April 27, 2011: We spent the night in Thule in the North Star Hotel. Before we could leave Thule the crew had to load the cargo back into the C130. Equipment is loaded onto palettes, and these palettes are loaded through the rear door into the plane. A C130 can handle four palettes with two tons of cargo each.
The flight to Alert is only about 1 1/2 hours long flying along the Nares Strait, with some very beautiful views of the Greenland ice sheet extending to the coast. The following picture shows the edge of the ice sheet.
We arrived in Alert at 10.30am, unloaded the airplane and started setting up the laboratories and workshops.