While most helicopter work in Canada is done during the 8 months of spring to fall with the vast majority happening during the May-August range there is still some work to be done in the cold of winter. This story is a typical day in the life of working in the far north in the winter. The job is a simple two day contract to fly out to Fort Good Hope NWT and from there take a Government of NWT Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) team to pick up some wildlife cameras and acoustic sensors.
There are a few different ways I’ll get notice for a job like this. In this case my ops manager asked if I was free to do a quick work tour in Norman Wells for some jobs coming up in the area as the local base pilot was on an extended polar bear survey and not available. After agreeing to that I’ve got my travel booked to the base and off I go a few days later. Once there the job info will either be given to me by email or I will look up the booking on the company scheduling website. Another possibility is the customer will call the base directly and if I answer the phone I’ll take the basic booking information and help the customer figure out how to get the job done if needed. From there I would pass that along to the people who make up the contract tickets for billing.
In this case the base manager is amazing here and sent me more information than I normally get from a booking. It’s a two day job, overnight one night in Fort Good Hope. 18 cameras to pick up and a GPS file with all the coordinates. He even loaded them into the helicopter GPS that I’d be using so I literally just had to show up and pack the machine to go. Before going I talked to the ENR lead to confirm things like the fuel drums we are using are actually there, confirm I have accommodations booked and because of Covid confirm what kind of food options are going to be open when I get there.
With that all confirmed the next step is to get the helicopter packed for an overnight. It might be just a single night outside in the cold but this time of year the overnight temperatures were dropping to around -38C. This means I need to bring winter covers, extension cords and buddy heaters or my helicopter will be a popsicle in the morning that won’t start. The helicopter I’m using for this job is an Astar AS350 B2 version.
It has a Tanis heater installed which is basically electrical heating pads attached to all the oil reservoirs to ensure the oil stays warm. There is also a heated battery blanket for the aircraft battery so it doesn’t lose its charge in the cold and prevent me from starting it. There is one standard electrical plug in for that and I also have two little buddy heaters that go into the engine bay and the cabin to keep the insides warmer. With 3 plugins I need a splitter extension cord and another 100’ extension cord to hopefully reach whatever power outlet will be available to me without having to land too close to the building.
The winter covers are large blankets that wrap around the engine/transmission areas to keep the snow out and the heat from the buddy heater in. Additionally there is a cover for the rotor head, the tail rotor and the main blades. There is also a windshield cover and horizontal stabilizer cover but typically those won’t be needed unless I expect a storm overnight (thankfully not in the forecast). While all that gear isn’t that heavy it is rather bulky. I will also bring a ladder in my cargo basket to make putting on the blade covers a little bit easier.
With all that gear checked and packed I double check to make sure my fueling gear for using drum fuel is also in good shape and loaded. This is the same gear used to fuel from the wildfire stories, works just as well in the cold as it does the summer heat. Only downside is in the winter the metal pump and filter are cold on the hands and the hose tends to be extremely stiff and difficult to unwrap and pack up after fueling in the cold. The cargo compartments are not heated so will be at the local -30C or whatever it is out there during the day.
With all that packed all that is left is my personal gear. I carry many of the same items in the winter as in the summer so all the wildfire stuff is still in my pockets or flight bag. The bigger difference is my clothing. Long underwear, parkas, battery powered gloves and sometimes battery boots too are all part of my winter kit. The battery heated gloves are my new favourite thing as often you can’t use bulky mitts while working around the aircraft. I can turn the gloves on high and then use my not as insulated as I’d like fueling gloves for refueling. Once done I put my now frozen hands into the nice hot gloves and massage the feeling back. I try to use the fueling gloves as much as possible since in the cold the seals on the fuel gear can sometimes leak a tiny bit and getting Jet A fuel on your hands sucks anytime, especially more so when it gets on the gloves you have in the cockpit with you stinking the place up. If you have never gotten Jet A fuel on your clothing, trust me it's a smell that won’t go away and will give you a headache if you are stuck sitting next to it for a few hours.
