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

Slacking and Slacklining

So here we go - week three and I'm already slacking with the blog posts!

It's got nothing to do with the fact that I've been far too busy to post anything - it's that there's NOTHING going on!

Last Thursday 4 new geotechs arrived on site. There was barely enough work to do for the 4 of us geotechs last week, and now there's more geotechs and even less work!

This afternoon the geotechs were sent out to get a geological rundown of the area from one of the geos, and then afterwards spent a good 3 hours reading papers that have been published on the geochemistry, structural geology, economic deposit, and tectonic history of the area.

Not to say all that isn't interesting, but it makes the days go by at snail speed.

To keep things interesting, though, one of the drillers has brought up a slackline and set it up between two trees down in the old camp. After dinner I take my speakers down, hang out, practice my balancing, and have fun! The drillers finish their shift at 7pm so I usually have a good hour after dinner to keep it to myself.

It's really hard! It's like balancing on a dynamic tightrope that keeps moving. Your legs end up wobbling and you're constantly trying to compensate for whichever direction you end up swaying.

I've been doing my best to practice every night since I started (4 days ago), and I'm slowly getting better. Tonight, I was actually able to walk 3 steps without falling! (it's harder than it sounds, I promise). It's good for your core and your legs, as well as really good for balance. They're super easy to set up (all you need is two trees and the slackline) and great for socializing. I think I'll treat myself to one as a grad gift when I get home from this break!

My goal for the end of the field season is to be able to walk between the two trees without holding onto anything and without falling!

Let's see how she goes...

How do we know the toothbrush was invented by someone from Mayo?

...Because if it were invented anywhere else it would have been called a teethbrush....

It's almost hit the 2 week mark (that comes up on Tuesday) and really the routine just keeps trucking along.

Wake up. Breakfast. Coreshack. Lunch. Nap. Coreshack. Dinner. Cards/movies/entertainment.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Today, though, was pretty wicked. I went up with one of the geos to go check out sites for the drill pads. The location was way up a mountain near 'Potato Hills' in the 'Shamrock Zone' of

our deposit. Tons of snow and an epic truck drive to get through before we reached our destination. It was the first time since I've been here that I've really been 'in the bush'. Sure, there was a road or two around - but these were rarely traveled as was evident by the tons of snow on the ground. We were just barely within radio contact of camp, and the road was just barely wide enough to fit the giant ford F-350 we were 'driving like we stole it'. We spent the morning trudging around in the snow, sinking in up to our thighs, rolling down hills, and enjoying mother nature's moodiness. One minute it was gorgeous and sunny out, the next it was snowing with flakes the size of golfballs. Check out the pictures below! The snow pictures were all taken on the same day. Check out the difference between super sunny group shot, and snowy miserable picture of the core boxes.

Just for some random information, the 'city' we're closest to (really just a town, or a single road) is called Mayo. It was established in the early 1900s as a river settlement and port for the Ag-Pb shipments from the Keno Mining district. In 2006 it's population was 248, and also has a big range in average temperature from summer-winter. (25deg C in summer, -30degC in winter). No more of this temperate coastal business for me! A few of the crew are locals from the area, so they have a quick trip to get back home for their breaks. When the mine opens next year, I'm sure that the Mayo community will appreciate the extra jobs.

In any case, I'm tired and need to catch some shut eye... the trek today wore me out!

Keep checking for updated photos :)

The final stake! Thankfully, we're actually ON the snow this time. Not falling IN it...

If it's hard to tell, the clock says 10:44pm.....

It's bright.. and it's not even June 21st yet!

Yikes!

Snowflakes the size of golfballs?? GO AWAY! It's spring, not winter...

To keep ourselves occupied when there's not much to do, some people in camp choose to turn the coreshack into a dutch oven (I swear I'm missing most of my nosehairs after they got burnt off), while others decide to 'hide' vests up trees.... This is the vest being planted.

Turns out Scott couldn't reach it...

The Dublin Gulch Gangsters.

This is me just playing around with my new camera trying to figure out different settings... but I think it turned out OK!

I like big butts and I cannot lie.

You other brothers can't deny....

Killing time in the core shack - I'm seriously digging Antoines striped long johns.

- C

My world in photos...

It's still fairly early in the 'getting settled' stage, but I feel pretty good about whats going on up here so far!

It's been alot of hanging around though and waiting for the drills to get going again, as 2 of them were waiting for parts/were broken when we got here. It's been pretty slow still, but I've been keeping myself busy with things like data entry, checking out drill pads, and digitizing data.

It's a slow start to the season but it'll pick up once the snow melts a bit more and more geologists and geotechs show up ready to map the area.

Below are a few more pics from the week in a nutshell. Enjoy!

The view from one of the drill pads we were scoping out today. It's ridiculously muddy up here so when we got out of the Kubota the mud was like quick sand and went halfway up to my boots! But - while we were trudging through the mud, we got to enjoy sights like this... -->

A little farther off into the distance but from the same vantage point, we get to enjoy this lovely view... Today was a gorgeous day. The sun was shining, and while it was a bit cold, it's a hell of a lot better than fog and snow.

Here's the Kubota we were driving around in to check out the drill pads. It was too muddy to take the real trucks up. For some reason they've given one of the geos a brand new GMC truck to destroy.. oh well... here we live by the rule: 'drive it like you stole it', or the alternate version 'drive it like you rented it'. Both very applicable. It's inevitable. The trucks. will. get. destroyed. It was fun...

While a few of us were scouting out the streams and rivers in the area for environmental purposes, we met the drill halfway up the hill. This is what the outside of a drill rig looks like, for those of you not familiar. You send it down, and it brings up lots of core - the same stuff found in the core shack that gets studied and logged by the geos.

