F
or my first day/trip/anything on the Twotter, I got crewed on a Water Survey trip. It's something that Tindi does quite often, you can click on the link for more details, but basically these guys go out three or four times a year and measure water levels, flows, ice thicknesses etc. They also have gauges set up everywhere that they download data from, and some cabins that they use in the summer. We were doing the eastern loop which meant that we were overnighting in Baker Lake for four nights. My captain was Joe Reid, who flew for the RCMP for 25 years, and has been flying for Tindi since he retired. Our first stop was Ennadai Lake, where there is a gauge. Things didn't go so well for the water survey guys, they were trying to fix their gauge and ended up toasting their computer, which resulted in us coming home a day early.
Anyway, this picture is at the next stop, Sealhole Lake where the Thlewiaza River comes in, and then we flew a short hop to a different spot on the lake where they have a cabin and a fuel cache of 15 drums. Supposedly. We never found it. Joe taxiied (taxied? I don't know!) up next to some drums that were barely sticking out of the snow that turned out to be empties, they were supposed to be there too, so now we just had to find the full ones. We started randomly poking around and digging holes were we thought the drums might be, some drifts were so hard that they resorted to using the ice auger. After about four hours of this we realised that we might be staying the night because we didn't have enough fuel to get anywhere else that was better, so the cabin was opened up and the heating stove turned on. By now Alex (one of the Water Survey guys) had called his office in town (yay for sat phones) to try and find out something, and also arrange for another plane to bring some fuel the next day. For dinner we had some emergency dehydrated rations, washed down with Gibsons or beer. There was a big can of chili in the cabin, but no one was quite willing to take a chance on it! By bed time the cabin was quite toasty warm, in fact rather hot, it's actually an old walk-in freezer, so it's very well insulated. I got a top bunk, right up near the roof where it was even hotter. I couldn't sleep and eventually ran out of layers to shed, and was even still too hot, so had to stand outside to cool down. (It was such a beautiful night, so clear with a crescent moon.) After I went back inside, it was only a few minutes before I was too hot again, then I realised the irony of the situation. My Mom worries about me possibly freezing to death on the tundra, and here I am about to expire from overheating in an old walk-in freezer! Eventually everyone else woke up too and we propped the door open a bit, which cooled it down enough that we had to burrow into our bags, and after that I slept great.
The plane that was supposed to be coming from Baker Lake still hadn't shown up by midday the next day, and we still couldn't find the drums, so there was talk of getting fishing in case we had to stay another night, there was tons of spaghetti in the cabin, but we figured fish would be better than the sketchy can of chili. But in the end the plane arrived, so we pumped the fuel on, packed up and blasted off for Baker Lake. So that was the end to my first adventure on the Twin, "surviving" for a night. Here's a picture of "the rescue".
The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. At one spot we fished and I caught a big lake trout. Joe stuck him in the nose of the plane, and we let him freeze overnight. I didn't get the classic fish picture, but here he is ready to be cooked up, it was delicious. The other pictures are of some muskox we saw, and the Kazan Falls that Joe kindly showed me. Also some cool ice we landed on. Joe chopped some up and we took a supply for our drinks later. The photo of the ice really doesn't do it justice, the water is so clear, when the sun shines on it you can see the five or six feet of ice and then down into the water.
I had such a blast on this trip, and learnt a lot of stuff, including how much there still is to learn! Landing off strip was SO COOL! I really am very glad that I held out to fly this plane, and in such an interesting part of the world. I'm pretty sure there will be more good stories to share...