OK, so we have the helicopter packed with all the winter gear and my personal gear. Now to get it out of the hangar and off to the job site. One thing about many northern bases is that the hangars are rather small. Buildings are expensive up here and so is heating them. Many of them were also built decades ago when all you needed room for was two bladed helicopters like Longrangers and 212s. Unfortunately for us today that makes getting a three bladed helicopter like the Astar into and out of the hangar a little more difficult. You won’t be able to fit through the door no matter how you turn and angle the blades so you need a different option. That could be taking the blades on and off each time you go into the hangar or if it’s expected like the Astars that live here are then you have a blade folding kit.
An Astar has two big pins holding each of the blades on to the rotor hub. It is actually rather easy to remove those, pull off the safety pin at the bottom and lift the blade up a bit and you can wiggle them out. The blade folding kit involves a stand attached to the tail boom and a stick with a blade shaped opening on it. One person holds the blade with the stick while another climbs up and removes one blade pin. Then you swing the blade all the way back and rest it on the tail boom stand. Go around the other side and do this again and you have all three blades back over the tail. Now you are almost ready to go outside.
One problem with the blade folding kit is that you now have all the weight of all three blades on the back of the aircraft instead of spaced out nicely. This makes the tail extremely heavy and the helicopter will want to tip backwards once you jack up the ground handling wheels. With only myself and the engineer here to get the helicopter out it would be too difficult to get over the bump at the hangar door as well as any snow patches on the ramp. Normally you would get a third person to stand on the front skid to add weight to the front but that isn’t an option for us. Instead we have to load the two front seats with water jugs, spares kits and anything else heavy we can find in the hangar.
Right on, so now we have the machine outside and all the extra weight removed. A quick call to flight service to open my flight plan for the day and a top off of fuel from the bowser at the hangar and I’m finally good to go. I actually cancelled the first day for weather on this job as flying in 1 ½ mile snow and 300’ cloud ceilings isn’t fun, especially when you have to cross a small mountain range to get to the work site. Now the weather is only temporary 2 mile vis with prevailing 5 mile and the ceilings along the route should be over 5000’, more than enough to sneak through the mountain passes to get there.
Leaving the base in Norman Wells to get to Fort Good Hope is about a 45 minute trip. The airport itself has about 6000’ long runway as 737s and C-46 (Buffalo Airways from the Ice Pilots NWT show) have daily flights doing milk runs between Yellowknife, Norman Wells and Inuvik. There is no control tower though, just an Airport Radio who will give information to pilots but not actually provide control for the airspace. 5 miles away and I’m out of their area and into the vast uncontrolled airspace that covers almost all of the north at altitudes lower than airline cruising.
Making my way through the mountains was uneventful over all. Winds were not too strong at around 10kts so little turbulence made for easy ridge crossings. You still want to cross over them at a 45 degree angle even with little winds. This is because in case you have a problem you can quickly dive away from the ridge no matter where you are, if you went right at it then you’d need a greater than 90 degree turn to escape the rocks if something went wrong be it winds or mechanical failure.
The other big thing to worry about with this weather is not being able to see over the ridge until you cross it. More than once I had no idea what the visibility on the other side of a ridge line was since the overcast sky and light snow made everything on the other side of the ridge from my altitude look white. Once you get close you can start seeing the valley on the other side and pick up the trees again for reference but you won’t know that till you are already almost on top of it. So that 45 degree approach makes it easier for me to bug out and turn around if I get to the ridge and see nothing on the other side but white.
