After a 36-hours long journey and 6 different flights we smoothly landed in Inuvik on July 16th. We were all quite happy to see the colors of the north, which contrasted with the white background formed by the clouds that were surrounding us during the hours of flight.

Inuvik is a small arctic town of 3400 inhabitants, mostly Inuvialuits and it is located along the Mackenzie River. The city is reachable via one road coming from the south, the Dempster Highway or by the air.

 

We stayed there for 4 days to get rid of our jet lag and prepare for Herschel Island. In fact we forgot about the jet lag and just jumped into the preparations. This implied scheduling and organizing the next flights to Herschel, packing and weighing the scientific equipment, shopping for more equipment, buying the food, and cooking.
We were hosted by the Aurora Research Institute, which provided us with housing and research facilities http://nwtresearch.com/.

 

This was actually the first priority as defined by the rule "Safety first: Food". We shopped and chopped, reshopped and rechopped and then we fried and stewed enough meals to keep 9 to 12 people away from hunger for the next 28 days. We put all dishes into bags and froze them to better transport them to the island. And we did not loose any finger on the cutting board!