Twin Otter plane, just landed on the tundra North of Hare Fiord. Glaciers
are touching the sea across the Fiord.
Similar, detail, with Fried Schwerdtner.
The pilot
shouts: “Is this were you want to land?”. You respond with “Yes” and he will
respond with “Let’s try it”. The plane make a few loops around the proposed
landing site and suddenly touches the uneven ground hitting rocks and shaking
with a load roar of the engines with
the propellers in reverse to break.
One minute
you are in a comfortable plane, the next minute you are on a cold tundra. The
first thing you do is set up the tents for shelter and load your shotguns.
Landing on
the wild tundra in Northern Canada is a tense experience when the proposed
landing site is unknown. All you have is carefully studying the aerial
photographs and looking for dry flat spots. Will there be a dry 300 m landing
spot free of rocks? Will the pilot try it? Where do you go as a fall back? It
must feels like landing on an aircraft
carrier, very tight. One minute you are in the air, another minute you are
circling above the target landing area and hit the rough ground. There is the
load sound of the oversized rubber tires hitting rocks and the load roar of
engines with the propellers in reverse to break. As long as you are still in
the plane you are still surrounded by the conveniences of civilization
including the plane noise and nauseating smell of jet fuel but after the
landing you will be on your own for the next two months, living in tents at freezing temperatures.
Surviving the landing is just the start of a real hardship period, cold and
lonely.
Resolute
Bay is the only airport with scheduled flights and the only transport in the
vast region of the Canadian Arctic Islands
is a chartered plane or helicopter [1]. The plane mostly used is the reliable Twin
Otter, a two engine bush plane. It can land
in freely picked spots on the tundra using oversized soft tires
provided you limit the payload to 3000
pounds [1][2][3][4]. The
plane only needs 100 m to land and a straight clear space of 300 m, similarly
for taking off.
The biggest
risk in landing is the muddy thawed tundra where the tires sink in the soft
ground and the planes gets stuck. Pilots look for dry or nearly dry places to
land. In the early summer these are rare as the tundra is still wet. A plane stuck in the mud is a disaster as
the only other plane will need to land nearby to pull it out and this means
that for that day none of the two government planes are available. Also, the
common poor flying weather conditions may stop flying for several days and
there tends to be a backlog forcing pilots to fly 16 hours a day at times.
In 1982 we
were dropped in the field by landing on a hillside on Eastern Axel Heiberg
Island[1]. There were six of us and for five this was our first trip, unaware what to
expect. The first spot near Whitsunday Bay was rejected, too difficult for such
a heavy plane. The pilot got an approximate position near Gibbs Fiord and
picked a landing spot on a hill side. Hitting the ground felt like a crash.
There was a loud roar of engines putting the propellers in reverse. The landing
was bumpy but we stopped within a 100 m, making tire marks in the wet tundra.
Bit surprised how easy this was, we unloaded the plane. As it was now empty, it
only needed a hundred meters to take off. We would be on our own for the next
eight weeks.
After 8
weeks in mid August a Twin Otter would pick us up near Buchanan Lake. It easily
landed on the gravel bars of the vast flood plane. It took off using a natural
runway of two hundred meters, which is very comfortable. The noise and typical
smell of jet fuel indicated we were going back to civilization but after 8
weeks camping in the wild I was very happy this was over.
In 1983 the
students were Jeff Torrance, Jeffy for short, an MSc student, and Steve and
Martin, summer students hired as field assistants. We decided to start the work
in early June to have two weeks extra. However, this was not a good choice as
this year spring was late. We tried to land at Whitsunday Bay but after 8 loops
the relatively old (around 60) but very experienced pilot decided against it,
"Too wet" he shouted, and "Other camp". I still managed to
yell to him "East of the mountain", before collapsing due to
airsickness caused by standing up during the sharp loops combined with an acid
breakfast of grapefruit. Jeffy took over the navigation and the pilot found a
perfect gravel bar for landing. However, not 4 km across the mountain with the
salt dome as planned but 8 km further to the east as this was the only good
landing site. It was cold that week. The area was fully covered in snow and
worse the freezing temperatures froze our vegetables at night, mostly potatoes
and carrots and these started rotting within a few days.
After a
week we again tried to land at Whitsunday Bay and the now much younger pilot
saw no problem although the tundra was still similar, with dry and wet spots.
