ancient rift, like the famous tectonic ruptures in East Africa. Others say it was caused by glaciers eroding the brittle rock along an ancient geologic fault.
