The Same.

Murphy and the Examiner in a wreathing clammy clinch. Breeding imminent. Freezing rain again in Resolute. Appendages for a clearance this afternoon...
More 2008 and 2010 pics here - click on the Wildlife albums. Captions may follow today if we are still stuck here.
http://picasaweb.google.ca/home?tab=mq

And the sun came out

And the planes flew - and ours went u/s on it's first trip and we who were second became second hand and here we still are. Appendages for tomorrow!

Some high arctic flowers here:
http://picasaweb.google.ca/alex1whit/HighArcticFlowers#

More photos - from Alaska 2008

Fogggbound time put to use - I have collected my photos of wildflowers from Alaska in 2008 and put them here:
http://picasaweb.google.ca/alex1whit/TundraFlowersAlaska#
Captions to follow if I get time to go through and identify them. Takes a mindboggling time to do it - there must be an easier way.
And then I will put up some wildlife pics from the same time.

Unfortunately, I did not bring the Southern Ocean Albatrosses and the Kerguelen pics with me else I'd have got them sorted too. Nothing like a spot of freezing foggg to spur one to action.

Flabby in Resolute

Still stuck in Resolute. This weather system seems to like it here but I wish it would go away.

Till it does, I've got a lot of time on my hands - can't roam far because of bears, did not bring my running shoes and have to stay close anyway in the forlorn hope that the freezing fog and drizzle will go away for long enough for a Twotter round trip to the Crater - about 45 minutes each way, but it has to be able to land at each end with some certainty.

So I've been headbanging with picasa web albums and there are some more photos here
http://picasaweb.google.ca/alex1whit/Resolute#

The Canadian army is moving in in strength for a big exercise - tents, field kitchens and soldiers everywhere.

Another tail...

2 years ago we were in Cambridge Bay in Berrimilla waiting for the ice to open in the central NW Passage to the east. Here is the most recent ice coverage  chart issued 2 days ago.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS56CT/20100802180000_WIS56CT_0005118933.gif

The ice seems to be more extensive this year. I have just spoken to Peter Semotiuk, that wonderful man in Cambridge Bay who, in his own time, looks after all the small boats attempting the passage with twice daily radio skeds. He says there are about 9 vessels hanging around waiting including someone in a solo rowing boat who is about 70 miles east of us, holed up in a bay on Devon Island sheltering from the wind and snow. There's another in Pond Inlet, a couple in Greenland and others in the west near Point Barrow. Lancaster Sound was not nice when we flew over and I'm sure it's a lot nastier at the moment but things can change very fast.

But as Peter says, ain't no-one going nowhere at the moment and the central arctic ice is still solid. Just goes to emphasise how lucky we were when we went through.

In the photos, the icebreaker in the bay is the CCGS Henry Larsen. Her chopper has been doing crew transfers and freight lifts all day. A C17 that was scheduled to land earlier did a low pass over the airstrip and diverted to Yellowknife. I'm not surprised, but it seems to be clearing now and appendages crossed we will get out tomorrow.

Fun in the high arctic part 2

Just got back to my room wrapped around nice crisp bacon sando and the fire alarm went off. In a wooden building, fire retardant materials notwithstanding, that means serious. Grabbed all my warm gear and evacuated to windy open shed nearby. There's snow blowing horizontally and drifting and struggling into warm gear in the swirling bluster ain't so squeezy. No sooner got it all on - I keep gloves, hat, neckies etc in the pockets - and we got called back inside. The place is full of Canadian soldiers and there were a lot of us out there. Left the camera behind so no pics.

Just another day in the boonies at 74.43N 094.59W.

The box

aka the Arctic Hotel. It seems to have dropped off the last email. Elegant, functional cubist sculpture in wooden cladding.

And it's snowing again in Resolute. Yeehaa. Bacon sando and tabasco (but medicinally bereft) to follow this broadcast.

Fun in the high arctic

The low is still plonk above us and it's windy, wet, cold and generally pearshaped and dismal. HMP is supported by the Polar Continental Shelf  Program run by Natural Resources Canada. Polar Shelf operate the Twin Otters that supply the Camp and we are dependent on them and the weather for transport out of here. We will check with them in a couple of hours - looking out of my window, I think flying here would be ok but not necessarily on Devon where the Camp is at higher altitude and may be in or dangerously close to the cloudbase. I don't know the terrain over there - whether it would be possible to low fly safely below the cloud - but an interesting ride if so.

