Sarah Hooper's blog - Chapter 1 (The Team & Getting to the River)

Now what you have to understand is that my paddling companions, although looking forward to our river journey, were pretty old hands when it came to flying out to rivers and landing in the middle of no-where.

Title
Author
Copyright

Description

I, on the other hand, was like a small child on Christmas Eve, I was so so excited ! I couldn't sit still for a moment in the Air Tindi waiting room, checking on every plane arriving (is this one ours?) and bouncing around the place. When our plane finally arrived and Trevor the pilot came into the waiting room I was beside myself.

The controller of Air Tindi pointed out on the map to Trevor where we were heading to which the pilot replied 'that's not on my map! '- I just about squeeled with excitement, oh my goodness, we're off his map!!!!

On account of it being my first trip in a float plane - I was allowed to sit in the co-pilots seat, yipee!

The flight was incredible. We flew for about 3 hours, above the Artic Circle and saw nothing but thousands of small lakes and rivers. It was unbelievable.

We weren't able to land on the lake we had originally planned, as it was too shallow. We spotted a couple of other possibilities but they were too 'glassy' [ if the water is glassy then it is difficult for the pilot to judge where the top of the water is, apparently they sometimes throw apples out the window to create ripples]

We finally found a suitable lake and Trevor was able to land safely although it was somewhat of a boggy landing zone!

Then came the moment when the plane flew off and we were left totally on our own. I had been anticipating this moment for months, wondering how I would feel - Scared? Nervous? Excited? Apprehensive? Lonely?

Actually I felt none of those things. The truth is that I felt completely at home and totally contented - I was exactly where I was supposed to be.