Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Stupid grouse. I hate those birds!!

Grouse are probably the most terrifying thing in the forest. Probably more than bears. I haven't actually seen a bear in the forest yet though, just grouse. I nearly messed my pants today, hearing a grouse fly up into the trees when I wasn't expecting it. Scary stuff. Hahahahahaha I'm just a big wuss about noises. There was a wolf howling somewhere near us last night, and I totally woke up in a cold sweat, totally thought it was the dog (Patches, he's such a great dog, makes me want a dog), until discussing this at breakfast today. One of the other traverse groups found a baby grouse (or mountain chicken, as another group likes to call them), and have adorable photos with it.

Today's traverse was good, aside from the grouse situation. We hiked up a pack trail until this huge debris flow (basically a small landslide with trees and stuff in it, it was pretty fresh though, not solid yet. My head geo sunk in up to his calf. Thank God for gaiters!), and then hiked down into this creek which we crossed with a log. After we crossed the creek, we realized there was this epic 12 meter outcrop on the OTHER side of the creek. So, we crossed the creek again, mapped the outcrop and then crossed back to the west side of 16 Mile Creek. It was a bit ridiculous, as the log was kinda sketch. Oh well, we survived. We basically just hiked up the ridge north of our camp all day, and then hiked down back to camp. It was decent weather, no rain, but the wind was pretty blustery. The cliffs coming back to camp were pretty bad though. Worse than I thought they would be. My toes are pretty sore thanks to those cliffs.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Wow. Just wow.

We went out on our third traverse today. Yesterday was bad, I puked in the morning and then felt like puking for the rest of the day. I wasn't sure if it was heat stroke from the day before or dehydration, or if I was just really messed up. Regardless, I trucked on through, and survived, and today was great. We have been doing road-style traverses, where we drive to a location, hike up a hill, hike down a hill, and then back to the truck. We won't be starting heli-traverses until we get our 8th person here, Larry, and he arrives on Wednesday. 

Today was good though. We hiked up from about 850m to 1208m over about 1.2 km of horizontal. Going up was brutal. Hiking down I can deal with, but the hiking up just makes me feel like I'm out of shape. I have to stop every 5 or 10 minutes. It would be alright if the mosquitos didn't swarm you and fly into your mouth every time you tried to breathe, or if the bush wasn't so bushy. Oh well, it'll get better. The view is beautiful though. I'm trying to upload a panoramic photo I took, but it won't take over the internet right now. Maybe tomorrow. Basically we were overlooking a beautiful river valley with a textbook meandering river, making all these beautiful curvy S-shapes through the bottom of the valley, with a large ridge to the south and the north. If you google-map it, it's the road out from Dease Lake westward to Telegraph Creek, about 10 to 15 km out, the ridge to the north was the one we did today and yesterday, and then on our first day we did the south ridge out to Hloey Lake (there's a bridge over Tanzilla River around the 10km mark, just by a gravel pit. Follow that road until the lakes on the other side of the southern ridge). I would link it, but Google Maps is breaking the internet. Anyways, at some point I'll get that sorted and make a nice little route showing everywhere I've hiked. I've been tracking it on my GPS, so maybe that'll get uploaded at some point. We'll see I suppose.

The bush is brutally overgrown with roses and juniper and all kinds of prickly things to grab onto while you're sliding down a slope. The juniper releases all this dusty-like pollen or something whenever you stand on it. Roses are PAINFUL, I've had to pick out more thorns that I have curse words for. Ouch. And I have sap all over my pants now, and even in my hair. I love this though, it's great. I'm having fun, even though hiking uphill is painful. I'll get into super-awesome shape soon, and then hiking up these things will be like nothing. 

Well, I'm off to bed, another lazy night ahead of me, reading until I pass out (still haven't used my headlamp at ALL), and then getting up at 7am for breakfast.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Day 5 of Not Showering

I wish I could say that not-showering keeps the mosquitos away, but that would be a lie. We went up a hill just west of downtown Dease Lake (just north of the airport), and took a look at some outcrops, learned how to use the station data sheets and our compasses and stuff. The first few minutes were great, and then the mosquitos and noseeums came down to feast on our flesh for lunch. Taking a strike and a dip with those fancy compasses is tricky enough, making sure the bubbles are level and whatnot, but to do that while swatting away 7 mosquitos from your hand, another 10 from each leg and probably 15 on your face is a bit annoying. Ugh. Bug dope tomorrow for SURE. I just don't wanna use too much until I can wash it off at night. Apparently the mosquito situation will get better as the summer goes on. At least until August when the blackflies come out...

We should have a shower by tomorrow though, which is exciting. That'll be lovely after our first actual traverse (by truck, not chopper). Today we just did a few stops, after doing some errands around town (looking for something airtight to store bear spray in while in the chopper, picking up our wireless router, giving our names and weights to the chopper company). Oh, and apparently this chopper company is super legit. They have this sky-tracking system where they watch where all the choppers are at all times, and continually log location coordinates and airspeeds and whatnot. It's pretty fancy, we got to see it today at their office. It makes me less concerned that I might be left alone in the forest for days if there was an accident. 

