Finishing up an infinished survey in CB and transitting to Resolute Bay

Day 12 Terrestrial snow and CB departure. Today the weather was back on our side and we set out to complete the curtailed airborne surveys of the MOACC intensive monitoring area north of Cambridge bay. The map below shows the flight track from two days ago followed by the survey completed today.

Survey coverage from Day 10.
 
Survey coverage from Day 12 (today)
The flight over the MOACC site completed another successful terrestrial survey. We now have multiple lidar, high res digital camera, snow radar and CryoSAR observations of TVC and MOACC sites where field measurements have been ongoing, but also many EM bird acquisitions over sea ice where SmartICE has been conducting in situ surveys. This is turning out to be a super significant campaign with a large amount of surveys conducted over study sites.

After we landed, the Polar 5 was packed up and readied for a transit flight from Cambridge Bay to Resolute for our next leg. Before we departed, we had a chance to show a couple of researchers from CHARS around the aircraft. Dan Kramer (Université de Sherbrooke), was a star during our surveys at CB because he was able to place a calibration target in the field of view of the radar for our overflight today and Thursday.
 
Group shot before we departed Cambridge Bay. 
 In the early afternoon we had "wheels up" for the transit to Resolute Bay. Flying time was around 4 hours and included some opportunistic "bird" surveys along the way over M'Clintock Channel. 

 
Transit flight path from Cambridge Bay (YCB) to Resolute Bay (YRB).

We arrived in clear cold weather (-23C felt like -35C) and it really felt like -35C! Our aircraft crew work for Kenn Borek Air (www.borekair.com), Our accomodation is now at Natural Resources Canada's Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP) facility in Resolute Bay. PCSP provides logistics in all kinds of ways to researchers active in the Arctic. The Resolute Bay facility is massive - a sprawling industrial-scale complex with sleeping quarters, canteen, lounges, labs and workshop facilities. We arrived on a day when 3 groups, who had been stuck at the facility for a few days on account of bad weather, were finally able to leave for the field. As a result, the facility is in a quiet phase at the moment, but will start to ramp up in the coming weeks as spring starts to settle in. 

Apart form all the excellent logistical support, PCSP is known for its food - plenty of it and available 24/7. This is great, but especially for teams who have been in remote parts of the Canadian Arctic and are on their way home. For us, it means that cooking is now provided freeing up time for our data management and flight planning activities.

Tomorrow: survey flight to Pond Inlet, weather permitting.

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