Planting Pictures

I forgot to import and upload pictures for a while so this is a few of the recent ones.

Lots of Trees!

Ohhhh my goodness. It's like 8 and I'm already in bed. This morning we got up at 4:45. Thats really early but it's really awesome as it means as we are done at 4 in the afternoon. However we were starting a new block today and we also finished it so we planted till 5:15. What also happened is not only did I set a new personal best. I beat Nathan's old personal best too (although he did set a new one today). I set a new personal best of over 2300 trees and also set a new personal best for money so I'm super happy and at the same time super tired. So i'm going to bed cause it's another 4;45 morning tomorrow.

But I'm making money so I'm not complaining.

Scott Theede

Helicopter's and such

I knew coming out here that treeplanters are an odd group of people, however today really explained why.

Now most of you I'm assuming have never been in a Helicopter, let alone had one land 25 meters from where you are sitting in the shade playing scrabble and trivial pursuit. I had just gotten up and as I'm walking out of my tent towards the people that is exactly what happened. Now the odd thing is that it didn't phase anybody and it was like the helicopter wasn't landing at all. I'm also one of those affected as I though nothing of it until I realized that nobody thought nothing of it. It really is a different world out here.

Well now on to some stuff I totally forgot about before. Our camp set up was really fun. We had a new helicopter pilot and helicopter (Brand new! too, only 60 hours on it) and I got selected to help fly camp in by building the nets that it would pick up and fly into camp. It wasn't that special other than having a helicopter hover 100 feet above your head while Jamie (the does everything guy) would hook them up and then the helicopter would head to camp. The other cool thing is that because it was a new pilot and new long line system for us he also gave David Cuddy (another planter) and myself the rundown on how to work the long line, even though it was very unlikely that we ever would. Well the first day also was fun as when working around a helicopter you always have to approach it from the front, and we were working on a road so that it's very narrow and not enough room to safely walk around it while it was landed and the rotors were moving. At one point I was about 40 meters behind where the helicopter was about to land helping Cal (the head boss) hook a Quad and turtletank to be 'slung' in as we knew that when the helicopter came into land this time so that we could put some stuff onboard the wash would cause this tank to roll away. So i have to wait for the helicopter to fly over us and start to line up to land , then I sprint to get in front of where It will land so that I can load a chain-saw and a car battery (that was stupidly heavy), then one it starts taking off and i have enough clearance I have to sprint back to cal to help him make sure that the tank will be in the sling when he hooks it up the the helicopter's long line. Normally this might not seem like much but I did have a helicopter hovering 100 feet above me for most of this, this also allowed me enough time to get in front of it as when you land with a long line it takes more time.

Now the real fun was the next day when all of the planters were getting flown into camp. I along with Nathan were given the job of unloading the helicopter as it landed. and for some odd reason the location that we were supposed to wait for the helicopter was the same place it landed, it was quite odd, we had the helicopter landing on us (as in we were under the main rotor when it landed). then once planters were in they started flying more gear into camp and I of all people became the one hooking the nets up to the helicopter and giving it signals on when to take off with the empty nets once it dropped off a full one. All I can say it it's the most fun I've had recently.

Now for the scary but I don't mean to scare you news, That same new helicopter had an incident the other day here. The Pilot (which wasn't the pilot I had worked with) forgot he had his long line attached and took off in the normal way instead of taking off like he has too with the long line where he has to hover until the long line is off the ground. This resulted in the line getting caught on a long deck. so the tension caused the line to basically hold the helicopter in place so the pilot released the long line but due to the tension it recoiled as it was disconnected and it got somehow wrapped up in the tail rotOr. At this point the Tail rotor gets ripped off the helicopter and if you have ever seen a movie where a helicopter starts spinning around and around and crashes, that's exactly what happened. The Pilot survived but the brand new helicopter didn't. hopefully there will be pictures of it later on in this post. Now this didn't happen at our camp. this happened at the other camp and everybody is Ok. The irony of this is the pilot who crashed is actually an instructor on how to use long lines.

Other than that I hope you all have fun and if I am slinging stuff into camp again I'll remind the pilot if he lands to refuel that he has the long line attached.

Later all!

Isolation

I've been into the Isolation Camp thing for the past few shifts and we've are half way though our 3rd. I've also started to go a little crazy. Now most of you are assuming that I'm already crazy because I'm out tree planting but now I've really lost it. Yesterday on the 19th while planting, I had this crazy thought and drive to code a computer program in C++ to tally my trees. It's only in Alpha right now and no where close to Beta but have fun with this code if any of you want to take a look at it and perhaps improve it. I know it will bore most of you but I don't care cause there are plenty of pictures to look at too.

PEACE!

Isolation Camp Time!

Hey All, Just thought I'd let you know that I finally do get to have a Isolation camp. Yesterday I spent the day Slinging in the gear and connecting the nets of gear to the helicopter (Well making the nets). Today we fly into camp so it will be another cool few heli flights.

We'll be there for 4 shifts then a little more planting around slave lake for a few days then it's off to Candle Lake in Saskatchewan! Can anybody say Marathon Canoe?

Enjoy your summer guys!

Scott Theede