Katy Quinn’s Devon Island Journal: July 5, 2001

Note: Text and photos republished from Katy Quinn’s FMARS page by permission of the author.

Thursday, July 5. Made it to Resolute.

I finally made it into Resolute, it was a little uncertain for a while
that we would but here I am. It’s my first morning here, right now
I’m in my room at the South Camp Inn. Resolute is on Cornwallis Island,
one island west of Devon Island and a gateway town to the high Arctic.
About 220 people live here and you can walk from one end of town to another
in about 5 minutes. If you’ve been following the news over at the
project website you’ll know that we’ve had trouble getting people into
Devon Island because of the weather. They got people in a couple
of days ago and hopefully there will be a couple of flights today but there
are people and cargo with higher priority than me so I might be in Resolute
a few days. The Discovery crew has been waiting in Resolute for almost
2 weeks, so I’m not fussed to jump on the next plane.

So how did I get here? It involved three planes and a couple of
aborted landings, so all things considered it’s lucky I’m not back in Ottawa
waiting for the next plane North. I left Boston Tuesday afternoon
to fly to Ottawa. Stayed the night in Ottawa, then got on a plane
from Ottawa to Iqaluit, saw some beautiful views from the plane of endless
tundra and pingos. Then changed planes in Iqaluit to fly to Resolute.
That’s when the uncertainty started. When we neared Resolute the
cloud ceiling was low and visibility marginal. We started our descent,
got close enough that I could see the ground come into view out of the
clouds, maybe 100-200 meters. Then as soon as it seemed we were going
to land the engines reved and we headed up into the clouds again.
Tried one more time to land, but no go. Turned back to Iqaluit, bummer.

Once back in Iqaluit we refueled the plane for another try. We
had about 30 minutes before reboarding, I went for a wander around town.
Iqaluit is the Nunavut capital on Baffin Island. It’s situated on
a bay, surrounded by low rocky hills with some leftover snow cover.
Dirt roads and boxy buildings, it reminded me a lot of McMurdo base in
Antarctica. Good to stretch the legs, it was soon enough time to
get back on the plane to Resolute. Low clouds again as we approached,
we started our descent and the conditions didn’t look much better to me.
We broke out of the clouds maybe 200 m above the ground, visibility a little
better, and this time we touched down, yay! Stepped off the plane
into a cold misty drizzle, very happy to be on the ground. Met with
Colleen Lenahan in the terminal, she’s taking care of all the Mars Society
folks in Resolute this year. Grabbed my gear then headed over to
the town, a few kilometers from the air strip. Looks like I’ll be
here a couple of days but there’s plenty to explore. I’ve already
gone down to the bay not far away from the Inn, today I’ll probably wander
up the hill above town.

Copyright © 2001 Katy Quinn – All rights reserved. The text and images within
this web document may not be used or reproduced in any form or by any means,
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electronic permission of the author. Reproduced on SpaceRef with the permission of the author.