The Casa 212 is a chubby little speedster powered by two Dash 10 Garretts of a thousand horsepower each. Designed as a Spanish military troop carrier and cargo aeroplane it is ideal for the electro-magnetic survey role by virtue of its large interior that can accomodate small military vehicles easily loaded by a hydraulic ramp. By adding twin booms protruding from the nose and a large box section boom jutting from the tail, a six strand loop of heavy cables are strung around the whole aircraft (laid horizontally and steadied by arrows that resemble missiles) that pound a million or so millivolts of power into the ground. Once airborne , two "birds" that resemble cruise missiles are let out by their respective winches to trail behind and measure magnetic anomilies produced by ore bodies and oil and gas pockets. It has a surprisingly comfortable and well laid out cockpit that is a blessing when flying long missions close to the ground for hours on end. But no longer a speedster , it is more of a contraption with banks of electronics and AC/DC converters in back including an operators station.
So with the birds winched up against the ramp door , loaded with spares , personal gear, tool boxes and survival gear we droned off to Yellowknife at a blistering 140 knots. We are to meet our Polish operator Jerzy on site and the time in Yellowknife is spent on maintainence and visits with many friends flying Buffalo Joe's DC4's , C46 Curtis Commandos and DC3's. Yellowknife is a Mecca of bush aviation and Buffalo Joe immeditaely offered me a job as DC4 captain but Fugro Airborne Surveys had stuck with me during my first battle with cancer and my loyalty to them was resolute. This loyalty today is paying off many times over.
The company had rewarded us with a large stash of beer and whiskey for the job well done in Peace River and this would be very welcome in a tent camp for sure.
Flight planning for the next leg was complicated by the summer Arctic sea fog that blanketed the northern route via Gjoa Haven and Cambridge Bay so we had no choice but to take the Baker Lake and Hall Beach route that involved nearly four hour legs with very distant alternates so a window of opportunity was sought where there were no headwinds.
We droned high above the barrens that became devoid of trees but replaced by rugged eskers that looked as if they had been scratched into the Canadian shield by the almighty when he was in an angry mood ... they all ran in the same directiion and offered little solace in the event of an emergency landing. The famous Baker Lake cariboo migration herds were too far North for our viewing and we were instead rewarded by the nothingness of Baker Lake where we landed with bare reserves for refuelling. The leg to Hall Beach , an Eskimo villiage on the shores of the still iced up Artic Ocean was mostly in or above cloud. Icing was our enemy as ice would quickly form on the loop causing it to hump thereby giving a ten minute warning prior to plummeting to earth with the glide angle of a greased crowbar. This villiage seemed friendly enough and relatively clean but we elected to push on to Dewer Lakes on Baffin Island which was a Dew Line radar site and our home for the coming months.
Very rugged , rocky mountains loomed on all points of the compass.
Upon arrival we noticed the automatic radar site high up on the hill , a well prepared gravel runway and our teeny camp on the banks of a frozen river. We hadn't seen a tree since Yellowknife. Some cariboo wandered the strip but soon dispersed with the shrieking whine of the Garrets and we parked on the cleared ramp in a cloud of dust. Two all terrain vehicles greeted us , one driven by the data processor and the other by Jerzy , the operator, and these were our only means of transportaion which was OK since there was nowhere to go anyway.
With gear piled high we made our way to the camp over rocks , all the same size , all the wrong size ... even walking was a chore over these devil's marbles.
Enroute , Dave the data processor told me with some foreboding that I won't believe the BHP Australia female geophysicist that was on site. He chuckled and grinned and shook his head often.
The Arctic wind with no warning ambushed us and with the dusk approaching , a shiver enveloped me as we approached camp.
And then I saw her.