Flying J's: ᐃᖅᑲᓇᐃᔮᒃᑯᑦ ᐊᐅᓪᓚᐸᑉᐱᑦ? - iqqanaijaakkut aullapappit?- Do you travel with your work?

Josh's career allows him to explore all of Baffin Island. Right now he's flying mostly to Mary River predominately a mining camp but there are also archeologists, geologists, enviromentalists and other researchers interested in the area there. He also travels into surrounding communities like Igloolik, Pond Inlet, Miline, Kimmirut and Clyde River. Future tours involve visiting old DND DEW line sites. The topography of Baffin is very rocky and mountainous. But the mountains are nothing like the Rockies. From the air, Baffin Island looks like a stippled ceiling, with rugged peaks and valleys with the highest terrain on the Eastern edge of the Island. Large rivers cut in between mountain passes and plateaus while glaciers cling to the basins of hollowed out rock. The reality that it is impossible to drive from community to community is made visible by the impassable land 10 000 feet below.

Sea ice near Pond Inlet - the darker patches of ice are from a season past and will melt first this year.

The Dornier cutting between mountain passes to the runway at Pond Inlet

Gravel strip at Pond Inlet, you can see the mountains in the distance

Flying through the clouds

A few weekends ago, I got to tag along on a flight to Goose Bay, Labrador. The pilots had to drop off a mechanic and parts to some company planes there. We left Iqaluit at 6 pm in broad daylight. The sky was quite clear, revealing how desolate we are up here. There was no signs of life for miles and miles. As we crossed the ocean between Baffin and northern Quebec, icebergs were floating along the strait. Hard to believe that in the winter, it is frozen ice. Northern Quebec proved to be just as dramatic, with exquisite peaks, valleys, rivers and glaciers. As we flew south, darkness surrounded us. We landed in Goose Bay to the pitch black night and humid warm air. What a change from Iqaluit. This is the first time we've been in such a dark night for months. After dropping off our load, we headed north again and left the dark behind. As we were leaving northern Quebec, an unwavering pinky-orange smoulder began to grow on the horizon as we flew closer and closer to Baffin. It wasn't a true sunrise, because the sun had never set in Nunavut. The reflection of the light off the clouds was beautiful and peaceful and my camera really doesn't do it justice. We arrived back into Iqaluit at 3:30 a.m. in broad daylight.