August 23, 2012….P.C. (Post Computer)

Well it happened last night; I was kind of expecting it would...... I was out voted 9 to 2 in favor, so after dinner it off to the shower. A clean new man in the same dirty clothes!  Oh ya, my computer died. We think it has a virus, but we cannot even start it to run a scan. 5 minutes at a rolling boil should destroy various pathogens such as viruses, although I might have a tough time explaining that to the IT Department. Anyhow I’ll keep notes in a field book until I can transcribe them.

Today looks like it could be another day in camp. The fog is low in the valley and the rain is coming down in buckets. Our chopper pilot, Brian, said that he is willing to fly the water sampling crew out to collect their samples, as he can fly the river the 12 miles necessary to reach site Mile 184 (I can just picture the scene from “Apocalypse Now” where the choppers come in low just above the water with “the flight of the Valkyries” playing on the loud speakers) and stay with the crew until the work is completed of the weather changes.

Charles “Chuck” Gravelle the project field manager is still playing e-mail tag with the crew back home, they keep changing the program. 1^st it’s 6 sites in 4 weeks , then if we finish the required (6) sites early, we go home early, no wait…another change we finish the required (6) sites early, they add 6 more sites and cut the time frame, no wait it’s changing again…same time frame, add the 6 new sites but make them at the far end of the trail (0-100 mile range from Norman wells while we are at the 170 mile mark, increasing out travel time to and from the sites. We have t fly the chopper there and back twice just to move crew and then again for equipment = 3 flights in, 3 flights out) all the time complaining about the amount of chopper time and fuel we are using. One of the sites is a small drum cache on June Lake, tucked back deep into the Skewi Range of the Mountains. None of us has been to this site before so we have no idea what to expect.

But for today we will sit quietly in our cabins reading or in the dinning tent drinking coffee and playing cards, some will work on their computers and others will go from cabin to cabin chatting and stoking the fires to drive the dampness out. It’s going to be a long day.

1000h and time is moving a glacial speed. We’ve chatted all morning about all the places we’ve worked and the times we’ve had in camp.

1100h, I have some work to do…plotting the locations of the sites on a Nav. Chart. It should do me until noon!

1200h – lunch – homemade chicken soup. We are starting to get a little concerned for the welfare of our field crew, we have not heard from them since they left after breakfast and the weather shows no signs of improvements. Well back to cribbage and teaching the drillers how to play so that we can have some variety in players.

1300h, the day feels like it’s dragged on into weeks…..time to put a fire in the cabin and have an much needed afternoon snooze.

Unfortunately my photos are all on Chuck’s computer so I load them as soon as I can them.

1500h we made an attempt to get into Mile 108 and Mile 111.4 to complete the work. We flew mid-mountain height into the sites to complete the required work of water sampling and surveying. On the way home we flew the river to check on the condition of a German hiker that passed through Ram’s Head a day or two earlier, he was traveling alone and with no sat-phone or GPS communicator, and as the weather was not improving and this was going to be our last trip in this direction of the trail for a week, we thought it would be a good idea to see if he was ok. Well we found his camp partially set up on the trail and him sitting in the woods taking care of business…..

 As the acid smoke from the black spruce logs that are burning in our stove, stings the inside of my nose, and the snoring from my two roommates rattles in my ears, I lie in bed trying to read by the fading light of my flashlight. My bed if you can call it that…my bed is of the Canol Trail vintage and probably came from mile 180 and has one leg shorter that the rest, regardless of which one I try to shim. The springs offer all the support of a “slinky” and regardless of where I sit I sink to within inches of the floor. I did manage to grab at 2 foot by 6 foot long piece of plywood to put length wise along the top of the springs with a second piece 2 foot long by 1 ½ foot wide across the middle of the bed. The third piece was 2 feet by 2 feet and placed to add support for my head (in theory). I have 2 foam mattresses, so thin that you can almost see through, that will not stay stacked regardless what I do. It’s like trying to get two same poll magnets to stick together. My sleeping bag, oh yes my wonderful, magnificent sleeping bag. The Woods Muskoka model (good to -35^o) is likely one of the best purchases I have ever made. I slept like a baby, warm and comfortable albeit a little crooked.   

Cheers