Flight from Detroit to Tokyo, 26 March 2004—1
During the first half of my flight from Detroit to Tokyo, I was lucky enough to have clear skies that gave me an uninterrupted view of the ground from Detroit to the Bering Sea. As usual on this flight, the aircraft flew north west from Detroit to Alaska, passing over Manitoba, the western Northwest Territories, and the Yukon before turning westward over central Alaska. Here are the best pictures from that flight.
The first several pictures were taken toward the west. This one shows part of Lake Winnipeg, a shallow N–S lake that stretches over half of Manitoba. he solid white area represents the snow-covered lake.
A closer view of Lake Winnipeg.
The contrast between snow and forest revealed the complex patterns of the rivers with unusual clarity. Note the abundance of earlier tracks for the rivers, many of which exist here only as oxbow lakes.
This closer view shows the older river tracks more clearly. Note the two large lakes in the middle of the photo
Here is a little town, with a large section on the left side of the river and a smaller section on the right. Note the airport and its T-shaped runway. A large lake lies at the bottom of the picture.
Here is another large lake connected to smaller lakes and marshes. Note the sharp bends in the river at the top left.
Now come two views to the east, away from the sun. This one is probably from the Northwest Territories, which is the Canadian Shield with an uncountable number of small lakes on top of it (water in local depression in the rock). Here the lakes are all snow-covered. Note how they line up, as though the rock were stretched. Another interesting feature of these eastward view is their haziness, much more than expected for this remote area. This is probably Arctic haze on its way southward out of the Arctic. (Arctic haze is pollution aerosol from Russia and part of Europe.)
A closer view of the Canadian Shield. You can see some access roads.
This view is to the southwest. It shows a portion of the Canadian Rockies in the distance.
A closer view of the Canadian Rockies.