Random panorama shot of our geology day, when Scott took us out and about to teach us about the local geology.

Kind of a cloudy day, but beautiful none the less. Gorgeous views of mountains in the distance, and Dublin Gulch down below.

Sooo pretty!

That's camp down below. It's capable of holding 100 people (though right now it's sitting at 39 until the permits for the rest of the camp are cleared). PS3, Wii, satellite tv, delicious food, and gold panning, all in one spot! NEWSFLASH: soon we'll be getting guitar hero/rock band or whichever one it is for PS3. Avoiding boredom is very important for us, or else we start going loopy! So really it's in their best interest to invest in a sweet PS3 game... either that or they can spend their money reimbursing us for psychiatrist fees...

Another panorama shot from Scott's mini field school.

My precious....

No, not really. Just a few guys panning for gold. I found some! Just a tiny speck though. The water was SO COLD (in case you missed the mass amounts of ice still frozen over the creek).

The wonderful core shack! This is where we spend most of our time. Checking out the core, logging it, teching it, taking bulk density measurements, and just general screwing around.

One of the 12 creeks we have to survey/photograph/take notes on for the environmental studies. We have to consider how much water is flowing through, changes (increasing/decreasing in melt), how much sediment is in the material, and if there is an ice dam blocking flow nearby. Because the drills use lots of water and we're in an area where we can potentially affect multiple streams/rivers, we have to be extra careful about what happens to the water once the drills are finished with it.

ME!

Standing in the back of the Kubota today, just on our way down for dinner (it's 6pm in this picture - SUPER BRIGHT!)

There you have it! Just a few more pictures from camp so far...

Later on I'll be posting a few more pictures with time stamps on it, so for all of you folks that aren't used to lots of daylight, you can see how bright it is up here at night time!

More new recruits get up here on the 17th, so we've got a few more days before they join us. Until then, it's just us 5 geotechs and 3 geos! Small crew, but fun....

I'll be doing my best to post at least twice a week, so keep checking back!

And here we go again!

Welcome back to my lovely field-season blog!

After 5 years of hard work, good friends, and many adventures, this is my first post where I am no longer a student! As of April 21st, I finished my last exam as an undergraduate and (thankfully) passed statistics! On June 15th I will be walking acr

oss that UVic convocation stage in my cap and

gown, getting my diploma, and relinquish the 'student' title I have held for 18 years of my life.

But enough about the past. Let's talk the present

and the future!

This summer I am working for a company called Victoria Gold Corp. My official title is 'Geotech', though the title here means something a bit different than other places. At VGC, 'geotech' is just a title given to the new recruits. I will be teching core, lining up drills, inspecting drills (guided by a geologist, of course), prospecting, mapping, and getting lots of field work in.

The reason why I chose this job was because of the dynamic nature of the work. The work itself is varied because the property is large and includes 3 stages of mineral explorati

on: prospecting/mapping (the grassroots stuff), drilling, and next year they have a section set to open as a functioning mine. It allows for quite a bit of learning in many facets of minex, and as a new graduate, that's just what I need! This property has been historically mined since the

original Yukon gold rush, and the property looks like a giant

pile of dirt. Placer mining has been

common here in recent history, and so gold panning is something many of us will be doing in our

spare time!
In other news: I live in a giant mudpit. The new camp has just been built, and we are stil

l moving in. Each of us has our own bedroom with

a bed, desk, vanity, and closet. 100-wing (the one I am in now) looks like something out of university residence. Super small, but

does the trick. 200-wing (the wing the exploration team - that's me - will be moving into soon) looks more like a room out of an ikea catalogue with dark-wood furniture and a sconce for a reading lamp! Before coming out here, it was recommended that we each bring sturdy gumboots,

as they said it was 'a bit' muddy.This afternoon we found out exactly how muddy it can get. In the morning it's not so bad

because everything is stil frozen from the night before. As the day progresses though, the permafrost starts melting and giant mudpits form all over camp.

It's going to get even muddier as the snow around here starts to melt even more.
This camp is like no camp I've been to. It's almost like a giant construction site with constant noise from the generators, people always running around doing something, and terrible food.

The trend is that people tend to GAIN wait in camp rather than lose it...go figure!

This is a panorama of 'Potato Hills' (the two big hills to the left), and the truck is what we were driving around all day today checking out drill pads for various new drill locations. We are supposed to have 3 drills running but 2 have broken

down for now and are waiting for parts.

Here we have the coreshack. This is where I'm going to be spending

lots of my time geoteching

and working with the core. The smaller building behind is the core cutting shed.

Just some pretty mountains viewable from Shamrock hills. It's afternoon so it's pretty cloudy around here.

An old-school shaker table for the old placer mining operations that littered the area. To the right are

Antoine and Adrielle, two other newbie geotechs.

In the Yukon, after a company vacates an area, the core must be left behind to maintain the record of the work that has already been done (I think I got that right? I might need to confirm that). But this core farm is all of the historical core from

earlier VGC ops as well as ops from other companies no longer working in the area.

Dirt+Water = Mudpit...

Pretty self explanatory. This is the entrance to our camp. Picture taken looking outside the entrance.

This is my hallway looking down from my room. Looking the other way isn't much different, but while these here are bedrooms, the ones going down the other end are GIS labs, medic stations, offices, and the coffee room.

Home sweet Home! It's not huge but it's about a thousand times nicer and more comfortable than the tents that everyone was sleeping in before these were built. This is the uni res-like dorms. We're going to be moving into the other wing soon (to leave the drillers in this wing so we don't disturb them - they work 7-7 shifts) and once I'm moved over there I'll post a pic of those digs.

So there's a pretty quick intro to my life at camp right now! Tomorrow starts a new day and new adventures. I'll be adding photos and videos here as time goes on so keep checking back!

-C