Sunday, 27 October 2013

What is Yellowknife like?

Weird. Extremely weird. Beautiful, but extremely weird.

For a tropical monkey who is used to the sun traversing the skies, East to West, the passage of the summer sun of Yellowknife is enough to make the inner tropical monkey in me gibber in fear.

That high up North (technically we're in the sub-arctic. Taiga area) the sun actually makes a horseshoe around the sky, and juuust barely dips below the horizon around midnight. But it remains light. That you can actually sit outside, and read a book!

These photos were taken on the Longest Day of the Year at midnight.









And trying to find your Cardinal Directions are somewhat impossible; for one thing, you cannot depend on the position of the sun (horseshoe route, remember?) and the fact that being that far North means the magnetic field lines are not really aligned North (as in True North), but also dips into the Earth. This Magnetic Inclination, in addition to the Declination drives all my magnetic compasses absolutely batshit crazy. It would randomly change directions, even when I am holding it still.

The GPS in our car also have a +/- 20 meters error on the display screen due to the position of the satellites in the horizon.

However, on that longest day, we went fishing. It was too hot to stay in the apartment. I caught my first ever fish. Just a Pike but it put up a hell of a fight, and I had a lot of fun landing it. Tastes fantastic, barbecued.


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