Gerd and Dorothy Wengler have joined a very elite group. That, of course, is the group of pilots who have landed their private aircraft at Canadian Forces Station Alert, the most northerly airport in North America.

Alert is a restricted military site, so just getting permission to go there takes a lot of work.  And then there's the flight to the top of Ellesmere Island, some 4000 kilometers north of their home near Toronto, Ontario. Making that trip is not something or the faint of heart.

There is only one small civilian community on Ellesmere - Grise Fiord, about 700 kilometers south of Alert. And there's a weather station about halfway up at Eureka. There also used to be a science station at Eureka, but that was closed in 2012.

Gerd and Dorothy made the Alert trip in mid-August 2009, from their home in southern Ontario.  And from this article on the Canadian Forces website, it sounds like it was quite an adventure.  They made the trip to mark the Centennial of Powered Flight in Canada.

This wasn't their first trip to Canada's Eastern Arctic in their Turbo Skylane.  They visited Iqaluit in the summer of 2005 on the way to Europe. They were back in 2007 for a sightseeing trip to Pangnirtung, Qikiqtarjuaq and Greenland.

Here's a report on their trip to Alert.