Off to new camp

We are just about to leave to head up to our new camp for about 2 weeks. I'll try to get an update before then but if not then have fun all you crazy guys.

scott

Video's and Pictures

Well hey all. We had something weird happen for two days here and that is that we are planting out of a hotel in Wabesca. And amazingly there is wireless internet here so until tomorrow night i'll easliy get your emails. but right now check out these video's for your viewing pleasure.

They might take a while to load so be patient.
Trees getting dropped off
Helicopter taking off.
My Second Flight out of block after the Cluster planting
Low Flying over block

Also the major collection of like all the pictures i've taken is here.

All my Pictures


Talk to you all later.

Scott

The average day.

Well I just finished a well lets see. left at 7 got in at 8:30. so 13.5 hour day. This is the longest day we've so far worked. But here's the rundown of the day.

Wake up call from call normally being a really really loud: "BREAKFAST". Then it's out of the tent then bike to the bathroom as it's way faster than walking. Then to breakfast that is well awesome with plenty of food. Well really like LOTS of food enough that i still haven't seen them run out. Then once you've eaten it's time to get your stuff ready for the day. For me that entails making my lunch which has normally been 3-4 bagels and banana's with various things on the bagels. Then with lunch made, I mix up some beverages to take with me which is normally 2 liters of Gatorade and the big nalgene of juice or water. That normally runs out by the early afternoon so probably go though 4-6 liters of water a day. then it's just checking to make sure i got everything like rain gear, sweater if it gets cold, sorts (If it gets hot, and those emergency shorts have been used a lot), etc. So with a day bag, my planting bags, and my shovel, we all board the bus. Now this shift was mostly stuff that was a 5 min bus ride away from camp however; today we had a 1.5 hour ride each way so that meant getting up at 5:45. But for most of this contract we just walked into our block or we'd fly in, can't complain about the commute or hours when each day your commute includes a helicopter flight.

Once at the block it's a pretty simple process of unpack the bags, load them up with trees apply sunscreen and such then take off planting for the rest of the day. Normally not taking a lunch break but short breaks after each box and an extended break around 1. Then it's the walk back to the bus or the flight back to the bus then back to camp where it's supper time, or is it. It's really cool actually. When you get back there is food out, about 3-4 salads of various kinds, some veggies and perhaps a little bit of bread and meat. The important point to all of this is that this isn't supper but appetizers. Out here in the bush we have appetizers. Supper is severed an hour once we get back but once we are back there is already food out for us which is really nice. Supper has also been huge and very good. We had some type of cordon bleu tonight that was awesome. We pack up and move out tomorrow and I'm tired so it's off to bed for me right now. Later Gaters.

My Planting bags with a full box in it.

The box. oddly enough from the Smokey Lake Nursery

Mark after a long day of work. A pretty good approximation of how all of us felt

Us waiting for the bus at the end of the day.

We got so bored yesterday wile waiting for soemthing to do that we made a bullseye in the road and played a modified game of shovel toss. Shovel toss is an awesome game where you try to spin your shovel in the air with it landing in the ground. So far I've gotten up to 4 revolutions. if you notice in the top right you'll see 3 shovels just hanging in the air.

More Trees

Well well well here we are again. I'm writing this as we are driving down the long gravel road into lac la biche. There are 5 of us crammed into Nathan's truck and it's nasty really a tight fit. We are heading into town for some fun and mostly laundry. And hopefully I'll find a place with internet so you can all have fun reading this.

Yesterday was totally awsesome. I set a new personal best at 1395 trees and That's just awesome, and that's a few bundles over 5 boxes. The one thing that did suck is that it was super hot and i was wearing a cotton shirt in them morning and it was soaked along with plenty of mosquitos. Then my feet didn't dry like i was hoping. So I'm going to have to maybe try out the old scarpa's. Yesterday was also awesome because it was our first fly in day for the entire crew. It was awesome too with George the pilot showing off a little bit by flying down the road before he cleared the tree line. I've got video of my second flight on the way out of our cluster fuck experience.

