We arrived to Trenton Canada on Monday where we over-night’d to catch a plane at the CFB the following morning at 6am. We flew out on a C130 cargo plane headed for Resolute Bay, Canada (our mid-way point before flying to Alert – took about 6.5 hrs of flight time). Resolute Bay was amazing and everyone was so so friendly! There was snow on the ground and the temperature was around 10 degrees F and quite windy. The following morning we boarded the plane again for our 2.5 hr flight to Alert. As we approached the station for landing there was quite a lot of fog and the plane was unable to land after circling the station for about 45 minutes. We headed back to Resolute Bay to try again the following morning (total of ~6 hrs of flight time). The following morning we boarded the plane again and headed to Alert for the second time (2.5 hr flight. This time the flight was flawless and we landed without any issue 🙂 It took us a total of 5 days to finally arrive at the station and about 15 hrs of flight time on the C130… glad to be safely on the ground!)
Alert is a bit colder than Resolute Bay and has been covered in a snow storm since we arrived. Yesterday was the official day of the sun setting for the year. It was cloudy so we weren’t able to watch the sun go down, but none-the-less we part took in the sun setting ceremony with the rest of the base. There was a bone fire and plenty of hot chocolate! We also visited the GAW lab yesterday where our instruments are located and began unloading our equipment and new instruments. Everything made it to Alert in one piece and we are thrilled that everything powered on! Today we will go back to the lab to get our communication up and running between the instruments and the data acquisition systems and start collecting data. Today looks pretty clear outside, which would be a nice change from the last few days. There is still a lot of twilight so hopefully field work will go smoothly… as long as the winds stay down 🙂
All the best,
The Arctic Crew!
