Blanchet Island, East Arm of Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories. 15-16 August 2015 PART I

Went out for a camping/fishing/stargazing trip to Blanchet Island, located at the East Arm of the Great Slave Lake. Never been that far east on the lake before - the geology and vegetation are distinctly different from Yellowknife.There are also fossils of stromatolites there!

Took the Twin Otter there ....

We're actually leaving, in these photos ... couldn't get a footage of us arriving when we are still in the plane, now, can we?

THAT is a piece of stromatolite!

And THIS is me holding dinner...

Which he caught.

I didn't do too much exploring/hiking as my back was a bit messed up that day. So it was mostly fishing, and looking at rocks, and napping, and snacking.... while waiting for the night show to start .. about nearly 11ish pm, all the way to 3ish am, when the sky starts to get too light to see the colours well.

The photos are a bit blurry, as I didn't have my tripod or remote shutter release with me that night (absent minded, much?), and towards the end the lenses were so fogged up with condensation. But the effect it had on the photos just made it more surreal.                                                                   

Considering the limitations, the photos came out spectacularly well. I am chuffed that I managed to capture some of the rarer colours (reds, purples). Haven't come across Oranges yet - it's Mythical Status yet to be debunked.
                                         

Glowsticks and Auroras = fun

Next time it will be multiple glowsticks going in all directions!

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I only act my age (about 5, mentally) when I'm camping

Of course we went fishing, again! Baker Island, Great Slave Lake.

Decided to scoot a bit further from Yellowknife Bay this time. About 40km southwest to Baker Island. I am still a bit weirded out by the fact that I still cannot instinctively tell the cardinal directions during the day! Nothing freaks out a forest monkey out of the tropics more than having the sun follow a horseshoe path around the horizon .....

I am tempted to get an underwater camera so we can view the fishies under the water. It's exciting when they bite the lure, but that is only half of the action - I bet it would fun to see them chase the lure in the water itself, from the vantage point under the water.


                                       

                                                                    

We still haven't quite figure out how to get the whitefish and trout.... but it was still a blast fishing out monster pikes out of the weedy banks.

They (pikes) are still chilling out in the cooler..... waiting for me to clean them up! Yum!

NWT forest fires and resulting smoke.

There's massive forest fires (note the plural) going on in Northern Canada, and the smoke has been torturing our lungs for the past month. It got so bad the only highway going up to Yellowknife from the south was closed for many days, and supplies ran short.

The smoke is even visible from the orbiting satellite! Thick thick smoke....

We went fishing on Saturday to escape the smoke in town, but alas, the lake is thickly engulfed, as well. Both Andrew and I were extremely sick on Sunday from the smoke inhalation. We can hardly see land when out on the lake with the smoke reducing visibility to about 20m or so.

That boat there is about 100m away.

This is what the lake and visibility looks like when the smoke wasn't too thick on the water 2 weeks prior.

BRB gone fishing

 

 

Pikes are good eating, especially if caught in Ice Cold northern lakes.