The Chopper's here!

Four days ago I heard a faint chugga-chugga off in the distance... I dropped the power washer and looked up to the sky to see the chopper finally arrive! I grabbed my vest, ran to the landing pad (that I had made with 5 cans of fluorescent orange spray paint) and watched it land for the first time.

We'd been waiting for 3 days for it to arrive, but bad weather had delayed it for a little bit.

So far we've been working in remote places for about 4 days now... but they're not really that remote. Eventually, later on in the summer, our mapping sites are going to be 10s of kms away from where we are now. At the moment, the chopper ride to out farthest destination has been only 5 minutes long. Before the chopper got here, a crew of us hiked for 7 hours up to the trench that we were supposed to be mapping... it was a far cry from the simple 5 minute jump with the chopper (albeit the chopper was I'm sure far more expensive...)

It's a total thrill! We've been briefed on all the safety stuff and we know the basics of what to do and what not to do. It's still fun getting that feeling of lifting straight up into the air - very different from the landing and takeoff of an airplane.

It's my first summer working with a chopper, and tomorrow we all get to go on helicopter tours of the whole property during the day!

Just to give you a taste of the kind of chopper that we're using, here's a little clip of two of my coworkers hopping off at our meeting point, the peak of the ridge we have spent the last 2 days mapping.

My first rotation finishes on Friday, so I'll be nice and cozy with my sister and her fam on Friday night.... oh boy I can't wait! <3 <3