Foot work.

This tail end of summer has been good up here. Yes I did come up here to find the place with air so thick with smoke I could not see Yellow Knife, but it rained a few days later clearing up that smoke and making room for string of nice days full of sun and some times getting too hot. The bugs have been largely absent. We have not been with out interesting weather. A Thunder storm some time around 4am on the 11th took out the internet connection for half a day and the phones were another day in the repairs. That was the end of the string of hot weather we had after I arrived, after that it rained for a day and a night. I was not going to start looking for cubits and gofer wood but it did make me go from need cool showers one day to need a hot shower to warm me then next. Its funny how this place is.

So we are back in to a string of clear warm and sunny days. So its back to the walks. This evening I took a long walk over a ridge that goes behind two of the lesser lakes behind camp. Its a good walk as much of it is in the open and high up keeping the bugs at bay. For fun I actually ran. Not the yuppy jog of some one trying to keep up a heart rate, but a child like dashing about. Often up hill. Running normally bores me, its only when I move on to interesting irregular surfaces that it becomes something worth doing. It was good to let my legs get a work out, all this standing and lifting core boxes has left me with strong arms and weak legs some thing off the opposite of my life time norm. After making record time along that ridge I found my self at a cliff top that I had wished I had my camera with me the last time I was there. It looks out over a little valley that in a land scape of bumpy hills managed to look like a valley, not just a swamp between hills.

After that I worked my way down to the lake and took the time to watch the clouds, since my readers have there own clouds to watch I took the time to photograph a few of them as I can not organize an NWT cloud watching trip for my fans.

Moving Day

Yesterday was a Thursday. For those on the out side that might be a non event but out here in the wilds is one of the few days stands out. Thursdays are plane days, we bring in new people and take out old ones, refreshing the atmosphere here. A good thursday is less productive but good for the spirits. As some people are leaving and t here fore in a good mood and those returning are not yet tired. For me it means I have less then a month left, as that marked my two week point in this rotation, leaving me with just under 4 weeks to go. Four week too long but that is a separate post.

Along with the frenchies rushing to get out the door for a much needed vacation there was the drill move. One of the drills was being moved from a property south of camp to a site north of camp to look in to a fuzzy blotch on a geophysics map. Because of the move there were two helicopters in our air space and some times the crew change plane. Crowded airspace.

The second Chopper was a Bell A-Star, a luxury bird compared to the Hughes 500 stationed in camp. We needed it to move the larger parts of the drill as the long distance made it near impossible for the Hughes. The Hughes is able to move the drill the few hundred meters between drill set ups on a single property but not the 20 plus Km between the properties. The birds made many trips back and forth, stopping to refuel here nearly every trip. I only took the time to shoot it when it came by with the largest and heaviest kite I ever did see.


A Hughes 500, from last spring.


The A-Star, was able to lift up the whole of the drill shack, all four walls in one lift. A thousand pound plywood kite. The A-Star's extra power must have come in handy for over coming the drag from such a large load.


A Bell A-Star





The move.

The slow life

After my 21 days of living the slow life of good food and company I returned to work. Within a few days of that I got a close hand look at a critter that seemingly has mastered the slow life. The Porcupine, my boss had observed two munching on some fire weed behind the transformer box. Here is a critter who's life is to eat sleep and some times mate, while not trying to be a trouble to any one.






And Lastly the best view of Edmonton I can think of from the air leaving it

Summer Vacation

As one or two readers have pointed out I have been some time with out a post, okay that was a week ago, but I have been silent for some time prior to that. I was away, away from the north a way from the Internet and far to involved in real life to take the time to write. Thankfully I have fodder to write about. Three weeks of summer vacation. From July 10 to July 30 I was free from the pressures of work and enjoying the good company of family and friends.

I spent the majority of my time off some where near Trail. From there several little adventures took me and some times the dog to various local lakes and parks.


A Happy Boomer Dog with a Stick

Highlights include a stop at Kooteny pass where a dead moose was spotted at the side of the road. Twenty minuets before the dead moose was a live but shaggy big horned sheep with small horns. There was a brief stop at the glass house on Kookeny lake that I have not seen since I was a kid. The sunset with forest fire from the Kooteny lake fire was beautiful.






Other details, I did two years worth of movies, having gone out to see, Wall-e, Hell Boy II and Dark Knight. All of which are good movies though I have a soft spot for Wall-e, its a Disney film but with a dark twist on the end of the world, the Garbage Apocalypse. I had a birthday where in a break with the unofficial tradition of the last few years it was not ignored.

After 10 days and one car accident, everyone came out fine but the Jeep had its last day, I headed over to Nakusp where, I went mad and managed to clean up two thirds of the upper half of the old log house. I also took my nephew to the beach and for the second year in a row managed to make sure he did not drown.

Now I an back in the north, is hot right now and I do wish I was back in the south, the company can be better down there.






EnJoy.

