Murphy’s 1st law: Mother Nature is a Bitch!

Camp: Day 1

Spring is the best! Weather sucks, not much gets accomplished, people begin freaking out and to make matters worse I saw on TV that Vancouver was to get up to 29 degrees.

Bastards!

Up until this point I had been stuck for 3 days in Rankin Inlet. The weather in around the camp has been less than ideal for flight. During the fourth attempt over these 3 days the helicopter was stuck 7 miles south of camp on it’s first inbound flight attempt of the day. Whether or not it returned to Rankin for me remained to be seen. Spring thaws and dew points, the temperature at which moisture in the air begins to form clouds, and the topography surrounding camp have brought ideal conditions for fog formation not to mention the possibility of rain/freezing rain.

As for Rankin itself, it has been suffering from floods of near biblical proportions. It pretty much poured all day and night long and combined with the melting of this year’s record snowfall has left lakes and ponds all over and many of those have breached their natural barriers. Now there are streams and rivers all over town. The fire department was called out Tuesday night to pump out one of the offending bodies of water to keep one home from floating away only to return this afternoon with city works in tow. Significant dangers up here as no homes here are built on foundations because of the permafrost.

The helicopter did make it into camp eventually and some 8 hours after it left Rankin it returned to town for me. Thankfully, one can only watch so much TV, and I have had my fill for the next 39 days. As I type this it is still making flights while it can to swap out the current drill crew for the one that will be replacing it tomorrow. So far so good I must say. It would be tough to believe but it is just a hell of alot more comfortable to be in camp. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Stay tuned