A brief trip out

After ten months north of the Arctic Circle we are heading south for a few weeks prior to recomissioning Gjoa for this summer's completion of the North West Passage.

This plane looks big, but, only the rear third was for people, the rest was for freight.

Flying out of Cambridge Bay was flying like it used to be, guess they assume if you're in Cambridge Bay and the only way in/out is by airplane, except for the very few who arrive by water and ice ;-) you'd already passed scrutiny getting there, so, there's no point in doing it all again when you leave. After strolling about twenty steps into the terminal, we went directly to the checkin desk. There was no queue. There was no id required, no xray scanning, no laptops out of the bag, no shoes/belts off, no metal detectors, no toothpaste bagging and no bottled water/pen knife confiscation. The free, hot sandwich served was delicious as was the coffee. We knew it could only go downhill from here as we had a few more flights, airlines and airports to get through before reaching our final destination.

Total snow and ice cover leaving Cambridge Bay.

A little further south, lakes are starting to break up.

Yellowknife and open water. The ice in the background is Great Slave Lake (tenth largest lake in the world) and still frozen.

When we got to the arrivals area at Yellowknife, it was tiny and there were maybe twenty-five people standing around. For us, after a winter of isolation, it was sensory overload already and we couldn't
wait to get out of there. We stepped outside into +21C heat!

Even the baggage carousel at Yellowknife arrivals was interesting.

Of late, the jet stream has been making a clear diagonal slash between Nunavut and the NWT. The west side, covering all of the Mackenzie valley, including Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, has been basking in the high 20C's for a while now. Cam Bay hasn't had any of that. The average May high temperature was only -4C and the average low was -12C. The day we left, May 22, it was around -2C and when we got to Yellowknife, only five hundred miles south, it was full-blown summer, +21C, We were greeted with a big, bright, blue, summer sky, a few puffs of fluffy white cloud and a gentle, warm breeze. The open water in the surrounding lakes shimmered with sunpennies and there were trees! Real trees with spring's tender green leaves.What a sight for sore eyes. The pink granite shores and dark water made us feel like we were already home in Northern Ontario and it's no surprise because the Canadian Shield extends all the way from here to there, thousands of miles across the top of Canada.