The weather is also testing my planning - what do you pack into a 20 kilo bag for a couple of weeks beside the Haughton crater? There's not a lot of room after the arctic sleeping bag and mat and I had to compromise. Lots of thin thermals, a quilted jacket that's seen better years and waterproof pants and an oversize sailing jacket. Gloves - 3 layers - monster socks, balaclavas and other headgear and neckies to keep the wind out of the jacket.Waterproof shoes - my Bering Sea fisho's boots were a bit too big and heavy but would have been ideal. So far so good but not really good enough for heavy freezing rain. I went for a walk with the camera yesterday and only my fingertips got cold. Kira has the right gear in the photo.

I never knowin what order gmail will load the photos - seems to be a bit random - the blue building is the Polar Shelf Program, the wooden box is the Arctic Hotel, there's a ship in the bay above the red truck (I magnified it to pixel grain and it has Peace on it's side - will research later) and at 75 degrees north, satellite dishes point to the horizon. And it's cold and wet and about 20 knots in all of them. And the airstrip with Twotter, choppers and a sort of boxcar in the distance.

Resolutely muddy

The snow turned to rain and here we still are. This is why

http://www.flightplanning.navcanada.ca/Latest/gfa/anglais/Latest-gfacn37_cldwx_006-e.html?Produit=GFA&Region=37&Langue=anglais&NoSession=NS_Inconnu&Mode=graph

Resolute is under the centre of this little low and it's not moving very fast. Not a lot else has moved either.

The standard green sticker...

Resolute views and the poor cold NASA mule. The green sticker goes on every boarding pass out  of Iqaluit as soon as the weather looks marginally iffy.

This is just like the day we pulled the plug and turned for home 40 miles south in Berri in 2008.

Back to the Pillow Book

It's snowing in Resolute - window closed, the Examiner lurks and the Twotter becomes something near yet distant....

Fwd: Resolute Bay...

More pics here.
http://picasaweb.google.ca/alex1whit/ArcticTailsAndOtherStuff#

Squeaked into Resolute - 20 minutes later and the fog would have been too thick to land - Murphy and the Examiner clearly out of practice. The Arctic in all its stunning desolate in your face indifferent beauty, Arctic Poppies and mosquitoes included. Iqaluit to Nanisivik mostly cloudy but it opened to allow us to land and I felt that eerie shiver - back again, without the stress and again gobsmacked by the splendour of it all. Out of Nanisivik over Arctic Bay and Admiralty Inlet and the same patch of ice - I'm sure it was! - that we had to dodge in Berri almost exactly 2 years ago - past Prince Leopold hugged by the cloudbank and across Berri's track from the photo in an earlier blog post. Into Resolute and Kira drove me in the NASA mule to the insulated box of the Arctic Hotel and then we went out into the Arctic night to look at downtown Resolute and the ice in the bay. Cold wet wind across the 1000 year Inuit settlement - whalebone and a walrus skull - and more poppies. There's a bear warning in force so one on watch all the time...

0345 now (1845 tonight in Sydney) and the BBC in the background - still low cloud and gloom outside - I have my window open because the room is way too hot - I can see the tail of the battered old  HS 748 that brought us in. If the cloud lifts, Twin Otter to HMP in a few hours. Woohoo!. I have my Naturalist's Guide to the Arctic from the airport shop in Iqaluit and I'll try to do better with the descriptions as we go. Slow link here and uploading pics not a little tedious. I need Marvin for the car parking work but he'd be utterly incapable of describing the exhilaration of being back - awestruck astonishment too at being only about 40 miles from Berri's eastward turn two years ago. Doesn't seem in tune with humdrum reality.

Ottawa in August

3 different aeroplanes so far and at least 2 more tomorrow for the flight to Resolute. Today's lot not too bad and Murphy and the Examiner declined to intervene so here I am.

 Idle musings on the way about different lives - squashed in a window seat 5 miles above night time Canada and looking down through gaps in the cloud at the headlights of the cars on isolated roads and wondering what the drivers could see ahead and how their day's experience influenced their moods. I doubt that most of them had the quiet excitement of anticipating tomorrow's flight and of seeing again the desolate grandeur of the high arctic.

Dry July is over - Dr Gordon had a cameo part in the long trip across the Pacific today and between us, Pete and I raised a bit over $2000 thanks to the generosity of all y'all.

