This is The Ungava Crater as seen from a high altitude aerial photograph. I didn't realize how large this crater actually is. Whenever I have had the rare opportunity to view this meteor crater, it was usually from 21,000 to 30,000 feet and many kilometers distant. It was hard to estimate the actual size of the crater from my viewpoint. I was amazed to find it's dimensions to be 3.44 Km in diameter and 445 meters in depth.

Ungava Crater

The Ungava Crater is an impact crater located in northern Quebec near Ungava Bay. The meteor crater is 3.44 Km in diameter and over 400 meters deep. I have seen it from the air several times now but have never been close to it on the ground. It would be a great place to explore in the short summer. The water in the crater bowl is a deep blue colour. This photograph shows the crater in it's usual arctic deep freeze state. The Ungava Crater is also known as the Chubb Crater or The Northern Quebec Crater.

Come on in! The water is fine! Seals will keep several holes like this open in the sea ice. The seals need to come up for air from 4 to 10 times an hour. Sometimes they will use the holes to look around to see what is on the ice above them. Polar bears may hunt for seals by waiting near the breathing hole. Inuit hunters can stand motionless over a seal's breathing hole for hours in hope of harpooning the animal. Seals are an important food source for inuit across the arctic. 

Cliffs rise 1000ft straight up out of the ocean. These red cliffs are near Arctic Bay on the northern shores of Baffin Island.  

Here is an interesting building. It is located in Iglulik. The building was originally a research facility. It was built in the 1960's during an era when prefabricated fibreglass panels were the wave of the future. The building is now being renovated and will be used as an arctic wildlife research facility. Spiral staircases bring you up to a central common area and the various labs radiate from the building's centre.

Starting off my morning in Hall Beach. These are the conditions just before we got the plane on it's way to Iglulik. The sun hasn't been seen for a long time. The sun looks like an atomic blast (In a way it is). Blowing and drifting snow was just the beginning of a massive blizzard covering much of Nunavut. We were to stay an extra day in Iglulik then on to Arctic Bay where we were once again weathered in.

This is Hall Beach Nunavut. That's it that's all. Hall Beach is in the middle of polar bear country and is often visited by the bears. The community is small but surprisingly busy. The community suffered damge from very high tides. The sea ice kept piling up on the shore one day. It crushed many boats and threatened homes on the shoreline. One of the local people told me that they believe that there was a tsunami. She pointed out onto the sea ice and said that sea quakes occur there sometimes. I know that the tides were unusually high then as the moon was on it's closes approach to earth at the time. This caused very high tides around the world. 

One of the thousands of unnamed peaks that we flew over during our run about the Baffin Island region. This shot was taken at 21000 ft. from within our chartered single engine Pilatus. 

This Clyde River. They have been having a few blizzards. Every home has a snowbank trailing from the leaward side. The winds were over 100K/hr for several days. Where is my snowshovel? Where is my car??  

We left the plane in Nanisivik overnight. It's a good thing that it wasn't buired in the snow! 

An Arctic Bay sunrise as viewed from the hotel.

Red sky in the morning. The weather in the high arctic was unusually warm. Arctic Bay was quite warm at +2C. This time of year one would expect daily high temperatures to be -30C.

Somebody get some snow removal equipment so we can get our snow removal equipment.