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Still Sans Shower

Showers are for the weak. Seriously.

We're hopefully finishing building the shower tomorrow.  At least now the septic is working again for the cabin, so there's proper running water again, and we have more than just the outhouse. It's pretty exciting. Our tents have woodstoves almost fully hooked up (tomorrow is apparently going to be THE day for all this), so camp is just about ready to go! Setting up the stovepipes in a thunderstorm was fun though. It was pouring rain. Pouring. The office is mostly set up, but not the internet and such yet. The generator got going, and all our radios and GPSs are charged and ready to go.

First night here was great though. I woke up around 2 am, thought it must have been at least 6am because it was still bright in the tent.  No need for flashlights here, well, yet, anyways. I was reading comfortably in the tent until midnight with no headlamp. I love the north in the summer. It's beautiful! My cot is super cozy with a mosquito net over the cot, and my -10 sleeping bag with silk-sleeping-bag-liner and pillow... Can't wait to crawl in there after a day's traverse, because it is SO comfortable. And food: Holy cow is the food delicious. Jan and Dempsey are staying on the ranch, and Jan is cooking for us. She's amazing. We had chicken wings, ribs, curried rice, roasted veggies, salad, and dessert for dinner. All of it is delicious. We better get hiking soon otherwise I'm going to be gaining a fair amount of weight.

Oh, and Jan was telling us that our chopper pilot is apparently amazing. She's worked in a ton of camps, and there are pilots around she won't fly with because they're risk-takers and such, but our pilots Jim and Billy are great, and she's flown with them before. So, Dad, you don't have to worry so much. We do our chopper orientation in a couple days, and then I think Monday we're going out on our first official heli-traverse. So exciting!

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

We're Here and Alive!

Wednesday June 22nd

After two epic days of driving through BC, we finally arrived in Dease Lake.

Monday morning we left Victoria on the 8am ferry, did some errands and exchanged a rental vehicle in Vancouver, and then took off for Hope. We drove up the Fraser Canyon through beautiful sunny weather, stopped in Cache Creek for fuel, had dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant in Williams Lake (The Log Cabin Capital of the World). Quesnel was our final stop for the night, at a classy motel called "The Talisman". Great showers. Comfy beds. What more could you want? Free breakfast? That too!!

Tuesday we got up and hit the road for Stewart, which is right on the Alaksa border. We drove up through Vanderhoof(The Geographic Centre of BC), Houston (Home of the World's Largest Fly Rod), and Smithers (Home of Where We Each Bought 2 Months Supply of Beer and Bug Dope). We had to race time to get to Stewart before the restaurant closed, but we made it. After a hearty dinner of whatever they weren't sold out of, a few of us (Bram the Dutchman, and Olivia the Wisconsonian) trekked out to Hyder, AK, seeing as it was only three kilometers away. Some of the others wanted to come but didn't have their passports, so it was only the three of us. We attempted to go get 'Hyderized' at the Glacier Inn, however they were closed on account of it being summer solstice. LAME! So maybe next time. After a lovely conversation with the border patrol guy, we walked back to Stewart. I'll post a photo in a few days, but wow is it bright here until about 11:30pm or so. No need for a flashlight until about then. It's great.

Wednesday morning, we had simultaneously the worst and most expensive breakfast ever. We hit the road, and drove all day to get to Dease Lake. Beautiful road, but no gas stations. We were down to about 60km of fuel left as we drove into Iskut, which was the last place we could get fuel before Dease Lake. These towns are all spaced about a tank of fuel apart, I think someone planned this....

Dease Lake: Holy WOW is this ranch ever beautiful. We have mountains on all sides, some rolling hills, and lots of trees. The house on site is a beautiful log cabin. It runs using solar power and a generator, with satellite TV and internet. We'll be setting up the office tomorrow, so until then no photos, as we can't all plug our laptops in. We'll have our own generator, and it'll be super pimp. The only bad thing are the bugs. And holy crap are there a LOT of them. Big ones, small ones, mosquitos, no-see-ems, crazy things that are huge, spiders.....Wow.

Dease Lake is a bit of a cultural gem. The scenery is beautiful, the people are great, and it's just awesome.

This is gonna be an awesome summer.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Preparing for Camp

Oh hello there! I am heading out into the field on Monday. It takes about 3 days to drive up to beautiful and remote Northern British Columbia, so we will be actually arriving and setting up our camp on Thursday the 23rd.  This is my first experience in the field, and I am really excited! I hope to be able to update fairly regularly, as we should have satellite internet in camp. So far, we've just been preparing for camp by packing up equipment and such. I folded about 84 maps yesterday, and spent most of today slicing up mylar into 8 1/2 by 11 sheets for mapping overlays. Wooo hoooo. Also, free ice cream. Working for the government has perks, evidently.