Date: February 4, 2006
Weather: -21°C and Partly
Sunrise: 11:03
Sunset: 17:14

Almost all of today was spent on various CASARA activities. I had two flights, both acting as spotter. We flew is a Cessna 207 which is a six-seater with fixed landing gear. It’s a pretty nice little plane actually, and I was surprised at what it could do and still stay in the air.

On the first flight we cruised around the area just north of Inuvik and practiced our navigation skills and the spotter technique. It can get pretty tiring on the eyes just looking for something. We were cruising at about 1500 feet (that’s about 500 metres or so – aviation still uses miles and feet rather than metres and kilometres – seems kind of crazy but it’s true).

The first flight was relatively uneventful, but the second flight yielded numerous interesting sights. We saw plenty of moose, one group of three, one group of four and a few alone. We saw one that was being hunted by a small pack of three wolves. From the air we could see them circling around her, attempting to tire her out before they moved in for the kill. It looked like they had chased her in the deep snow for some time; she must have been exhausted. They wolves were likely waiting for her to go down so the could make an easy kill. Some people may find that sad but that’s nature’s way.

I won’t bother saying too much more on the flights, but I’ll give you a few pictures. During our regular breaks I was able to snap a few shots with the digital camera. Here they are:


These are a few of the small lakes in the delta. There are thousands of them like this. That's a piece of the landing gear in the foreground.


That's the pilot on the left and our navigator on the right. The Nav is hard at work becasue we have just been retasked with a Search plan diversion. It's pretty hard to plot a new seach course on a paper map in a plane with all those spotters talking on the radio!



Another peice of the delta. Notice the snakey pattern the tributaries of the McKenzie River takes. As well, the terrain is so flat here.



This is an arial shot of Inuvik from about 1500 feet. It's a little bit bigger than show here, but not much.


A shot of the sun on the horizon. this is about as high as it gets. You can see what I was saying about the colours.


Another shot of the sun...this one under the wing of the plane.


And finally, a shot of yours truly - taking a break from spotting and just relaxing.


That's it for now.

Cheers!