Another hazard related to white out here is that many of these mountains are not the harsh jagged peaks of the rockies to the south. Because the mountain tops are more rounded they also pick up more snow. For the peaks with scattered trees this isn’t a problem but for those that are bare they will blend in perfectly with the overcast sky. You could be cruising along at 4000’ and fly directly into a mountain side that you couldn’t even see if you weren't paying attention. Even some of the cliff faces are fully snow covered around here so watching for clues of the terrain from trees and rocks is important when flying lower. This is again why I wasn’t feeling the weather the other day, sure you can fly legally around there in 1 mile visibility but to be safe I’d have to fly much much slower and still be putting myself in unnecessary risk. It’s just some cameras after all!
With the mountain crossing all done and Fort Good Hope in sight I make my radio call to the Airport Radio there. This airport is much smaller with only a 4400’ gravel runway and tiny little terminal building. Radio gives me the altimeter setting and winds with the ever common “no reported traffic” you almost always hear up here. I’m not actually landing on the main ramp this time, my contact at ENR said to land directly at their building which is on airport property. I spot the green siding he described and make a quick assessment on where to set down.
There is a collection of sea cans and some trucks half buried in the snow banks as well as several half buried piles of fuel drums. They did plough the area a little bit for truck access and it looks like there is a nice spot for me to set down between two large snowbanks. While it isn’t the tightest spot I’ve been in by a long shot winter does have an additional challenge. Downwash from landing will kick up the loose snow and turn it into a blinding white out ball. When this happens those two snow banks will become almost invisible and with no other references close by the entire landing spot won’t have any definition to it. Without a reference point hovering and setting down safely can be difficult to impossible. If you know the conditions on the ground a no hover landing can be done to minimize this but has its own risks if you’re unsure of the ground and it tends to work best with a flatter approach which all the obstacles prevent here.
What I plan to do instead because of the obstacles is simply a high hover to blow the snow away as much as possible before slowly descending into the spot using the building as a reference point. With no passengers and light cargo an Astar has no issue hovering out of ground effect so I just sit and wait a few moments as the worst of the snow is cleared. Then it's just a vertical descent into the spot watching my reference to make sure I don’t drift into anything as there is still plenty of snow blowing around.
Safely on the ground I shut down and started unpacking my gear. No room in the back seat for passengers with my winter covers there and no need for the ladder to take up space in the cargo basket. I find a safe spot where they won’t blow away or get lost and then wait for the customers to arrive.
Not too long after, 4 pick up trucks pull up in front of the ENR building. I’m a little surprised because the booking information I had suggested there would be 2 maybe 3 passengers for this job. The first ENR member greets me and then introduces all the other people. Apparently there is a documentary crew from France in town who are working on a project about “Indigenous Guardians” around the world. They were working with various indigenous groups and documenting how they protect their natural environments from Papua New Guinea to South Africa and now the Northwest Territories. Their crew as well as several other locals would be joining the camera retrieval team and filming various parts of the job.
This is all very confusing for me since I never was told about any of this. However the ENR lead seems to be all on board and we have some instructions on how the days are going to work. Instead of just my ENR crew we will also have a local elder and the camera crews swapping around to get different shots and interviews. I only have 4 seats and the cameraman needs some space to work so we get the first trip organized with just him and 2 ENR crew to retrieve the first wildlife cameras. We can’t waste too much time on the ground as with -28C out the helicopter either needs to be covered and plugged in or we have to run it to keep the oils warm and battery charged. I make a mental note to call my ops manager when we get back to confirm this is all kosher since normally some paperwork about filming me and a company machine would have been involved (not the first time I’ve worked with movie or documentary crews).
We do a mass safety briefing for everyone since at this point I’m not even sure who might be swapping in and out of the helicopter and with that paperwork done we are ready to get to work. The documentary crew set up another camera to film my departure while the rest of the people hop in their trucks and leave. They at least know what they are getting into standing next to a departing helicopter in the snow unlike the people I sand blasted in my fire stories. Doesn’t mean it’s any less crappy for them even being prepared as I lifted vertically out of the ENR site then turned to our departure heading and accelerated to cruising speed. Kudos to the cameraman, he kept that camera right on me the whole departure while his hood was blown back and hat knocked off in the downwash and snow blast. I imagine with the -28C it was that the windchill from the downwash probably made it feel more like -40C for him for a bit.