Albertan Albertan

There is a well known problem on BC roads in the summer. It arrives some time in late may and thins out in late august. Its Red menace that slips across our long and unprotected boarder unchecked. Every year thousands of red on white license plates bearing the signature of wild rose country migrate west. I am uncertain for the motives of these creatures, perhaps its like Salmon, they swim up stream to to spawn. I have not attempted to assess if this is a spawning habit, but it can be seen that they have more akin to Atlantic salmon in that they do manage to return to their homeland after there mountain voyage. This odd creature is the tourist from Alberta.

I found my self suck behind then on a few occasions on my vactation, each time I was faced with the same pattern, common to many native BCer's. The Albertan will fly over any straight stretch of road well over the the speed limit. Unfortunately for them straight roads in BC are slightly more common then math genius supper models and they will be forced to brake. They will then go through the corner slower then needed and regain their speed on the next straight stretch. The net result of the pattern is that it is hard to pass them and annoying to behind them as you are unable to drive the road according to the conditions but according to the Albertan instead.

This inspired a silly rhyme

Albertan Albertan, why'd you come out west
You Can't drive our straightest roads even at your best
Albertan Albertan is driving in the mountains some kind of test
So you can come home and tell your buddies that your are the best.




No actual photos of Albertans driving, the best time to get a photo of them is the worst moment to try to take a shot, on a zig or or a zag on a mountain road.

Managed to Death

This stands to be my last blog post for awhile. I am going on a three week break, much anticipated and much needed. I will generally lack the connectivity and the desire to post any thing, and I will have plenty of better things todo.

As a prelude to my departure, I got wrangled into a field trip tomorrow morning. I had heard of it few nearly a week, but had dismissed the idea because I did not figure it could be made to fit into the halfday I have before I have to get on my plane and fly south. A field trip of mostly road side geology in and around Yellow Knife, to introduce use to the shear structures that dominate some of the rich gold bearing mines, specifically the Giant and Con. The field trip was to be done by 1:30pm leaving me with enough time to catch my 3pm flight to Calgary.


The Con Mine Head Frame

As it worked out our overly eager summer student Ms CW, suggested in jest that I go. This was heard by my immediate boss, Mr. MR, who agreed to give up his seat on that morning trek having seen done that tour before. For me that would have been enough to say I was going. In my mind and likely in MR's mind it was decided that this would be the plan. I fly out with the field trip luggage and all get the tour, get a good lunch in town and part company at the airport and head home. This is still the plan but it starts to get silly at the management end.

We have too much management here, it stems form the ambition of the head office to have the property where the main camp is located to some day become a mine. I can not say when or if this will happen. This leaves us with three layers of management for a place that barely hosts 25 people most days. At the very bottom I can place my self, I can and have over seen portions of the drilling but tend to shy a way from that when others are here. From the Geologic end Mr. MR oversees most of the day to day, After him is Mr. P, who used to do a larger share of the day to day management and now is more involved in dealing with various branches of the government and environmental issues and works on the models that will go into the mind design, mostly spending time at computers swearing at them. And because this we are dreaming big out here we have a supervisor, Mr. DL, who's job would make more sense if we had a mine, here, instead he over sees a handful of labourers and the general logistics of this camp, but has to get his fingers into the geology, which is where the field trip comes in.

So two days ago a conversation in office with MR, and CW and I led to me going on the shear zone field trip tomorrow morning, and I had figured that MR's accent would have been enough to give it a green light. I was wrong, for this morning I had a visit form the ministry and the department of redundancy. I was approached this morning by Mr. DL who processed to tell me, that it has been decided that I am going on the field trip. He tells me this assume I have not heard a thing about this. I get smart and told him I already knew for the last day. As it was the idea had to pass through both Mr. MR and Mr. P, to reach Mr. DL, who had to approach me and treat the idea as if it was his.

So I have spent a portion of the mulling over this silly state of over management, I had seen Mr. DL's habit of having his stubby greasy fingers is every pie on site before but this struck me as the most transparent and due to the anticipation of going home struck me harder then his reinterpreting my imperfect drill management ideas from the first few weeks of my stay here.

Walk About

Every once in awhile I something for my mental and physical health, I go for a walk. A few days back I went for a walk along the ridge above the camp. A path that I have walked enough times to fine boring, perhaps explaining why I do not often walk it any more. For I have walked most of the area around camp and have found it full of naked rock, lichen cover rock and rock cover by some what thicker layers of bogs lakes and black fly larva. So after a couple years out here I have lost interest in the local surounds, and it all looks the same for miles around.

Even in that sameness there are still things worth taking a shot at. Some, lichen, be glad you are not Cariboo, because if you were this would be your main meal every day.






And even though it all looks the same most days this landscape still has its moments, the storm that was building the other day had a interesting look from a distance, as various microclimates showed themselves as the hills squeezed water out the clouds in some places but failed to do so in others.