Helicopter to the Top of the World (see slides below)

Phot:o: Looking a little derelict but feeling magnificent!

Helicopter to the Cambrian Ice Fields - Stewart Canada

One of my missions on this trip is to fobtain a reasonably good feel for the size of our planet. In my travels I’ve been to every continent; but only by plane and on unconnected journeys. I felt like a motorcycle trip from top to bottom would provide an accurate feel of the earth’s circumference. After all it is just a ball and so half-way around in one direction could be sensed and experienced, then all that need be done, is to double it. It sounded like such a good idea originally but today’s experience has shown me that my initial hypothesis may have been wrong.
Riding a motorcycle on roads from point to point is basically only two dimensional. Today we took a phenomenal helicopter ride to the Cambrian Ice Fields. They are atop the glacial mountain range that defines Stewart Alaska. Only a 12 minute chopper ride to the Ice Fields but it was a world away. Over 9000 feet above the sea these Ice Fields are said to be the largest in North America. I don’t know if they are, but they are vast. It was like being in a desert of snow. I was deposited on the ice field with three mates and left there until the copter returned in twenty minutes with more of our group, then my group was flown back down. Having never been in a helicopter before I knew this would be remarkable. I was unprepared for how beautiful the experience would be. On the return to the heliport we dove and climbed up and down the giant gorges formed by the glaciers over millennia. Spectacular, stunning, humbling and large, larger, largest. The scale of this mountain range when viewed from the heli’s cockpit terribly complicates my attempt to get a feel for our globe’s size. This third dimension adds great complexity and complicates getting a sense of the globe’s size - But maybe it really just adds data. After all the circumference is still the same, it is only that what is inside the circumference is very full when you consider the nearly infinite nooks and crannies. If I’m trying to gain a global perspective haven’t I just learned that, at a minimum, those who say it is a ‘small world’ are horribly wrong?


Sir Gerald, Kiwi Jeff, and Mac