Now we are finally in the air and off to the first wildlife camera location. The weather is getting a little nicer, we have at least 10 miles visibility and it’s warmed to -26C. On the way out we chatted a little about the job and past work. The ENR crew up front was a wildland firefighter for 15 years working with ENR as well and turns out we worked the same large fire in northern Alberta a few years ago (not together directly, over 50 helicopters and hundreds of crew on that one).
I also learned a little more about these cameras. Turns out they also have acoustic sensors in some of them and they take the film and audio information to figure out all the species of animals in the region. Experts will listen to all the bird calls, the moose, caribou, wolves and bears to get numbers of each as well as what kinds of birds are in the area. I’ve done several of these kinds of camera pick ups or drop offs over the years but never realized they use the sound data to identify all the birds and other critters around, I thought it was more for the larger animals. Can only imagine what kind of ear and experience you need to listen to those tapes and be able to pick out the dozens of different species that live out here.
We arrive at the first set of coordinates and begin the hunt for the camera. In this case they have been attached to trees and marked with flagging tape. The GPS will get us close but given how deep the snow is out here it’s best to land as near to them as possible to save time. If I can’t land right next to it then spotting it from the air will at least make their job easier too. Unfortunately for us this first one seems to be hiding. After hovering around the edge of the river and following some animal tracks (apparently moose and caribou are often curious about the camera clicking sound and will investigate them) we give up. I pick a spot along the frozen snow covered river to set down that is as close to the coordinates as we can get.
Landing in these conditions presents a whole different challenge than landing in the summer. In warmer times I have to worry about trees, bushes, branches and swampy ground. In the winter the snow itself becomes the bigger threat. It will turn into the blinding snowball whiteout effect and if you don’t have a good reference point you can easily start drifting. If you start drifting not only can you get your tail rotor or main rotor to contact something but you are also at great risk of dynamic roll over.
Dynamic rollover is what happens when a skid contacts something on the ground and the contact spot becomes a pivot point. If you drift right for example and touch a rock or snow drift then the helicopter will want to roll around that point and tip over to the right. With dynamic rollover you end up tipping far enough that no matter how much opposite control input you make the helicopter will still rollover in the original direction. Once past a critical angle the main rotor will still be pulling you over so the only thing you can low is lower collective and set the machine back down. This is easier said than done as most dynamic rollover crashes happen in seconds or faster and you can even over-do the correction and the momentum will cause a rollover in the opposite direction!
To avoid that I pick a spot to land almost directly on top of some smaller bushes that are poking out of the snow. By keeping my reference close to me I will still be able to see it in the inevitable snowball. I also keep a couple trees as references a little farther away as I begin to lower down from the high hover and use them for as long as I can to ensure I don’t have any drift that would cause me to lose sight of my chosen bush before getting close to it. Nice thing about the river landing spot is that I have a very clear exit direction in the event I lose all my references; some more confined areas can be trickier to deal with.
To reduce the snowball effect enough to let me see my reference bush I hold a high hover and slowly start coming down, pausing as the snowball builds and then lowering again once it subsides enough to see down. By the time the trees are obscured I have my reference bush clearly in view out the chin window and use that to keep steady the last couple feet. While I haven’t personally done any heliski work the same idea applies there, stakes/flags are set up as references on the mountain spots where there are no bushes which let you land there in the much desired fresh powder.
Once the skids touch the surface of the snow we aren’t out of it yet though. You still have to get the skids into the snow without any drift as you have no idea where any rocks or branches are underneath that can snag you. Also if there is an ice crust on the snow you don’t want to break through and then have the skids shift under it. When you lift off the bearpaws can catch on that crust and might not break through it evenly which will again create that dangerous pivot point for a rollover.