Our crew finally getting to all fly in.

First wave going in.

Take off

My Flight



A good view of the rips and of a cache on the left side

How close the helicopter land to where we are sitting around waiting isn't that far at all.

The drive on on day off.

Trees

Well today was the worst day that turned into an awesome day.

We were waiting for a new shipment of Trees today and it was supposed to be in at 12 and so the blocks could have new trees by 12:30. We started late this morning and after the walk into the block I finish up the box I had yesterday which had 60 trees in it because yesterday i planted my first 1000+ day where i had the goal of 1000 and hit 1020. Now these numbers are low but tomorrow I'll be much higher. i have a new plan to try. But back to today. So i get in 16 bundles before the block is fresh out of trees. it's about 12:30 ish, it wasn't until 2 that we finally get back out planting. So I go out and plant some more and it's not really going all that well, crappy rips that keep diverging and then converging and going every which direction. So I finish up and once again the cache is out of trees and I happen to mention i think it was about 3:30 to 4. nope it was 5:30. So i just sit around as I wait for the rest of the guys to finish up planting at the cache then move down to the other one in the block so that we could finish up quickly then go home early and not late as planned as out next block is a even further walk and we wouldn't get in much planting. So just about to leave to the next cache and I hear my foreman's radio say something like, Dave A, You there? and the next thing you know he points to me and 3 other people and says, Pack up you are moving to help out in another block. The reason we are packing up is because of the 5 crews, 4 of them were heli'd in and our crew walked in. So Dave has basically 3 min to get us to pack up and explain how to get into the copter safely. Lets just say it was a bit of a rush, To make things worse as the copter is coming into land Dave noticed he wants to land where we are standing. So we scatter down the road some more and then get under the blades. hand him our stuff then get in and get ready for a wild ride. The pilot George apparently like to play with the rookies and show off. The flight was awesome though and I remembered why I loved Helicopters so much. I was in a helicopter before I was ever in an airplane and these bush guys really know how to fly. I didn't take any pictures of the first flight but I did get plenty from the flight out and a full video of the entire flight and check it out and notice the angle of the horizon compared to the copter. Well once we get to Callum's block we find out we've been called into to play clean up. There were big huge blocks of no trees and we were called into fill them with trees, problem being he didn't know how big of an area was missing trees. So the 4 of us ringgers load up a half box and off we go to go (warning, there is profanity) 'Cluster Fucking'. At first it wasn't bad as we found some empty trenches and just planted them, I ran out of trees so when I went back for more I loaded up a full box so that I could save another person a trip. Ohh man was that heavy. So it's the end of the day and remember we didn't get to the block till about 6:15-6:30. So we are going to be the last people out. Well we finish up cluster fucking the main area when we find out there is another hole. So we go finish it up. By this point we are out of boxes of trees and I'm just getting bundels from who ever is nearby and has an extra one they can spare. Then just as we are done that i notice a little empty spot that turns out to be a big empty spot that also happend to be quite boggy and wet. By this point everybody's out of trees and we go get the rest that are on the block which is only 6 bundles. So 5 of us now including the foreman Callum all working double time get the trees in then it's off to wait for the Copter and it was good timing as he had to refuel anyway and I was on the last flight out of the block and you can watch video of that awesome flight and all the pictures from the last blog post day. Cause these are being posed to the day there were written and not the day they were posted. So don't worry, the may 13th post won't have pictures from may 14th. only may 13th and before.

Well that's all for now. Another nice thing is that today was pretty lazy until we got called into to cluster fuck. 510 trees until the flight then 360 trees after we had moved blocks from like 6:30 to 8 when we finally left the block.

