Chronicles of Camp Doom, part II: Armstrong & the month of June
....
So this is Armstrong, eh?
I've seen small towns before. Heck, I grew up in one. but I guess mine had... infrastructure. The first thing that struck me about Armstrong was that it was all housing. Even the businesses were house-like buildings or converted houses. the second thing was that the town was, well... not very inviting. people don't put much stock in gardens and apprearances, I guess. the third thing I found out when we got to the bar. As I walked in, I was greeted by whoops from the guys - apparently, there are few women up here (the guy was married, no less - eugh!).
.... Let's get outta here
Our first order of business is to find a campsite out somewhere in the bush. now, to run a geology camp, you need a few things of your campsite...
1) you need a water source like a lake or stream nearby, for water for the rock saw, bathing, emergency water supply ( we had a filter) and potential access to the lake systems ( plus plane landing/take-off area for food supply if fly-in camp)
2) you need (in our case) access to the road systems, but you don't want to be on the roads, especially logging roads
3) you need a sufficient area to set up a kitchen, office tent, a latrine, rock saww shed, and one 5-6 man tent for each person on your crew (hey you're out there for 3 months - It's nice to have a space of your very own) this area should be devoid of trees & brush - If not, you have to make it so.
there were some restrictions on us, too:
the first good-looking campsite we came to was the "property" of a yearly bear-hunting camp (it was actually pretty far south in our mapping area, too)
so, we hunted around the area for 3 days, looking for a place to stay. the best one we found was a little East of the midpoint, an hour from town, with rough access to a lake (hey, it wasn't much, but it did for the summer). a launch point was further down the side. We found, later on, two additional camps on the same lake, both accessible only by boat/plane (a lot of the lakes in the area are acessible only by plane - you fly in, land on the lake and set up camp onshore), as well as a slew of hunting camps in the bush. but that was later.
So, on friday, three of us, Dan, Dave and myself, were left to begin setting up camp, while Carole Anne and Scott made the four hour one-way trip to Thunder Bay to pick up our gear. they didn't get back till after midnight. at least they had tents set up.
so the next week, we worked on setting up camp - making furniture, setting up kitchen & office tents, organizing gear, supplies and equipment. Then, rather abruptly, we got to mapping. That, looking back, was one major thing missing from my mapping experience - no real pulling together of the team by our team leader, no goals, no focus - just mapping.
However, when we opened our equipment, we found that some of it didn't "check(ed) OK" as the label read.
What we found broken/incomplete was:
1)zodiac - it came with a cracked floorboard (which broke, of course, later) and never sat properly in the water.
2) 15HP motor - busted coil. starting it was a bit of a gamble.
3) 3HP motor for canoe - seized. yup, seized.
4) Kits for car - we got an extension cord (??) in them, but no yanker strap, only 1 hi-lift jack for 3 vehicles (hope no one else needs this today...)
5) tools - most are rough, not in good condition, didn't have enough of them
6) fire extinguishers - there were none. we're required to have one in each vehicle, one in the kitchen, and technically, one for every tent (that makes a total of 15!!)
7) propane cylinders: the 40lb cylinders were purged, or so we had been told. They wouldn't fill, and we had to get them purged a second time and re-filled.
good ol' warehouse... *sigh*
Actually, once we got the camp set up and found out what worked and what didn't, mapping was quite uneventful for the month of June, at least. However, the one thing I wish to express about June in the bush is this: bring the bug spray. Bugs in the bush are bad - REALLY bad - in June. I started gauging bad days based on the number I managed to swallow, that's how bad they were - you'd walk five feet into the bush, and would be covered in a black cloud of your very own assortment of blackfly, deerfly, moosefly (which are really hard to kill) and mosquito, depending on temperature and wind conditions. They like dark colours, strong colours (blue is a fav - no jeans), scents (forget perfume, even scented shampoo is enough to attract them) and of course heat. light coloured clothes are your best bet, long sleeves, a hat, and lots of bug spray (unless you want to look like you walked through a bee convention and have broken out in hives as a result).
We got a lot done in June - around half the roads on our map had been covered in June - a quarter of the map area. Too bad the next few weeks weren't going o go as smoothly...
So this is Armstrong, eh?
