Düsseldorf to Vancouver, part 3
This is the third and final part in a series of photos from Flickr user banthafood, taken on a flight from Düsseldorf to Vancouver. The first part of the series covered East Greenland, while the second part covered West Greenland. This final installment crosses Baffin Bay to the frozen wilderness of Canada's Bylot Island, and then continues across the Canadian high arctic and south to Vancouver.
I'll warn in advance that Google Earth's coverage of Bylot is terrible - the imagery is low-resolution, poorly lit, and was acquired during a period of heavy snow cover. This makes it difficult to match the photographs with the Google Earth imagery. In all cases, the locations given are almost certainly correct - I don't publish images unless I'm quite sure of a location match. However, due to the poor quality of the Google Earth images, it's difficult to visually match some of the images with the screenshots shown here. If you click the Google Earth screenshot next to each image, you can view the area yourself in Google Earth, which usually makes it much easier to see the correspondance with the given photograph.
Given the difficulty of matching the locations, I normally would not include these Bylot images at all, except for the following factors: (1) Bylot Island is remote and seldom visited. Not many people fly over, and of those that do, not many apparently take pictures. These are the first aerial images of Bylot that I've seen on Flickr. (2) The photographs from banthafood are superb, particularly the close-up views. The clear air, barren landscapes, and swirling ice combine to create images of abstract beauty.
With that said, let's move on to the photos. The first image shows a typical pattern of glaciers on the east coast of Bylot Island. Unlike most glaciers in Greenland, the glaciers of Bylot typically do not flow directly into the sea. Instead, as seen here, most terminate in rounded, lobe-shaped glacial fronts, with a network of rivers and streams carrying the meltwater to the sea. The glacial fronts seen here are about ten km inland from the west coast of Bylot Island.
The next image provides a wide overview of the network of glaciers covering the eastern half of Bylot Island. The waters of Baffin Bay lie to the upper right, and the island stretches off to the left. Bylot Island, the world's 71st largest island, is slightly smaller than the US state of Connecticut, and is uninhabited.
Here are some more of the lobe-shaped glacial fronts on the east coast of Bylot, about 12 km north of the glaciers from the first image above. Note the small meltwater lake, dotted with ice floes, at the glacier's edge in the upper right.
The next image shows the mountains and ice flows in the interior of the island. Two glaciers are seen here, one flowing to the right and one flowing towards the upper left.
Another shot from the highlands in the interior of the island. This image shows partially frozen meltwater lakes along the edge of the large glacier in the upper left.
This spectacular image comes from the merger of two glaciers, flowing from the lower left and right sides of the frame. These meet near the center of the frame, with a large meltwater lake right at the junction point. Surface water can also be seen along the surface of the glacier, flowing in bright blue strands in the upper left.
The next image shows an overview of a single large glacier, its surface marked by complex flow patterns, and dotted with several meltwater lakes. The glacial junction point from the previous image can be seen on the right-central portion of this photograph. The section of glacier shown here stretches about 30 km from the bottom of the frame to the terminus at the top, and is about five km wide at its widest point.
We now leave Bylot Island, crossing over the small strait which separates Bylot from the northern portion of Baffin Island. This image shows a portion of the shore of Baffin, with a huge circular collection of ice floes floating just offshore.
Travelling about 1200 km southwest of Bylot Island, we come to this image from the western part of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, showing the Ellice River flowing through the center of the photo.
Photo (© banthafood)
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Google Earth Screenshot
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Back Lake and Box Lake, Northwest Territories
A further 350 km southwest, we have crossed into the Northwest Territories, where we have this close-up view of some of the many lakes in the region. The northern portion of Back Lake is in the foreground, and Box Lake stretches across the center of the image.
Photo (© banthafood)
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Google Earth Screenshot
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Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories
150 km further southwest, we come to the eastern arm of the Great Slave Lake, the deepest lake in North America. The Pethei Peninsula runs diagonally through the center of the image, separating Christie Bay on the left from McLeod Bay on the right. In the lower right is the western tip of Kluziai Island.
Photo (© banthafood)
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Google Earth Screenshot
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Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories
The next image shows the cluster of islands at the base of the eastern arm of the Great Slave Lake. The photo looks west across the main body of the lake. Running diagonally into the center of the image is Wilson Island; in the upper right, at the edge of the clouds, are the Caribou Islands.
Photo (© banthafood)
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Google Earth Screenshot
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Slave River Delta, Northwest Territories
Along the southeastern shore of the Great Slave Lake, the next image shows the delta of the Slave River as it flows northward into the lake. The delta lies in the upper right; another river, the Jean River, flows from the foreground into the center of the image.
South of the Great Slave Lake, the next photo comes from the northern edge of the Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada's largest national park.
The final trio of images comes from western Alberta, about 600 km further southwest. This image shows the tree-lined banks of Howard Creek (foreground) and the Ksituan River (center) meandering through open fields.
The next image shows the gorge of the Wapiti River in western Alberta, about 25 km from the British Columbia border.
The final image looks back across the fields of western Alberta, showing the the Redwillow River winding through the farmland.
Photos taken: July 22, 2007
Photos by: banthafood
Route: Düsseldorf to Vancouver
