This is the view from my office; late night, or early morning view of Inuvik airport, final for runway 24. Sometimes I forget how awesome my view is. But, it isn’t always this good..
Earlier in the day we were way the heck up north heading to Prince Patrick Island, specifically Mould Bay, an old decommissioned government weather outpost. We were about 20 miles back from our destination and could hardly see the water below us. I was on the map plotting our position and course while my captain pointed us at a 45 degree angle to the shore. As the visibility got worse I subconsciously let out a “crap, this doesn’t look good” followed by a sigh. My captain agreed and urged me to keep following along on the map and stressed the need for absolute accuracy. Why? Because we knew there were some big hills coming up, roughly 5 miles off the nose, and we couldn’t see them yet because of the fog. It sucks to come all this way, roughly 650 nautical miles, and not be able to get to where you’re going. Luckily, moments later, the fog cleared and we could see the shoreline for miles!
Mission accomplished.
In another note, darkness is finally starting to reappear in the North. Currently the sun sets at 1:08AM and rises at 4:58AM.
*** I have stumbled on a great site lately called ‘The Big Picture‘ on Boston.com. The writer, who, ironically is not a writer, but a programmer/web dev guy, scans picture wires for striking pictures fitting a certain theme and posts them along with a blurb for all to see. Like the blog title implys, they are BIG FORMAT PICTURES. Awesome idea! I’ve constantly been frustrated with news websites that post pictures so small that you can’t make out a single detail. What ever happened to the mentality of ‘A picture says a thousand words’.. Well it seems its back again with The Big Picture. The writer updates the site 3 times a week, so be sure to bookmark the site and pass the link around.. One can hope, this will start a trend revolutionizing photojournalism on the internet.
Yup, you are a lucky man! What a view! And we checked out The Big Picture - pretty awesome!
Thanks for this one. Brings back many memories of PW 737 arrivals, not to the mention the great group of Inuvik-based charter pilots I used in my three years living and working in the Delta.