After gently lowering into the snow to feel out what's there and confirm you’re not having one skid hit something to have you off level the next part is to do a seating check. This is basically mashing the helicopter into the snow with deliberate pumping of the collective. The idea is to compress the snow under the skids and bearpaws to ensure the helicopter won’t shift or suddenly break through the snow after you shut down. After making a few good bumps and not feeling the bearpaws crunch down anymore it’s now safe to stop flying the helicopter and to shut down.
One nice thing about deep snow like this is that the bearpaws acting like snowshoes will let the nose tip forward a bit which in turn raises the tail rotor away from the ground. That’s how I can land in 4’ or more deep snow without chewing it up with the notoriously low tail rotor on an Astar.
Now that we have safely landed and shut down the ENR crew and cameraman fall out into the snow and dig their way over to the basket where their snowshoes are. That is when we found out how deep it really was out here as their first steps out the door have them fall down to their waists. This is where that seating check really comes into play as the helicopter compressed the snow down enough to sit happily on its belly and the bearpaws even though the skids were not directly touching the ice below the snow.
I stick with the helicopter while they begin the hunt for camera number one. While I have emergency snowshoes on board for myself and it would be fun to go for a little hike around, I also don’t want to risk getting injured. If I fall or twist my ankle out there it will be very difficult to fly home! Besides, it was fun to watch the poor cameraman who has never snowshoed in his life struggle to keep up with the local ENR crew while insulated from any similar embarrassing blunders by offering helpful tips from the cockpit.
After 20 minutes they give up. The camera should have been placed along the river not too far into the woods. There is evidence that the river bank may have collapsed a little in the summer with a few trees along the edge having fallen over. The ENR crew assumed that their camera tree was washed away unfortunately. With that we get their snowshoes back into the cargo basket and I fire up while they do the notes.
Departing from the snow is basically the reverse process from landing in it. A nice snow gentle climb into the hover watching my reference bush to prevent drift. Once the skids are clear of the snow I pull more power in to get above the building snowball quickly before losing other references. This departure wasn't too bad but gives an idea: https://youtu.be/XLaxatOiqoQ
We repeated this process for the next couple cameras and thankfully only the first one was missing. The sky is still overcast and it was snowing on and off as we went. This was really too bad for the cameraman as some of these wildlife cameras were into the edges of another mountain range and would have been beautiful on a sunny day. As you can see here in this video visibility wasn't the best: https://youtu.be/mF-VLtyOnV0
With fuel now running low it was time to head back to Fort Good Hope. When we arrived back there all confusion from the morning became much more clear. It turns out that while yes the documentary crew was supposed to be flying today with some of the ENR crew and the other community members, it was not supposed to be with my helicopter! Turns out another company was chartered to do the filming work and my task was to recover the other 17 out of 18 cameras while they did one and other film work. From what I gathered the ENR lead, while aware of the overall plan hadn’t been fully briefed on how it was all going down and the documentary crew became excited and sort of took over when they heard me come in to land initially.
In essence I had been hijacked by a French documentary crew! Luckily it didn’t really affect our plan for the rest of the day beyond having an odd start. My two ENR crew stayed with me while the rest of them and the documentary crew left to figure out where their actual helicopter was. The French leader assured me that they would not be using any of the footage that they had taken so far as they had all their paperwork arranged with the other company. At least that potential crisis was averted before I had started my own phone calls to head office. Just another day in the north for us though as it is not uncommon for communication breakdowns to occur between various offices down south and the actual workers in the north.
Fueling in winter out of drums is much the same as the summer. It’s just a lot slower and harder because most of the time your drums are buried in snow and you have to dig them out before rolling them over and everything sucks in the cold. This was one of those dig them out occasions though thankfully not too bad. They were horizontal and the front of their packing skids had been sorta ploughed. After digging out the pallet and separating the drums that had frozen together the ENR crew and I rolled them over to the helicopter and I got to work refueling. As mentioned before I try to use fueling gloves to keep the Jet A off my good clothes and hands.