He took one loop and landed [1] while the big soft
tires of the plane hit a few rocks during the landing. He couldn't avoid those,
he said, as they on the only bit of dry area but this was no problem.
Twin Otter landing on the tundra at Expedition Fiord, in front of the
main Expedition Glacier, about 10 km wide and 80 km long. Distance to glacier
is 6 km. Photograph taken during the bright mid summer night at 3 AM in the
morning in late July.
Expedition
Fiord is a little oasis enclosed by glaciers and mountain ridges and our camp
was well sheltered from the constant fierce Northern wind [10 km wide Thompson Glacier at 6 km
distance]. It was
now the end of the season and we shot off the unused parachute flares and small
flares [1] and burned a torn up tent using gasoline and
flares [1][2] after using it as a toilet tent. This is a
real comfort from crouching outside in the cold wind. I made the mistake of
firing off a parachute flare secretly standing in the tent door to surprise
Jeffy but the tent was quickly filled with a suffocating sulfur smoke. The camp
was very pleasant but I did get irritated for some reason by the noise of the
fast flowing streams during the occasional warm weather unable to sleep well.
The pick up at the end of
the season was on time as we had window of good weather. The plane had an older
pilot, the same person who refused to land at Whitsunday Bay in 1983 but now he
did not even make an extra loop. He arrived after midnight, flew over the
Expedition glacier [1], did not make a single reconnaissance loop but
landed in one go. After he landed he
told us this area was like an airport [1][2]. He was already working for 24 hours with
little sleep, a bit in a hurry due to the back-log as the previous week the
weather was too poor to fly. During the 2.5 hour flight to Resolute he spotted
Beluga whales and said "Lets go whale watching" and made a sharp turn
and descended to just above sea level. I did see the whales.
In 1988,
after landing in Resolute Bay with a one-day delay, we were asked if we could
be ready to go in 2 hours as the weather was good for flying. "Aaahh, yes,
no problem", I responded. Happy not to loose any more time. I was
convinced I could sort out the food and gear quickly using six years of camp
gear experience and with the help of one of the base aids, a very pleasant
Newfoundlander I knew from the previous years. He worked here from January to
October for the past 6 years leaving his family down south and was hoping for a
promotion as coordinator in the radio room. We soon took off by Twin Otter
plane and three hours later were dropped off in a cold, windy and rocky, uneven
streambed on Northern Ellesmere Island, North of Hare Fiord. The landing in the
stream bed was rough, hitting several rocks. This was a big contrast from
Toronto 36 hours earlier which had a heat wave with a temperature of 36-37
degrees Celsius. This area at 81 degrees latitude is much colder than Axel
Heiberg Island as it was closer to the Arctic Ocean and surrounded by glaciers.
It was still mostly covered in snow and temperatures were around zero Celcius.
Now it took me two weeks to get used to the cold and fighting the routine first
week cold was not easy this year.
The
1989 expedition on Northern Ellesmere Island was the year of snow, snow and
snow. Freak weather systems kept on rolling in from the south and covered the
mountains in a near permanent layer of one or two meters of snow. Only near sea
level the snow would melt. This is very unusual for this area, as it is know to
be an Arctic desert.
We went with a large group,
our professor, Matt from England, the MSc student with his field assistant and
Jeff (another student) my field assistant.
With the experience of last
summer realizing Northern Ellesmere Island is much colder and using the
knowledge from the Newfoundland fieldwork in 1985, 1986 and 1987, I ordered
Coleman gasoline lamps as portable stoves, surprising equipment for an area
that never gets dark. These proved to be very good to heat up the tents,
especially in the morning. We would always light a lamp before getting up and
in 5 minutes the tent would be warm.
In Resolute Bay we met an
artist who installed a one-meter compass needle (for a horizontal rotation) and
half meter long inclinometer needles (for a vertical rotation) outside the base
near the sea [1][2][3]. As we were so close to the magnetic pole,
only 100 km, they spun around slowly, both vertically and horizontally in a
seemingly chaotic way.
The six of us were dropped
of North of Hare Fiord on Northern Ellesmere Island on a muddy tundra near the
shore making deep tracks in the soft tundra and luckily the plane did not get
stuck [1]. The first week near the coast was fine and
the only (pleasant) incident was the pack of 4 wolves [white dots in the distance] but always kept a large distance.
They came back to our camp several times and we left a student home to guard
the tents. The scenery here is special, frozen sea ice [1], icebergs [1] and glaciers almost touching the sea [1].