On Thursday February 23 six of the seven members of the 2017 ACE/OSIRIS Validation Campaign Team left Toronto's Pearson airport on a 6:45 morning flight to Edmonton. The team was tired but in good spirits during the flight and they arrived just after 9 local time in Edmonton. After a short layover the team bade farewell to Edmonton, and relatively warm weather, to head to Yellowknife. Just before 1 in the afternoon the team landed in Yellowknife, which at the time was at a brisk -11 degrees.
We settled into our hotel and after a brief bit of time to unwind we headed out to see a bit of the town and grab lunch. Later on Kristof, Gurpreet and Paul went for a walk to a nearby frozen lake and managed to get covered in snow from some surprisingly deep drifts. The team met their seventh member, Emily, for dinner before heading back to the hotel to get an early sleep in consideration of the early charter flight that would take them to Eureka the next morning.
On Friday morning the team left their hotel to head to the airfield from which they would be catching a charter flight to Eureka. This flight made stops in Cambridge Bay and Resolute before arriving in Eureka safely on Friday evening. Strong winds made the trip up from Yellowknife take longer than usual, but the flight was generally uneventful. Upon reaching Eureka the team was warmly greeted (in contrast to the -40 degree weather outside) and settled into their accommodations. Emily, Erik, Ghazal, Kristof and Sˇbastien are returning team members and Paul and Gurpreet are the new members who get to experience PEARL for the first time.Overall the team's journey to Eureka was long and tiring, but the team arrived in one piece and ready to start working.
For those of you checking our website (https://eureka.physics.utoronto.ca/), we expect to have it updated on Monday.