No photos yet - was dark or cloudy - but I'll try to get some desolation in the viewfinder tomorrow and maybe even a glimpse of Berri's little track along its edge..

HMP link

View HMP in a larger map

The call of the Arctic.

It looks as if it might actually happen! Next Sunday I'm flying to Ottawa on a big aeroplane and then the next day on a much smaller aeroplane from Ottawa north to Iqaluit, along the length of Baffin Island to Nanisivik and then across Lancaster Sound to Resolute Bay. We will reverse my earlier experience of arriving at Cape Desolation in Berrimilla after flying over it less than a year before. This time we will cross Berrimilla's actual track close to Prince Leopold Island (in the background in the photo).


The flight from Ottawa crosses some of the most desolate terrain in the world. One of my favourite authors, Ernest K Gann, wrote a novel about this corner of Canada based on an actual plane crash and the search in which he took part - it was called Island in the Sky and it was made into a film. I have never seen the film but the book is a wonderful description of the territory.


From Resolute, weather permitting, on an even smaller aeroplane, probably a Twin Otter, to Devon Island and the Haughton Mars Camp. There are several blogs by the scientists up there - here is one I have just been sent:
http://voicesfromspace.blogspot.com/


I've spent the last week squeezing all my arctic survival gear into a small bag and collecting all the camera and computer and satphone connector gizmos into a heap so that I can distribute them around the pockets in my jacket - less chance of losing them in the baggage transfers!


So there will be photos, bloggery and possibly - for the Australians - a satellite phone call to Macca on Sunday August 8th.


And still Dry...

Watch this space.

HMP in google earth

I have been trying to post a google earth placemark on this blog so that it works as a link. I'm sure it must be possible but it has defeated me so if you want to find the Haughton Mars Camp, feed these co-ordinates into google earth and they should take you there.

75.26.00.63N  89.51.58.20W

There may be a link on the HMP website as well. www.marsinstitute.com and click on HMP

Good luck!

Respectability for an old fart?

Another abridged version of the North West Passage transit - this one appropriately acknowledging Corrie and Kimbra - in the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter. What an erudite spot for a scruffy old geezer to hang a byline! And all from talking to a spaceman on Berrimilla's batphone. Thanks to the Editor for permission to post the page - and to Leroy Chiao for a special kind of erudition.

For those of you who don't know, there's a longer article in the July issue of Yachting World. It would be interesting to know how the Friends overlap with the readers of Yachting World.

Devon Island YES!

From Keith Cowing www.spaceref.com 

Alex:

At last , you get to see our smelly, isolated, quirky, home away from home!

Pictures, blogs, PLEASE!

Get Pascal to take you north to the canyons and inlets.  And please get to Beechey Island if at all possible.

Working on it mate - working on it. Watch this space.

Haughton Mars Camp

For anyone still following, the blog will resurrect in a few days. I have been invited up to Devon Island by Pascal as part of the summer programme for the Haughton Mars Project (www.marsinstitute.com and click on HMP) and I'm flying up there on august 1st for about 10 days - almost exactly two years since we got so close in Berrimilla.

I'll take a laptop and the satphone so that I can keep the blog going but will only be able to send photos if I can use the camp internet connection. If not, then lots when I get back.

Crossing the fingers and all other appendages that I might be able to visit the Fraknlin graves at Beechey Island. We got so close enough in 2008 to see the cliffs behind Beechey. Go to  http://www.johngeiger.net/frozen.html  for the book and the story. The photos of young John Torrington, who died on January 1st 1846 and his two colleagues have for years haunted me - until I met Pascal in Louisiana, I never imagined that I might one day visit their graves.

Dry July and other stuff

Last Wednesday, Pete and I gave a presentation to 220 or so people at the Cruising Yacht Club in Sydney and amongst other thngs we raised $786 for Dry July and cancer research. Which I banked on Thursday.

This afternoon Robin gave me another $14 to round it up to $800 - Thanks Robin. I will bank it on Monday.

Other stuff:
Might anyone be interested in an Oz version of the Jester Challenge - perhaps The Jester Challenge Down Under with a gig from Sydney Heads around NZ and back? About the same distance as the original with a few more possible stops if things get pearshaped.

http://www.jesterinfo.org/thejesterchallenge2010.html

Let me know.