When you are filming with helicopter pilots, you tend to get fairly constant and detailed updates about the weather. Well over our last few days on this shoot, in the beautifully spelled hamlet of Qikiqtarjuaq, the weather forecasts were getting gloomier and gloomier. A giant low-pressure system was working its way down Baffin Island towards us, getting closer ... and closer ...
Please imagine ominous music beginning here, and underscoring the rest of the post, filling you with nameless dread.
The town is full of people with stories about how they've had to wait three or four days for an airplane. The weather around here is full of local nastiness, you can be in sunshine and a light breeze in town, and then once you get out into the fiords, you can suddenly meet up with twenty-five knot winds coming down off the glaciers above you, cold winds that would really rather like to slam your helicopter down onto the valley floor like a basketball.
Airplanes into Qikiqtarjuaq go through Pangnirtung first; Pangnirtung and Grise Fiord are tied for being the worst airports in Canada to get in and out of. Pangnirtung is famous for high winds, and the airport is conveniently parked between two mountain faces, and regularly decorated with low-lying cloud banks. It happens pretty regularly that the plane from Iqaluit flies all the way there, then the pilot takes one look at the local situation, soils his flight suit, and turns around to go straight back where he came from. If you want to get out of Qikiqtarjuaq, you have to wait for them to finish those antics before they even try to come and get you. So when a low pressure system is approaching, you start to realize that it might well mean an extra three or four days continuing to explore the social and cultural richness of a village of 500 people, while the things you are supposed to be doing elsewhere go delightfully undone. So we changed our flight, raced like mad to wrap up our shooting early and get the equipment packed, and set out to leave on the afternoon plane instead of waiting for the next morning.
You could see the weather just hanging there in the hills all day, inching its way closer and closer to the airfield. I figured if that wall of fog hit the end of the runway it was game over.
Meanwhile, from the airport window, we had ringside seats to watch the airline staff dealing with the baggage, using a system that involved putting all the outgoing bags into the airplane first, then trying to get an entire shipment of fruits and vegetables for the local store out from behind them. It was like watching your favourite team trying to hang onto a one-point lead in the playoffs, and taking stupid penalties every few minutes. We were all giving them body English from our vantage point inside, we must have looked like a four man a capella group rehearsing their dance routines.
But the home team pulled through in the clutch, and our flight took off just ahead of the dreaded low pressure system. It was goodbye to Qikiqtarjuaq, and for me, goodbye to the Arctic. Even though it was in fact just the first step of the journey home; as it turned out, it would take us almost three days to get from Qikiqtarjuaq to Iqaluit, from Iqaluit to Ottawa, and finally from Ottawa home. But the rest of that story is boring and I will spare you.
I'm heading back home to sit in a windowless edit room, not being chased by polar bears, and surrounded by peculiar southern things like streetcars and trees. Other people are covering the rest of the Northwest Passage; I got from Iceland to Resolute Bay and turned back. But that's OK, not making it through is a Northwest Passage tradition, and at least we didn't have to eat our sled dogs, or resort to cannibalism. So we are among the lucky ones.
So that is the end of my Arctic adventure, and the end of this blog. See you all at Starbucks.
Over and out.
Please imagine ominous music beginning here, and underscoring the rest of the post, filling you with nameless dread.
The town is full of people with stories about how they've had to wait three or four days for an airplane. The weather around here is full of local nastiness, you can be in sunshine and a light breeze in town, and then once you get out into the fiords, you can suddenly meet up with twenty-five knot winds coming down off the glaciers above you, cold winds that would really rather like to slam your helicopter down onto the valley floor like a basketball.
Airplanes into Qikiqtarjuaq go through Pangnirtung first; Pangnirtung and Grise Fiord are tied for being the worst airports in Canada to get in and out of. Pangnirtung is famous for high winds, and the airport is conveniently parked between two mountain faces, and regularly decorated with low-lying cloud banks. It happens pretty regularly that the plane from Iqaluit flies all the way there, then the pilot takes one look at the local situation, soils his flight suit, and turns around to go straight back where he came from. If you want to get out of Qikiqtarjuaq, you have to wait for them to finish those antics before they even try to come and get you. So when a low pressure system is approaching, you start to realize that it might well mean an extra three or four days continuing to explore the social and cultural richness of a village of 500 people, while the things you are supposed to be doing elsewhere go delightfully undone. So we changed our flight, raced like mad to wrap up our shooting early and get the equipment packed, and set out to leave on the afternoon plane instead of waiting for the next morning.
You could see the weather just hanging there in the hills all day, inching its way closer and closer to the airfield. I figured if that wall of fog hit the end of the runway it was game over.
Meanwhile, from the airport window, we had ringside seats to watch the airline staff dealing with the baggage, using a system that involved putting all the outgoing bags into the airplane first, then trying to get an entire shipment of fruits and vegetables for the local store out from behind them. It was like watching your favourite team trying to hang onto a one-point lead in the playoffs, and taking stupid penalties every few minutes. We were all giving them body English from our vantage point inside, we must have looked like a four man a capella group rehearsing their dance routines.
But the home team pulled through in the clutch, and our flight took off just ahead of the dreaded low pressure system. It was goodbye to Qikiqtarjuaq, and for me, goodbye to the Arctic. Even though it was in fact just the first step of the journey home; as it turned out, it would take us almost three days to get from Qikiqtarjuaq to Iqaluit, from Iqaluit to Ottawa, and finally from Ottawa home. But the rest of that story is boring and I will spare you.
I'm heading back home to sit in a windowless edit room, not being chased by polar bears, and surrounded by peculiar southern things like streetcars and trees. Other people are covering the rest of the Northwest Passage; I got from Iceland to Resolute Bay and turned back. But that's OK, not making it through is a Northwest Passage tradition, and at least we didn't have to eat our sled dogs, or resort to cannibalism. So we are among the lucky ones.
So that is the end of my Arctic adventure, and the end of this blog. See you all at Starbucks.
Over and out.