I didn’t have the heavy insulated fueling gloves today and honestly even if I did have them it wouldn’t help much. The locking clasps on the pumps, filters and hoses require a little fine motor skills, especially when they are stiff in the cold and the heavier gloves make that very difficult. So sadly I got a little Jet A on my nice heated gloves and would have to smell it the rest of the day. No matter how careful you are when it’s this cold the seals don’t work perfectly and bending a frozen hose around can cause spills when draining. Nothing drastic but certainly enough to stick on you all day.
With that task out of the way it is back on track to find the rest of the cameras with only my actual ENR crew on board. One neat thing about flying over this terrain in the snow is that you can see all sorts of animal tracks as well as the animals themselves. More than once the ENR crew pointed out areas where a wolf pack had clearly made a caribou or moose kill. There were also more moose out than I would have expected. By the end of the job which was a little under 8 hours of flying I spotted over two dozen of them and around five or six caribou! Not so lucky to spot any wolves, in my experience they hate helicopter noise and hide long before I see them most of the time and it was too early for the bears to be about (polar bears being much farther north).
In fact at the first camera we stopped at round two we ended up disturbing a group of 4 moose that had gathered right next to the camera. You never really want to bother local wildlife as it stresses the animals out and can harm them but in this case we both surprised each other. Given how large they are you’d think they would be easier to find from the air but if in the trees they can be deceptively camouflaged. I hold a hover near the camera and wait until the 4 moose are well clear before prepping for my actual landing.
During one of the camera stops I realized I had made a terrible mistake. Instead of moving my lunch bag into the cabin I forgot it in the cargo cheek after unloading the winter covers. This meant that the chicken wraps I had made for myself that morning had been sitting in -28 temperatures for a few hours by now and my water bottle as well. So much for a drink as it was solid ice and likewise I had to sit with a wrap under each armpit under my sweater for a few minutes before being able to take a bite without breaking a tooth! Hopefully I won’t ever make that mistake again!
The rest of the day goes by pretty much the same. Quick recce of the GPS coordinates to find the camera from the air and then landing as close as possible to them for pick up. Without the additional cameraman we were able to get 11 sites finished covering over 500NM (575SM or 925KM) of ground. That left us with only 6 more sites for the second day, all of them much closer to Fort Good Hope as well.
Getting settled in for the night is always the least fun part of the day. You’re tired and want to go to bed but instead you have to brave the cold yet again to get the covers on the machine. A quick inspection of the helicopter for “after last flight” items and it’s time to put it to bed. First step is placing the buddy heaters in the cabin and engine bay as well as making sure the cords are all long enough and no breakers have been tripped. Then it’s on to the covers.
There isn’t too much you can trust your customers to do with this even if they want to help. The body and rotor head cover require standing on top of the helicopter to put on and there are plenty of places they can damage with a wrongly placed foot or hand grip. They are at least able to help with the main rotor blade covers. You unroll them and have one person on a ladder (or back of a pick up truck box) feeding them onto the blade while the other person pulls the straps along to get to the rotor hub. Then you crawl up top to pull it on the last little bit and wrap the straps around and buckle them in. Body and rotor head covers and velcro to hold them together are not that difficult in theory. What makes it hard is cold hands and in the case of the Astar very little room to work up top. I’m lucky that this one has large squirrel cheek cargo pods on both sides that give me a much larger area to stand on. Once the body and rotor head covers are secured up top it’s just a matter of wrapping the rest of the straps around the skids/tail boom/door handles and clipping them in. Tail rotor cover is much easier, slide in one blade and then velcro around the other. Then you just tie the blades down like a normal day and are good to go.
