LEG 2: Thurs, Fri / 10, 11 July -- ( BURLINGTON VT - SEPT ISLES - WABUSH - KUUJJUAQ - IQALUIT)

Downtown Burlington, VT

A bustling city on the shores of Lake Champlain. Home of the U of VT and a manufacturing center for electric machinery, wood products and maple surup.

Enjoying a evening downtown. Summers are too short.

Sept Isles, Quebec

Here we entered Canada by calling customs (CANPASS) the then filing a VFR flight plan with ADvise CUStoms in the remarks.

The friendly inspector met us at the airport and helped up fill out the shotgun permit (the barrel was over the manditory 18 1/2 inches).

(Then he couldn't accept US dollars but was happy to personally give us one-to-one CAN for US dollars. Upsetting but probably worth the time savings.)

 

Sept Isles, Quebec

Once again the people at Trans Sol Aviation Services could not have been nicer or more helpful. (I overnighted here last year.)

Sept Isles is second only to Vancouver as a Canadian shipping port.

Departing Sept Isles for the bush - Wabush that is.

This is called the Duplessis region of Quebec and the beginning of the northern end of the very ancient, Appalachian mountains.

What we didn't do was visit any meteor sites. The 70 km wide Manicouagan crater was created by a meteor 214 million years ago. Further north, the Nouveau Quebec crater in the Ungava peninsula is only 3.4 km across and formed 1.4 million years ago.

Skirting a rain shower

The air route runs between the railroad 30 miles E and Route 389 / railroad from Baie Comeau to Wabush and Labrador City.

A waitress in Wabush told us there were eleven RR crossing during the eight hour drive to Baie Comeau. "That's how the kids kept track of the distances."

The Moisie river is just one of the few that come south out of the mountains through U shaped glacier valleys.

The Moisie river is famous for depositing black, iron oxide sand to the Gulf of St. Lawrance.

Eskers are long linear gravel deposits formed by water flowing in channels under glaciers. Some were fifty or more miles long.

Eskers are used by fixed wing aircraft for landing. However, we never tried one to see if it would work.

 

Labrador City

A mining boon town in the 60's, the town has settled down to a company(ies) town of 8,000.

The Labrador Trough is the supplies nearly all of Canada's iron ore. The open pit mines started in 1949 and reached the 1 billion ton milestone. Three mining companies still operate. The Iron Company of Canada, Quebec Cartier Mining Company and Wabush Mines

Iron Ore mining in Labrador City

A side trip we should have made was to the hydroelevtric facilities at Churchill Falls. Tours are available in Labrador City.

Schefferville, Quebec closed its mining operations in 1982
Schefferville, Quebec

N of Schefferville, Quebec

The rounded knobs of Precambrian bedrock are covered by a shallow cover of till. We're leaving the tree line as conifers give way to tundra.

Both John and I had anticipated many and long weather delays. There are bush pilot stories of being stuck under weather for three weeks.So we each brought four books.

This turned out to be the end of the bad weather. I think I ended up reading only twelve pages the entire trip.

Gassing at Kuujjuaq (KU-gee-ak). He we incountered our first real bush plane.
Kuujjuaq is at the bottom of Ungava Bay. As with most of the northern hamlets, one barge a year (called Sea Lift) brings the big items. Everything else is flown in.

Flying north we were steeling ourselves for our first big high-anxity moment, the 80 nmi crossing of Hudson Strait.

The water temperature was just above freezing and if a moter boat did come out it would take well over a day to get to the wreakage. Why we wore life jackets was anyones guess.

The weather was not great. The freezing level was at 1,000 feet and the ceiling was dropping as we flew north to our departure point, Cape Hopes Advance.

Half way over the clouds went lower then we wanted to go. We called Northern Radio and got a IFR clearance for the remainder of the leg.

 

The hassle and time it took to get the clearance was a bit of a mystery. Later we found out that since it is unregulated airspace, few pilots do more then self announce their location and altitude.

Then the light icing didn't help much either.

 

Not too surprising, the clouds stopped at the water's edge of Baffin Island (Iqaluit had reported 12,000 overcast). We were now above the tree line and in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. Baffin Island
The blue comes from the very fine glacial dust that is suspended in the water.
Iqaluit - the capital of Nunavut And the end of an exhausting day.

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