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Blog Yukon Coast 2012: Departure
On Tuesday, July 17, we finally started our expedition after months of intensive preparation and packing.
We woke up at 5:30 am and met at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Potsdam to pick up our last eleven boxes of equipment before embarking on our expedition, to the Yukon Coast and Herschel Island. We left off in Berlin, and after a quick stop-over in London, continued on to board our plane to Edmonton, which lay another 9.5 hours ahead. Although tired, we were in good spirits, and the mood continued to improve as we met up with Michael Angelopoulos, David Fox and Jared Simpson, our partners from McGill University in Montreal, who used every opportunity to make everyone laugh. The coming weeks of our cooperation will surely be a lot of fun. However, first we needed to continue our long trek to the north.
Early next morning we boarded a small Boeing 737 to Inuvik, via Yellowknife and Norman Wells. We looked on the changing landscape from the birds eye perspective, but at every stop of the way, we had a chance to briefly leave the plane and experience the beauty of the arctic summer. Inuvik, our destination and logistics base, is the most northwestern City of Canada, located 2o north of the Arctic Circle. Our main partner here is the Aurora Research Institute, whose facilities and staff experience are invaluable to us every step of the way. The weather is excellent, we experience 24 hours of daylight.
But we didn't just bring 11 boxes of equipment with us. Weeks ago, we had sent about 2 tons of equipment, like our new Zodiak boat, core sampler, and lots of warm clothing, tents and sleeping bags, etc., totaling over 27 large boxes and 1.5 tons! These were waiting for us when we arrived. They just made it perfect in time.
Our time now is spent getting our gear ready for action, organizing the flights to Herschel Island, and buying food for four weeks of field work of eleven people.
On our first night we bravely ignored our 8 hours of jet lag and attended the Festival of Northern Arts, which is taking place in Inuvik this week. This event draws artists from across the Arctic, where traditional arts and culture are showcased. To the beat of Inuit drums, Inuvialuit and Gwich´in dancers invited us to participate – and we did! What a wonderful first impression of our first day in Canada!
Today we made a lot of progress as far as getting field equipment ready, but the more daunting task was filling up our food stock. We had to buy food for 11 people for 4 weeks. To give you an idea what that means, we got 12 kg of rice, 15 kg of pasta, 27 kg of cheese, 40 kg of meat and 20 kg of vegetables, 15 kg of cereals, 80 loaves of bread, about 180 bagels, 5 kg of coffee, 500 teabags, 7 jars of Nutella, 2 kg of peanut butter, 300 chocolate bars and 300 fruit bars. All of this filled up about 10 large moving boxes in our guesthouse living room, while the bread, meat and veggies filled up several gigantic freezers.
Tomorrow we're going out to the shooting range to practice using a shotgun, in the very unlikely case we have to fight off a bear on Herschel Island. We are all really excited to continue on to Herschel. What things are like there, you will probably read in our next update. So long, from your sleepy mid-night sun tanners!
Stefanie, Boris and Juliane
______________________
Main page of the blog "Yukon Coast 2012": http://page21.org/blogs/60-herschel
We woke up at 5:30 am and met at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Potsdam to pick up our last eleven boxes of equipment before embarking on our expedition, to the Yukon Coast and Herschel Island. We left off in Berlin, and after a quick stop-over in London, continued on to board our plane to Edmonton, which lay another 9.5 hours ahead. Although tired, we were in good spirits, and the mood continued to improve as we met up with Michael Angelopoulos, David Fox and Jared Simpson, our partners from McGill University in Montreal, who used every opportunity to make everyone laugh. The coming weeks of our cooperation will surely be a lot of fun. However, first we needed to continue our long trek to the north.Early next morning we boarded a small Boeing 737 to Inuvik, via Yellowknife and Norman Wells. We looked on the changing landscape from the birds eye perspective, but at every stop of the way, we had a chance to briefly leave the plane and experience the beauty of the arctic summer. Inuvik, our destination and logistics base, is the most northwestern City of Canada, located 2o north of the Arctic Circle. Our main partner here is the Aurora Research Institute, whose facilities and staff experience are invaluable to us every step of the way. The weather is excellent, we experience 24 hours of daylight.
But we didn't just bring 11 boxes of equipment with us. Weeks ago, we had sent about 2 tons of equipment, like our new Zodiak boat, core sampler, and lots of warm clothing, tents and sleeping bags, etc., totaling over 27 large boxes and 1.5 tons! These were waiting for us when we arrived. They just made it perfect in time.
Our time now is spent getting our gear ready for action, organizing the flights to Herschel Island, and buying food for four weeks of field work of eleven people.
On our first night we bravely ignored our 8 hours of jet lag and attended the Festival of Northern Arts, which is taking place in Inuvik this week. This event draws artists from across the Arctic, where traditional arts and culture are showcased. To the beat of Inuit drums, Inuvialuit and Gwich´in dancers invited us to participate – and we did! What a wonderful first impression of our first day in Canada!Today we made a lot of progress as far as getting field equipment ready, but the more daunting task was filling up our food stock. We had to buy food for 11 people for 4 weeks. To give you an idea what that means, we got 12 kg of rice, 15 kg of pasta, 27 kg of cheese, 40 kg of meat and 20 kg of vegetables, 15 kg of cereals, 80 loaves of bread, about 180 bagels, 5 kg of coffee, 500 teabags, 7 jars of Nutella, 2 kg of peanut butter, 300 chocolate bars and 300 fruit bars. All of this filled up about 10 large moving boxes in our guesthouse living room, while the bread, meat and veggies filled up several gigantic freezers.
Tomorrow we're going out to the shooting range to practice using a shotgun, in the very unlikely case we have to fight off a bear on Herschel Island. We are all really excited to continue on to Herschel. What things are like there, you will probably read in our next update. So long, from your sleepy mid-night sun tanners!
Stefanie, Boris and Juliane
______________________
Main page of the blog "Yukon Coast 2012": http://page21.org/blogs/60-herschel