The last part of the day is finding some food and getting to the B&B I’m spending the night at. Unlike down south many small hamlets up here don’t actually have hotels/motels to stay in. Large companies like Esso will have entire work camps set up for their staff that are similar to a hotel but if you are just visiting then often you’ll be in a B&B (minus the breakfast part…). Per the contract with ENR I also am being given a rental truck even though I don’t really need one after being dropped off. Either way, the first stop is the corner store where I pick up some chicken nuggets and fries as well as the truck.
There are no formal rental companies up here and when the ENR lead drops me off he points to a red truck and says “I think that one is yours”. Keys were already in it and it is clearly just the corner store owner's personal vehicle complete with their keychain having what looks like their house keys and some other personal items attached. Store clerk was unsure but the ENR lead simply texted the owner and she confirmed to take the red one. No paperwork or anything to sign, just a text sent to me later telling me to send the $200 for the day to an email and a picture of a notepad receipt.
Same deal with the B&B, no one there, just a number given to me by the ENR lead to call and arrange for payment. House was nice enough and I was the only one staying there. Doors were unlocked and a key was left on the kitchen table with instructions written to leave it there when I leave. During busier times in the summer a place like this will be full and the next best option is to start asking around for a local with a room or couch available.
One memorable time I was in Kugluktuk up a little more north in Nunavut, the inn I was supposed to stay in was double booked and my only recourse was to walk around town knocking on doors asking for a place to stay! That actually works rather well in these hamlets as typically someone will know someone with a place to stay or vehicle to rent if you really need it.
With food, wheels and lodging secured I finished my paperwork for the day and got some sleep. Next morning we had plans to be airborne around 10am. This means I need to be at the helicopter around 9am to get all the blade covers off and do a quick walk around and refuel. One thing to note with temperatures like the -38C it was that morning is that you can’t actually do a fuel drain of the aircraft. Below 0C there is a chance the drain valve can get stuck open and spill all your fuel into the ground. This is why checking the drums with a flashlight before using them is even more important than normal! Most of the time there will be a little water in the drums too but the standpipes we have are adjustable so you can avoid sucking fuel from the very bottom where the water will collect. We also have an additional airframe fuel filter on all our helicopters in the fleet to help filter out any ice that might make its way into the fuel tank.
The crew arrives and now it is time to take off the body cover and remove the heaters. If you take those out too early then all that heat will disappear quickly so it’s a little bit of a rush to put the cover away and get everyone loaded up. The electrical cords are the worst part as even winter cords are very stiff and breakable in -38C. Thankfully the ENR lead took them into their building to warm up before coiling them which made my job a little easier.
The second day of flying is much like the first. We go to the coordinates and find the flagging tape, land next to the cameras and pick them up. Again we see some more wildlife including a moose that was curious enough to come back after initially being scared off by our approach. You can see him in this video when we left the site: https://youtu.be/hxcmQNUyxLY
With the last of the cameras picked up we head back to Fort Good Hope before lunch time. Funny enough the other helicopter finally arrived for the documentary crew. Turns out he cancelled the other day due to weather in his area but he didn’t have the contact info for the documentary crew directly to let them know he wasn’t coming.
With the job done I pack up all my gear and take on one last drum of fuel to get back to Norman Wells. Weather of course cleared up completely then so I had a much more enjoyable trip home. Back in the hangar all that’s left is some paperwork and a quick wash of the machine before being ready for the next job and whatever adventure in the north it brings!
Funny enough as a side note, after working in and around these towns over the years you end up making friends with the people who live here or friends/coworkers end up moving to one of these places. In my case I had an old friend from grade school who lives in Norman Wells these days. In typical northern fashion as soon as they knew I was coming to town for a bit I was immediately invited to a curling bonspiel that was happening that weekend. Nothing like arriving in the middle of nowhere to warm hospitality and soon enough I was sharing some curling club shot served off a modified curling broom with a bunch of the locals! The weather might be cold but the people are always warm and friendly.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to ask any questions about this story or helicopter bush operations, I'm always happy to talk about the job, machine and environment!
What an awesome read. And a great reminder at the diversity in flying careers out there.
