Parks Canada staff flying by helicopter over Auyuittuq National Park on Tuesday took this photograph of the erosion at Crater Lake. (Matthew Nakashuk/Parks Canada)

Parks Canada has barred visitors from entering Auyuittuq National Park on Baffin Island from Pangnirtung in the south because a badly eroded moraine has raised fears about the possibility of flash flooding in Akshayuk Pass.

The federal parks department has asked glaciologists and geologists for expert advice on whether it's safe to reopen the pass, the park's most popular hiking destination and the entrance to the park for people travelling from the community of Pangnirtung, Nunavut. Parks officials hope to have an answer within a day or two.

"Until we get that information, we don't know how safe things are going to be," Pauline Scott, a spokeswoman for Parks Canada's Nunavut field unit, said Wednesday.

Akshayuk Pass is closed to visitors from Mount Overlord to Windy Lake, a distance of about 15 kilometres on both the east and the west sides of the pass, due to the danger of flash flooding from Crater Lake.

The moraine that keeps the lake from spilling into the pass is badly eroded, park officials say. Fourteen visitors were airlifted out of that area of the park on Monday and Tuesday.

The Windy Lake suspension bridge was already impassable after it collapsed last week because of erosion around its supports.

Auyuittuq National Park covers about 19,000 square kilometres of glacier-scoured terrain on southern Baffin Island. The park is about 30 kilometres from Pangnirtung, which also suffered flooding and damaged bridges last month.

"We saw large cracks and sinkholes," Pangnirtung senior administrator Ron Mongeau said. "When I look at the pictures that were e-mailed to me from Crater Lake, certainly it appears to be very similar."

Scott said she hopes to get answers from the experts soon because August is supposed to be a busy month in the national park.

"There's all kinds of visits planned. Cruise ships are also planning to take visitors in for short hikes. There's a TV documentary being filmed," she said. "There's all kinds of things that are planned for Auyuittuq."

Scott said 10 days of warm weather recently on Baffin Island have led to glacial melting and rising water, worsening the situation.

"So right now, we're trying to just avoid having visitors in the area until we can determine what might actually happen."