Sledding out towards aklavik and then back down the river past the grounded GIS Exlporer

An unofficial road is in on the river to Aklavik, and people have been using it but one car has already went in near a side creek, only sank the front end luckily. The road goes right past the barges and docks.

Skiing, the stars and the omnipresent moon

Just before town I stopped at Shell Lake as I wanted to inspect the ice runway that is being built on the lake for ski planes (happens every year) and to try and catch the transition between full night sky and stars with the waning light of the setting sun – gradation of deep blue to black with stars. I set a medium ISO and 30 seconds exposures and got some reasonable results with minimal trailing. I enhanced one in particular to bring out the Milky Way near Cygnus and even caught the dust lanes – pretty impressive for a basic set up. Nice transition though with light from Inuvik and the set sun balancing the night sky with emerging celestial objects. I see the one looking back to the main shore of Shell Lake caught a satellite. It’s also worth noting that Polaris seems almost directly overhead at this latitude.

and the moon...

Skiing on Boot Lake

The Dempster, in the evening

The moon is of course out more than the sun now is a natural draw for imaging, in town or out.

On Sunday, after climbing I headed south down the Dempster, it was a nice day -19, but no wind and very clear skies. Took some pix south of Beaver and Carmichael Lakes, trees, sunset, road, etc. Also got the sunset showing very pronounced mirage effect with a trapped air layer hanging over the Delta and warping the Richardson Range into fantasy-esque Plateau Mountains. The really interesting thing is that the layer is so distinct and quite visible. On the way back a martin jumped out on the road soon followed by a wolverine. Some of the locals were saying that one martin pelt went for 1300 dollars last year but that, of course, was exceptional. It seems one can make reasonable money trapping martin right now.

Further south...

Campbell Lake mirages