Bus and Plane and Plane and Plane and truck. And a lab.

After a shuttle from London to Toronto, flights through Edmonton to Yellowknife, and overnight stay in a hotel, the Polar Sunrise crew awaits departure from the Arctic Sunwest charter terminal.

The plane ride started out a bit cloudy. Before we gained more altitude than the clouds, we could see rock and trees and a million frozen lakes - a snowmobiler's paradise! 

 

The scenery between Yellowknife and Resolute Bay: Lots of sea ice! It was cloudy for the first while, but then cleared right up and gave clear views of the ground.

 

 The first clear, calm day I think I've ever seen in Res! Good weather DOES exist there (at least for one day). Proof:

 The good thing about good weather in Resolute, particularly if it's a refueling stop that day, is that you're able to take off again. Quite frequently the weather is decent enough to land, but then not good enough to fly out again 20 minutes later. It's also way prettier when it's not socked in and windy and overcast.

Cornwallis Island, near Resolute Bay. So pretty. And you can see how thin our atmosphere is from this perspective, too.

 Home-Sweet-Eureka! The first sighting of the lab from the plane. Can you see Upper Paradise (with its satellite dishes) and the PEARL lab (red building on top of the ridge)? The part of the road that you see leading from the centre of the photo to the lower left heads toward Skull Point. The road to the Weather Station (where we sleep and eat) is on a not-very-visible-in-this-picture road from Upper Paradise down to the lower right.

 

We're Heee-eeer! Our journey ends with the fun activity of loading enormously heavy boxes into pickup trucks for the ride from the Eureka runway to the Weather Station.