Now that I have returned home safely, I have finally had the opportunity to upload some videos from my recent project at Goose Lake in Nunavut. That means that the helicopter video I have been waiting to upload is finally ready. Which brings me to the subject of helicopters.
At both Henik Lake and Goose Lake, the daily commuting vehicle was the helicopter. Each day we were shuttled to and from the grid we were working on by helicopter, in addition to the occasional moves during the day. So, despite having begun the summer having never flown in a helicopter, I can now safely say that I have well over one hundred flights under my belt.
I have now flown on three different helicopters. At Henik Lake, we flew in the Bell 206L LongRanger and at Goose Lake, we flew in the Bell 407 and the Eurocopter AS350 AStar. Of the bunch, I mostly just disliked the 206L – it was grossly underpowered for the job it had to do, forcing us to travel to the grid in two groups. Since it was a 20 minute flight there, that meant that there was a forty minute delay before the whole crew arrived on the grid.
Note the basket on the side.
I must say, though, that flying in helicopters is truly the way we were meant to fly. They fly near the ground which means one always has a nice view, and never has to go through the trouble of having the ears pop. It also seems that they don’t have nearly as much trouble with turbulence – likely simply due to the fact that they don’t fly in those conditions in the first place. Finally, when has an Air Canada pilot ever offered to take you on a detour through a gorge and take you through gut-wrenching manoeuvres which leave a smile plastered on your face?
You see, I was tasked with operating the transmitter on the Goose Lake project, a job with considerably more setup and shutdown time. This meant that I was also usually the first one to arrive on the grid and the last one to leave. Because one of the helicopters only seated five passengers, that often meant that I was the sole passenger on my flight back to camp. It was on one of these occasions that I asked the pilot if I could take him up on his offer to fly me through the gorge that forms the beak of Goose Lake. He happily rewarded me with a rather epic flight, with turns plastering me in my seat and the helicopter skimming low over the land and water. Suffice to say, I was really pleased; this is what in-flight service should be.
I’m feeling kind of aimless since returning from Goose Lake. I will be returning to work, this time in the Toronto area, which I’m sure will shatter my melancholy; however, I will surely continue to miss the Arctic. I uploaded an additional video I took in order to capture the large, expansive vistas I had the privilege of enjoying every day. The fog in this video simply adds more to the beauty as I explain in the video.
