Monday, February 24, 2014

Some catch up shots from last week

Out by the Forward Operating Base near the airport - sunset looking across the tarmac of the main runway, -36


The previous weekend, near the barges which are overwintering by town and a nice crack developing the ice road



Later in the day by Caribou Hills - looking inside one of the original buildings used by the Reindeer herders, lots of rabbit and fox tracks around the buildings and heavy truck traffic is now on the ice road


Even later on the same day I went skiing further north as the snow is now setting up quite nicely, -38 though. Was able to get some decent turns in before dusk. Got back to the truck in time to watch two rock trucks drive up the ice road - obviously they are too heavy to truck up at 40 tonnes or so. I could feel the ice move and shift as they went by and the road was heavily cracked after they passed by.

Friday, February 14, 2014

sunday sledding adventrues

On Sunday I took the snowmobile and headed south on the river, i.e. upstream to see if I could get to the outflow from Campbell Lake. It seems that the initial clearing of a single lane on the river has not continued and the “road” was quite drifted in. This did not stop an n older couple in a sub compact from driving about 5 kms down, saw them on their way out; from their tracks it didn’t appear that they had made it to their destination.

Further along I passed a second vehicle that had a parked with the owners using snowmobiles get firewood. After I passed the Gwich’in camp I came across one other vehicle, a 4x4 crew cab that was apparently trying to do the same thing I was. They had turned around and were exposing overflow on the ice – leaving tracks about 30cm deep full of water and slush. After passing them I came to the end of the plow line and decided to turn around as well as the amount of overflow was defiantly increasing and the snow off the plow line was deep enough to have good potential to get stuck in. the last bit of overflow was about 100m long and I had to full throttle through it twice – going and coming. Machine got coated as the water/ slush froze and mixed with the dry powder snow past the open water. Temp about -28 and very humid on the ice, as the “dust” kicked up by the snowmobile hung in the air for quite some time.

Lastly a couple of fake aurora shots - looks like northern lights but it isn't. Same phenomenon as sun pillars but at night - due to heavy ice fog refracting light upwards from the source


oh..and look, the sun is still up after 5 PM now


Last Saturday

A few more images from the trip to Tuktoyaktuk.

As I mentioned, the incentive for going out that way was to locate and ski over to Aklisuktuk “Growing Fast” Pingo…and here’s a pic of it from the road. It is interesting in that the paper on Aklisuktuk Pingo refers to the ability of one to see the pingo from the road at historical dates. Regardless it isn’t the biggest one around but is the largest one that is first visual when travelling north.


Also a few pix of the elusive and moving mirages that we encountered on the way back


Last Saturday we headed south on the Dempster as the forecast was marginal. For the first time in a long time Environment Canada got it wrong and skies turned clear all over the Delta. Since we were already heading south we stopped at the Campbell Lake territorial viewpoint and skied over to the official viewing area. Deep snow and trees all covered over. With the blue sky and snow laden trees it looked like skiing anywhere in BC that gets a decent snowpack. Without longer views in frame the pix could have been taken anywhere, instead of north of the Arctic Circle. Oh, and one bird that followed us around for a while.

Snow was in better condition with less areas of depth hoar where your skis went right to ground. Just below the viewing platform the cliff band was plastered over so I decided to chance a few turns on the steeper terrain. I did go through to the rocks initially but the snow pack on the run out actually was good and substantive and I was able to get some nice turns in, climbing back up the band to our start point was less fun mind you. – too steep to skin.

After skiing around a bit more we headed back to the truck and back to town as the sky looked good to the north. We stopped by the GIS Explorer before heading up the ice road to the Caribou hills, as it was Kat’s last full day here –so pix on the ice road by the barges and such.




We parked by the usual spot about 50 kms from town and picked up the trial that leads up the Hills and over to the gas plant. Some people were at their cabins nearby and came over to make sure we knew what we were doing as I get the feeling that not a lot of people ski out this way and it was a bit of a novelty to see us out there. The snow was really good with fresh on top of a reasonable base layer. The shallow draw we ascended was also very sheltered from the wind and made for good travel. In short order we made the ridgeline and followed it over to the plateau. Wind, of course was more pronounced on top. We hung out for a bit and then pulled the skins to ski down. In a huge breech of etiquette Katerpillar skied right over my lines and messed my pristine turns, ha ha. Snow was the best it has been out there thus far, albeit a little slow due to the cold temps.
On the way back down our visitor came back as promised to check on us – he changed skidoos as he was concerned about getting stuck if he got off track. Again, since they weren’t used to skiers out here he was concerned and had to make sure we weren’t getting into trouble –very normal response for out here – people tend to look out for others. I asked him about the last time he saw caribou in the hills and he said it’s rare now to see them. Surprisingly we crossed a fresh moose track on the way up and he spotted it as well when he came up to us. He wanted to know if we wanted to come back for muktuk and dry meat but time was a bit of an issue so that didn’t work out. Katerpillar didn’t know that muktuk is Beluga blubber and or skin



...and some shots on the way out, by Reindeer Station, windy day, -27