I've seen small towns before. Heck, I grew up in one. but I guess mine had... infrastructure. The first thing that struck me about Armstrong was that it was all housing. Even the businesses were house-like buildings or converted houses. the second thing was that the town was, well... not very inviting. people don't put much stock in gardens and apprearances, I guess. the third thing I found out when we got to the bar. As I walked in, I was greeted by whoops from the guys - apparently, there are few women up here (the guy was married, no less - eugh!).
.... Let's get outta here
Our first order of business is to find a campsite out somewhere in the bush. now, to run a geology camp, you need a few things of your campsite...
1) you need a water source like a lake or stream nearby, for water for the rock saw, bathing, emergency water supply ( we had a filter) and potential access to the lake systems ( plus plane landing/take-off area for food supply if fly-in camp)
2) you need (in our case) access to the road systems, but you don't want to be on the roads, especially logging roads
3) you need a sufficient area to set up a kitchen, office tent, a latrine, rock saww shed, and one 5-6 man tent for each person on your crew (hey you're out there for 3 months - It's nice to have a space of your very own) this area should be devoid of trees & brush - If not, you have to make it so.
there were some restrictions on us, too:
the first good-looking campsite we came to was the "property" of a yearly bear-hunting camp (it was actually pretty far south in our mapping area, too)
so, we hunted around the area for 3 days, looking for a place to stay. the best one we found was a little East of the midpoint, an hour from town, with rough access to a lake (hey, it wasn't much, but it did for the summer). a launch point was further down the side. We found, later on, two additional camps on the same lake, both accessible only by boat/plane (a lot of the lakes in the area are acessible only by plane - you fly in, land on the lake and set up camp onshore), as well as a slew of hunting camps in the bush. but that was later.
So, on friday, three of us, Dan, Dave and myself, were left to begin setting up camp, while Carole Anne and Scott made the four hour one-way trip to Thunder Bay to pick up our gear. they didn't get back till after midnight. at least they had tents set up.
so the next week, we worked on setting up camp - making furniture, setting up kitchen & office tents, organizing gear, supplies and equipment. Then, rather abruptly, we got to mapping. That, looking back, was one major thing missing from my mapping experience - no real pulling together of the team by our team leader, no goals, no focus - just mapping.
However, when we opened our equipment, we found that some of it didn't "check(ed) OK" as the label read.
What we found broken/incomplete was:
1)zodiac - it came with a cracked floorboard (which broke, of course, later) and never sat properly in the water.
2) 15HP motor - busted coil. starting it was a bit of a gamble.
3) 3HP motor for canoe - seized. yup, seized.
4) Kits for car - we got an extension cord (??) in them, but no yanker strap, only 1 hi-lift jack for 3 vehicles (hope no one else needs this today...)
5) tools - most are rough, not in good condition, didn't have enough of them
6) fire extinguishers - there were none. we're required to have one in each vehicle, one in the kitchen, and technically, one for every tent (that makes a total of 15!!)
7) propane cylinders: the 40lb cylinders were purged, or so we had been told. They wouldn't fill, and we had to get them purged a second time and re-filled.
good ol' warehouse... *sigh*
Actually, once we got the camp set up and found out what worked and what didn't, mapping was quite uneventful for the month of June, at least. However, the one thing I wish to express about June in the bush is this: bring the bug spray. Bugs in the bush are bad - REALLY bad - in June. I started gauging bad days based on the number I managed to swallow, that's how bad they were - you'd walk five feet into the bush, and would be covered in a black cloud of your very own assortment of blackfly, deerfly, moosefly (which are really hard to kill) and mosquito, depending on temperature and wind conditions. They like dark colours, strong colours (blue is a fav - no jeans), scents (forget perfume, even scented shampoo is enough to attract them) and of course heat. light coloured clothes are your best bet, long sleeves, a hat, and lots of bug spray (unless you want to look like you walked through a bee convention and have broken out in hives as a result).
We got a lot done in June - around half the roads on our map had been covered in June - a quarter of the map area. Too bad the next few weeks weren't going o go as smoothly...
posted by NinjaRaven at 8:35 PM
1 Comments:
it still is much the same. my defence mechanism for truly traumatic events is to, well, forget them - draw a blank. i had to keep reminding myself that the accident really did happen so that this wouldn't happen. However, the experience of remembering such events can be likened to placing a red-hot brand to various parts of one's anatomy.
Post a Comment
<< Home