The Rips that were steaming in the morning

My first 1000th Tree

My Shadow

Me thinking about why the hell i'm going into the lake

Me actually jumping in the lake

Helicopter landing in the block to pick us up from the cluster planting

Taking off with Foreman Callum

The Controls that i still can't completely understand

I'm Here.

Hey all. I've neglected writing this post for quite a while as well today on our first day off it rained till about 7:30 and having to deal with digging a trench so that some tents wouldn't flood wasn't my idea of fun. So far camp has been great. The food is awesome and I've been eating plenty of it. Talking with the cooks, we have have apparently eaten on average 22.5 pounds of potatoes every morning with breakfast, so that's about 1/3 of a pound each. Work days of which we've had 3 have been fun, but that's a loose definition of the word fun. I'll post a bunch of pictures that have been taken with my camera this week. It's really odd though because we our camp is actually located at a camp ground which means there are outhouses and such. It's like i feel just like I'm camping except there is a kitchen providing me food and not me cooking it myself. The people here also are really diverse, there are so many artistic people here, I feel like the only one that can't play the guitar. I had the most interesting converation about math and logic with one guy here who's studying math and my foreman at the time, Dave, who happens to have DVD on his gloves, which means in terms of logic, D or D. Also here the hip and cool clothing is a bright orange Helly Hanson rain suit so everyboth fits in even if you are wearing a necktube as a hat (Dad, you'd fit right in) or wearing your long underwear with shorts (once again dad, you'd love it), and if you are really tired you'll just wear the long underwear. I'll leave the actuall planting to the end but so far we had just about ever kind of wearther except falling snow. We've had frost with ice on the outside of the tent and water on the inside of the fly, wind, sun, rain, sun and rain at the same time, fog, you name it we'll get it. So the actual planting of a tree. Well the first thing you need to deal with even before you plant the tree is deciding were to put it. On this current contract we are aiming for 1800 tress per hectare which is 9 per plot. a plot being 1/200 of a hectare. So the first thing is that you are trying to evenly space the trees, secondly. You have to make a hole, which isn't that easy of a task why you are trying to plant the tree quickly. then you jab the tree in the ground with your hand then close the hole, making sure to not j root the tree or have it leaning more than 15 degress. (Our checker actually has a pair of calipers to check, it's nuts). Our terrain has been ripper trentched so it's quite easy to plan in and after 3 days I've started to now plant the trees without having to kick the shovel and getting a good plant on my first try with my hand. Well I've got a wake up call of 6:30 and then we'll won't be out of the block will probably 6-6:30 so it will be a long day. And don't worry i'll give you a definition of all these wierd terms i'm using.

Block: The area in which we are planting, a big open
Bundle: A wraped bundle of 15 Trees
Box: A box with 18 Bundles and therefore 270 trees.
Cache: place were the trees you haven't planted yet are stored and where you keep your bag and lunch during the day.
Plot: A circle of radius 3.99 meters that gives you the area of 1/200 of a hectare
Flagging: Flagging tape that has been tied to something to mark out a specific area.
Rip: A trench that has been made in the ground. you just go along it and plant tress on either side in good microsites.
Microsites: a good place to put the tree.

There are pictures of helicopters that follow. These are all pictures of it doing things around me as I still haven't yet gotten to ride in one.

Our Camp

Hannah Duek

Nathan Sedgewick

Aaron on our first day planting

All of the Rookies

Tavis on first planting day

Joren on second day of planting

Hannah Peirson walking out on second day

My Dirty Hand

Hannah's Self Portrait

Helicopter (Bell 206) carring a sling of trees

A bundle of brees

My Hand even more dirty

Me

Helicopter just landing on the road about 20 feet from us

I'm off

By the time most of you are reading this I'll be on my drive up planting or planting. I hope you all have an good summer and check back as i'll try to keep the blog updated as often as possible.

By the way, I cut my hair.

So send me an email and keep in touch cause I hear there isn't much to do in the bush so i'll sure be writing letters i'm sure.


Scott F Theede