“… to fly the Northwest Passage …”
Yesterday was an amazing day, in both good and not so good ways. Since Calvin and JP came up to join Dave and I here at
Aviat Camp on Tuesday, we’ve been working our tails off installing these POLARIS seismic monitoring stations in their new homes around the Melville Peninsula. We’ve gotten into a steady routine, wake up early for breakfast (around 6:30am) so we can be in the chopper for 8am and off to the station. Once there, the three of us work pretty much non-stop until we finish the station, usually around 5pm, and then have to wait for a couple hours until the chopper is done picking up the samplers for the day before we can be picked up and bought back to camp. That’s one of the prices we have to pay as guests in a place like this, we have to work around everyone else, and as much as I love being out in the wilds here, after 8 hours of hard work, what I want most is supper and a chance to lie down. At that point, having to wait an extra couple hours isn’t really my idea of a good time. As another example of our place on the pecking order here, the three of us (Dave left yesterday) were politely kicked out of our four person ‘tent’ (more like cabin) last night and spread out amongst the various other tents here because some new ladies had arrived and needed a tent to themselves. I’m now bunking with the pilots, which is fine (once the spare rotorhead and other helicopter junk was finally taken off my bed at 11:30pm), but it would have made life much easier and nicer for us if we were all in the same place and could keep our gear there too. The kicker was being told we would have to move right after coming back exhausted at 7:15pm after a 13hr day of hard work. Overall though, being here in camp is a great time. The people are all wonderfully nice and friendly, the food is amazing and plentiful and the accommodations (while sparse and ‘rustic’) are a hack of a lot better than any alternative in the region. The issues don’t arise unless you’re dealing with logistics with the camp manager, and even then she’s pretty accommodating – as long as our needs fit in with her other, more important, priorities.
Anyway, our task yesterday was to set up the third POLARIS station, this one at
Gifford Fjord over on the south coast of Baffin Island, just north of Iglulik. Due to the fact that it was a 40-minute chopper ride to get there, we were told we’d have to leave at 6am so the helicopter could make it back in time to start its normal flying duties back at camp on time. So waking up at 5:15am was not really a pleasant experience, but I got an understanding of what the sunrise is like around here (since it rises at around 4:45 it usually feels like noon by the time you get up). Having seen that, I think I’m going to stick with watching the (amazing) sunsets around 11pm each night, much more accessible, and even aesthetically nicer I’d say.
We managed to get organized and lift off on time, so the sun was still low in the sky as we flew north towards Baffin. This flight promised some impressive scenery, so I was eager to see it and had my camera at the ready, but as we loaded the chopper, I realized I had an unfortunate choice. The right side of the helicopter had a nice (relatively) clean and scratch-free window (unlike the left side), but flying north meant this was broadside the low-angle sun, which often causes window glare and accentuates any dirt and scratches. I was first onboard, and so had the choice of which side I wanted, and in the end went for the sunny, clean window. Turned out to be a poor choice, but once airborne you can’t change seats in a small, crammed chopper, so I did the best I could, and still managed to get some decent pictures. The scenery didn’t disappoint; flying over the Strait of Heckla and Fury (one of the narrow points along the Northwest Passage) you could see pack ice being pulled along by the strong currents, and collecting in bays along the shore. To think that it’s mid August, and there’s still tons of ice on the ocean here! This place is truly amazing. The landscape on both sides of the strait consists mostly of ridges of bare rock or a thin, gravely moraine, with valleys and lakes gouged out of the hills leaving shear cliffs in some places that still harbour snow in their shadows. It’s truly spectacular up here, and there’s really no way I can describe it accurately, you’ll have to come up and see it for yourself (though with return airfare from Ottawa going for $3000, it’s not exactly an accessible place).
The site itself was an old wind-swept esker, whose surface had been scoured of all sand grains leaving a ‘desert-pavement’ of tightly interlocked gravel and cobbles. And as if to remove any doubts as to where the sand had gone, the wind was howling wildly when we arrived, and only slowed slightly by the time we left at the end of the day. Try to imagine 8 hours of work setting up racks of solar panels, a satellite dish, and a seismometer vault and all the associated cables and electronics. Now imagine doing this in howling winds (where the 2.4m diameter satellite dish and 4m x 1.5m solar panel racks acts like huge sails) where getting ballast means shoveling nearly 6 tonnes of sand and gravel out from beneath a thick crust of pure rock. Throw in a different (horrid) design for the solar panel racks that took us 2 hours to figure out how to assemble, a locked seismometer that needed a cable we didn’t have to unlock it and a satellite dish whose focal point had mysteriously moved during transport, and it made for a grueling day. There were times I just wanted to give up, call in the chopper and go back to camp, but because of the large amount of helicopter time needed to get there and back, it didn’t seem like we were going to get another chance, so we had to just work through it. So although we had a promising start to the day, most of it ended up being less than ideal. Finally after 11.5 hours we managed to get it all up and running which felt like quite a victory, and so I spent most of the remaining hour and a half before the chopper arrived napping under the evening sun on a cardboard solar-panel box, blissfully ignorant of the wind that still blew all around.
Just before the chopper came, I finally got up and decided I ought to at least look around the area a little bit before I left – seeing as it could quite possibly be my last time on Baffin Island for quite a long time. Also, when taking the GPS coordinates for the station, I realized that we were only about 500m south of 70˚N – making it the most northerly place I’ve ever been, and since I was that close, I just had to go up and actually make it to 70˚N. A short little jaunt over a small rocky ridge brought me to a small pond/marsh that wouldn’t otherwise have drawn any attention, but the 70th degree of latitude passed right through it. Seeing as getting wet up here is just asking for trouble, I elected to walk around the pond until I found a person-sized rock sitting at exactly 70˚N (±5m according to my GPS, but I wasn’t going to let a stupid little uncertainty keep me from felling like I had reached my goal) rather than wade out the 5m it would have taken from where I came to the shoreline. Sitting on the rock looking out at the landscape around it, it seemed extremely bizarre and almost laughable that this precise spot was special – an example of the strange systems we humans have for understanding/describing the world that really have no real significance. But all the same, there was a feeling of excitement and accomplishment as I sat on that rock. I love the north, there’s something about it that draws me up here, to explore this vastly different world, and even sitting on that one milestone of latitude, somehow I doubt it will be my last…
I chose the sunless side on the return trip and got some more great pictures, but of course the best scenery was on the other side of the helicopter (and it appeared that the sun wasn’t actually all that much of a factor) so I felt a little cheated again. However, it is really hard to complain about something as small as which side of the chopper you’re on when you’re out in an amazing place like this, just being there and being able to see even part of it is such a treat.
We took today off, having worked 3 long hard days straight, and are planning to go out tomorrow to finish the last station in the area. From there, we still have some work to do in Iglulik and maybe another station further north on Baffin (though unlikely now), but making plans any more than a day in advance is just asking to get burned around here, so I’m not making any bets. When the work is done, I’ll be going back to Ottawa, and in the meantime, I’m going to make the most of this amazing place I’m in now!
This is the online home of one Shane Warner, my place to attempt to tell some of my stories, as well as just spout off whatever comes to mind.
