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.

Consultations in Constraint

I don't know how many of you are still out there following this nonsense but if you are, Pete and I have signed up for a rather  more significant journey.

We don't usually do sponsorship, in either direction, but during all our voyages and presentations we have made a point of raising money for kids and others with cancer as a memorial tribute to a couple of young friends. This time we have decided to be something of an Old Farts Rump in Adam Spencer's Breakfast Booze Busters crew in an enterprise called Dry July. www.dryjuly.com

For the aliens, Adam Spencer hosts the Breakfast radio programme on Australia's 2BL national radio network. http://www.abc.net.au/sydney/programs/702_breakfast/  He's a bit of a genius, a thoroughly good guy, appears to have even less hair than me (but hasn't - I think he shaves for that super shiny look...) and would understand all our Hitchiker jokes. He interviewed us on our way home from the Kerguelens.

Accordingly, there will be no Consultations for the whole month of July. That's 31 days.  Our crew of medical specialists, Drs Gordon, Cooper, Murphy, Windhoek, the Doctor from Dublin, Dr Dry from Cork, the Barber Surgeon (Mr Talisker) and all the rest will become rail meat for the duration. For the uninitiated, that means no alcohol for Pete and me for 31 days. All Medicinal Compounds will be banished to the outer darkness. I can just hear Marvin telling us how much we won't enjoy it.

If any of you would like to join us in one of the very best of causes, please sign on at www.dryjuly.com, then when you are signed on, find the options and select 'join a team' and look for Breakfast Booze Busters in the drop down menu or enter team number 2102.. Then get to work finding sponsors. If total abstention is a bit too hard, contributions would be entirely acceptable. Ideally, we would like you to sponsor us - say $1.00/day. You can do this through me and this blog or directly to the Team via the website.

I'll try to keep a running commentary going as we progress.

Thanks!

Berrimilla's travels since December 26 2004

With thanks to my diary for the world map. Small scale and approximate but close enough for a sailing ship.

The blue line is Sydney, Cape Horn, UK, Sydney in 2005 and the red line is Sydney - UK via the North West Passage in 2008 and back to Sydney via the Kerguelen Islands 2009-10. Each includes a Fastnet Race.

Last launch for Atlantis

Hauntingly beautiful video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKPqomW5kDI&feature=autofb

Lots more links on the right. With thanks to Matt for the main link.

Pascal Lee and Leroy Chiao

Pascal is out on the sea ice in the Wellington Channel between Cornwallis Island and Devon Island right now (zoom out to see exactly where that is). He's driving a specially equipped tracked Humvee and simulating a pressurised Moon Rover.

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0e3h8JV5kbk0Bap9IpsiC1IoEGBiiXYxs

The background story is here
http://www.marsinstitute.info/

And Leroy and Miles O'Brien will be doing live commentary on the final launch of the shuttle Atlantis tomorrow. Only 2 more shuttle flights after Atlantis (click on the live webcast link on the left). Liftoff is scheduled for 1330 GMT or 2230 AEST Friday.

http://spaceflightnow.com/

Something for the (adult?) kids?

A friend at NASA Ames sent me this and asked me to spread the word. A chance to do some science.

http://www.moonzoo.org/

Thanks for coming!

Was fantastic to see all y'all yesterday - thanks for coming. Pete and Berri and I had a wonderful day and we hope you did too.

Special thanks to Scott and Florian who laid on the food, and to RANSA for years of support and for letting us use the Club yesterday.

Some coming home party photos

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/alex1whit/BerriComingHomeParty?authkey=Gv1sRgCI_-zKmJ8vvo7QE#

Something else to follow

Pascal Lee and his team are about to drive a tracked Humvee from Resolute to Devon Island across the sea ice of the Wellingtom Channel.

Follow them here

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/analogs/