Natashquan, August 9th

In the Montagnais language it means “the-place-where-we-hunt-for-bear.”

Nutashkuan issishuemakam nite uesh natashkuenan

We found no bears today though we did go off the road into the wilderness for about an hour along a hiking trail, the Pas du Portageur, that wound through the forest and across the tundra (a plateau of smooth rocks, pale lichen, miniature larch trees, cotton grass) above the Petite Natashquan River. The path was marked with home-made birdhouses and tripods of dried poles. Blueberry bushes grew everywhere, full of ripe berries to which I helped myself. The ground underfoot felt very spongy and over the soggiest patches logs or ladders had been laid. The other place where it's fun to walk is on the sandy beach beside the village or on the boardwalk crossing the dunes, where we were mesmerized by the lapping and overlapping wavelets and the smooth rocks out in the bay that look like whales' backs emerging as the white water slaps them.

We decided to land here again today because none of the other accessible airports west of Blanc-Sablon has fuel available, also because this one was reported to have better weather than at our departure point where it was raining hard in a strong, cold wind, out of low clouds. Saying goodbye to Gary Landry, the proprietor of the Auberge Four Seasons, we climbed into our minivan to return it to the airport and then got soaked, checking and loading our 'plane and unrolling the life-jackets that we thought we'd better wear under our harnesses (I kept getting my whistle caught in my headphone cables). The engine coughed apologetically but wouldn't start until the fourth try; Chris is still speculating why we had this “ignition problem"—I hope we won't have it again tomorrow. Finally the propellor began to spin as it should and the engine began to sound normal; with rain lashing on windows that were also steamed up on the inside and dripping with condensation from our wet clothes we pulled out onto runway 05, opening our Flight Plan with Sept Iles radio as we did so. The winds were impressive too, coming from 100 degrees magnetic (50 degrees “off the nose”) at 21, gusting 26, knots. The sky was reported to be 600' broken, 1200' overcast, although in actual fact, when we got up there, it wasn't quite that obscure. I was also expecting to suffer from turbulence, but that wasn't so worrisome either, the aircraft admittedly swinging about, but quite smoothly so that it was hardly noticeable, except by the vertical speed indicator.

We flew for about an hour in cloud and then for a further 45 minutes between layers, which is less hard on the eyes, beginning to see misty patches of ground or water towards the end, and all the way imagining the land and sea we were flying over because we'd seen it on Wednesday. Only ten minutes before we were due to land, however, we were still immersed in cloud, with the AWOS from Natashquan (Automatic Weather Observation System) unbelievably reporting sunny skies and scattered cloud (sparse cloud, if you listen to the French translation). Sure enough, with about 10 miles to go and well into our descent we were suddenly in the clear, so that Chris had great pleasure in doing his first ever “contact” approach in IFR. This whole flight was “IFR in uncontrolled airspace with no clearances,” another unusual factor.

The airport (here's where it is on a Google map: the satellite picture shows you the way the glaciers once scraped the surrounding land) was deserted: closed for business at weekends. A telephone, however, was accessible this time, and I must have managed to make our presence felt in my inadequate Quebec French to someone or other, because after a while a truck rolled up, the driver telling us he was the remplaçant for the usual airport workers and would help us; we could pay him for the fuel. We tentatively asked about transportation for our bags into the lodging I'd found and he grinned, saying, “Le taxi, c'est moi!”

Spent the night at La Cache on the Chemin d'en haut. When we came to Natashquan before, eight years ago, I think the only other street was the Chemin d'en bas, but the village has expanded since and other thoroughfares are now named. We found a short cut back from the shore along the rue de Souvenir, for example. Natashquan is full of memories about which I intend to add another blog post later.