|
James Bay Road in January 2009
Photos and text by Vanessa Campbell
Page 2 of 2
Page 1 Page 2 |
| |
 |
This picture was taken from the Hydro Quebec access road at
km 396. We drove along it for a bit hoping to get a side view of the Eastmain but no such
luck. |
|
 |
At the Opinaca River rest stop at km 411. Finally we got a
picture with the sun in it! |
|
 |
And finally we get to see some caribou! The caribou are
much like deer; very skittish and they flee the road before you can lift the camera up to
your face.
These pictures were taken from the car. You can see how far over I am on the shoulder. |
|
 |
Pictures from the
Trans-Taiga Road. The last satellite map we saw before leaving Brampton showed the
majority of caribou around Lake Sakami. Since our caribou sightings were dismal, we
decided to take a little side trip along the Trans-Taiga Road in the hopes of seeing more
caribou.
But it was not meant to be. We made it to Lake Sakami and saw zero caribou. The drive
to km 60 was fine. The gravel was frozen, and it seemed like they had graded it
relatively recently before the ground froze. It was not smooth like pavement, but there
were no problems in maintaining 70km/h. It was actually easier to drive on since it was
packed snow instead of ice over pavement....
This photo is from the bridge over the overflow (km 59). |
|
 |
Here we are heading back along the
Trans-Taiga Road towards the main highway. You can see
how nice and smooth the surface is. We were tossing around the idea of driving towards
the cut-off for LG-3, but decided against it since we wanted to make Radisson before the
darkness fell. |
|
 |
Heading into Radisson.
Some areas had tons of snow on the trees, others, very little.
|
|
 |
The next two photos are not in black and white. When it's
overcast outside, everything turns to shades of grey!
This is the overflow for the main dam. |
|
 |
This picture is from the man-made bay into the intake for
LG-2A. On to Chisasibi...
|
|
 |
Since there isn't too much to do in the town of
Chisasibi, we decided to drive right out to the
water. They do plow the roads leading to the ferry dock for Fort George, and the one that
goes right to the ocean.
The gravel road leading to the airport is in poor condition; it definitely had not
been graded prior to the ground freezing. As much as I tried, I couldn't find a section
of the road without holes. The snow didn't fill in the holes and smooth out the road... |
|
 |
Again, more grey photos from it being overcast and light
flurries on and off. There really is an ocean out there, but it's impossible to tell
unless if you've been there before! (We did camp on that beach in 2004 and the bugs drove
us crazy.) |
|
 |
It's time to head south... We spotted a few caribou which
ran into the trees as soon as we got near them. While we were taking pictures of those
caribou, we spotted 3 more about half a kilometer down the road. With the element of
surprise on our side, we slowly crept forward and they stayed on the road. |
|
 |
If I can find some editing software, I'll post a video clip
of them running with the car. They run around 35-40km/h on the highway. If they get
running around this speed, it gets too fast for them to run off the road and into the
ditch. You can see them looking for somewhere to exit the road. After we got our minute
and a half of video, we backed off the gas and watched them run off the road and back
into the bush. I don't remember exactly where this was, but it was likely in the
km400s. We saw most of our caribou in this area of the highway. |
|
 |
A ptarmigan. |
|
| |
| That's it! I hope you enjoyed our winter travelogue! --Vanessa Campbell.
Page 1
Page 2 |
| |
|
|
| |
