Arctic Canada - Jan '06

Canada - Snap Lake January 2005

Me in the Rockies, standing on Lake St Clair

So work sent me to the big cold country in the North.

We left Sydney with a stack load of gear, bound for Los Angeles. Caught a connecting flight to Calgary with a lot less gear, and then onto Edmonton with still less gear. Now stuck in Edmonton we had missed our last flight due to an Air Canada delay. We also had no personal clothes and Phil was wearing T-Shirt and shorts. It was -15 outside. So we spent the next day kitting ourselves out with North Face and Marmot gear, before heading up to Yellowknife in the North West Territories. We landed to -26C a kind of cold nothing like I had ever felt before, lung burning stuff. We waited a couple of days for the kind folks at Air Canada to deliver our luggage and radar probes, and then off to the Diamond mine - a futher 200km North West via charter flight.

On site: A clear day around the -40C mark

You have to admire DeBeers for trying to mine some diamonds out of a hole in the ground under a lake 200km away from the nearest town, with no roads to it (except for 6 weeks a year when they build an ice road).

A view from a small mountian near Banff

So we did some surveying, tried to keep warm in the -40C temperatures above ground and the toasty warm +2C underground. We worked some long days (or were they nights with 4 hours of sun a day you couldn't really tell), ate some excellent mine food - really it was, and even watched a few ice hockey matches with some dedicated local fans.

Me making a snow angel

Then went back via Calgary with a brief two day stop in Banff, a little bit of snowboarding, running up some mountains and sightseeing. So many mountains, and snow - amazing. Got to go back to actually learn how to snowboard and not fall on my ass the whole time. Then back via, LAX to Sydney.

Kitted out in CS gear for some moutain running