Fall is on it's way!

So we are winding things down. Fall is coming. The leaves are turning. It's getting cooler. We had a small reprieve of a few of the nicest days all summer, but not anymore! I'm very excited to see the leaves turn though, hopefully I will be able to get some nice pics of that. The work has been good though. Only a few more days left. 5 more sleeps to be precise!

The other day it was neat, we were walking and ran into a grizzly bear. It was the perfect situation though, he ran away and I managed to snap a picture. It was an amazing thing to see. He wasn't really big, but I'm glad I was with someone at the time.


The other neat thing (and less dangerous) that we got to see were some really big springs coming out of the side of a mountain. They were not warm but they weren't ice cold. We're still hoping to get to some really good hot springs before we leave. Here is a picture of me with the enormous mounds deposited by the springs themselves.


And of course, I have the obligatory shot of me looking like a dork with a set of caribou antlers. It was neat to find them both together!


Anyways, I should head to bed. I will be home on the 25th for good so I hope to see you all very soon.

Mel

50 days and counting...but only 8 more sleeps left!

Well, I know it’s been a long time since I’ve made a post. There was this guy in my camp…and he was such a distraction. Actually, it was a very welcome distraction having Micheal in our camp. I wish that he would have had a bit more opportunity to relax, but he will be back in Edmonton tomorrow (the 1^st) so he will have lots of opportunity to sleep in.

We spent a lot of time working on getting our drilling program going and we were lucky enough to get out hiking around for a day to work on prospecting. The weather was fantastic the whole time Micheal was here, I think somehow that our best week of summer arrived with him. I was sad to see him go, but I am very close to being back for my break so that makes it a lot easier. Here is a neat picture of him helping put up our core logging shack. It's really too bad that it only took 3 hrs for it to blow down the hill. Got to do it all over again the next day!

So everything is going along well here with our prospecting and drilling. Lots of activity here, it has become quite the bustling little city. We finally got our helicopter fixed. For a while it looked like quite the airport with all the helicopters lying around. There are 4 helicopters in this picture (courtesy of Eric) if you look really closely.

So core logging has been a bit of a break from walking up and down mountains all day. It’s a bit of a battle with the ground squirrels though, they like to eat our core boxes. Little buggers! Here is a picture of a little ‘family’ I saw. Pa on the left, Ma in the middle, and the little guy on the right. They were pretty cute. Today, one of them tried to nibble on my toe. Getting pretty bold…

Well, I’m tuckered. But I’ll try to be a bit better about updating…it’s just so tough when sleep is such a precious commodity!
Take care,

Mel

Minor difficulties...

So the weather has started to get a bit nicer here. I have had 2 whole days in a row with no rain. The work has been going well, we have had a few bumps in the road but overall it’s been working out fine.

First off, our helicopter broke. The other day our A-Star (which is infinitely better than our underpowered Long Ranger) was taking off from camp to go get the 3^rd crew (out of 4) and the engine died. So, it happened at the best possible time in the best possible place – on the ground, in camp. But it still meant that we had 8 people in the field that needed to get home. We were lucky that there is a NWT Geological Survey Camp nearby so we were able to borrow their heli to pick up our crews. It was still 9:30 by the time they were getting back.

So, we had to wait to get another heli, our underpowered Long Ranger came back. How sad. Then the fun part was, the Pilot and Engineer ordered oil for the heli and it never came and it never came…Then the other morning we rushed to be ready and we were 10 minutes early for the 7am flight and the Pilot said that we should go back to bed. No oil = no flying. Apparently the oil had been shipped by the helicopter company to the hangar, but never made it on the plane. Whoopsie. So we had a day in camp to plan. Brad, our data/computer/safety guy took a picture of the ‘most expensive paperweight ever’:

Note the file folder under the skid. Apparently we will be getting a new engine on Tuesday so they will just do a switch and hopefully we will be up and running in the A-Star shortly after.

Other than that, we have been seeing lots of wildlife. From the helicopter the other day, one crew saw a big grizzly with a freshly killed bull caribou. We had our wolves hanging out in the one area we were going back to quite often. The wolves liked to howl in the morning, which was quite a creepy way to start the day. I’ve been nearly run over by a number of caribou in the last week. I think they are nearly blind. It meant that I was able to get some very cool pictures though. Here is my favourite one of a wee caribou who spotted me:

Keep in mind that it is quite zoomed in, I’m not actually getting too close to most of the wildlife.

I’m quite excited because in 4 days Micheal is going to be in my camp. He was nice enough (crazy enough) to decide to spend his short break in our camp. I don’t get my actual break for quite a while yet, so I’m pretty sure this will save my sanity. He won’t have much more time in the field, so he will likely be home in Edmonton at the start of August. That way, he can go back to watering the plants and picking the snails out of the fish tank (thanks Nat and Dad!).

Well, take care everyone and see you soon,

Mel

Soggy Camp Willowhandle

So, we have had about 12 days with rain. Some days were partly sunny, so it hasn't been too bad. It's better than too hot anyways!

Camp is in full swing now. We aren't at capacity, but we must be close. We have about 4 helicopter loads of people every day heading out. It is my job to figure out who, what, and where for all of those trips. It feels like Edmonton International around here sometimes!

The mapping is going okay - that's my job. I work around our one permit area that we are going to be drilling. I am trying to figure out where we should be drilling - with a lot of help thank goodness! I also supervise a crew of soil samplers (sometimes as many as five guys) who are working on sampling around areas of mineralization. They have a pretty hard job, but they are pretty darn upbeat about it. They have to dig up to 50-60 samples a day, which can be pretty tough with rocky ground and bad bugs.

The fog has kept us from leaving a few mornings, but sometimes it has some pretty results. Here is some harmless fog from the other morning:



There was this one solitary loon hanging out on the lake, it was just so pretty. I love listening to them at night:


So, we have also had a lot of wildlife sightings both in and out of camp. The other night we were working away when we heard what sounded like cow bells. Then...20 horses walked into camp. Our camp manager was a little bit stunned to see those guys! It was a group of outfitters bringing their horses through. They stayed for a night and continued on the next day. Here is a pic of our camp being invaded, note the muddy mess that it is:


And in the field, we can't seem to see enough Caribou. Herds of 100 or more come through all the time. It's kind of crazy. With the caribou of course, comes the wolves. The other day, we had 3 wolves hanging around and we had one come within 2 feet of one of our samplers! The wolf didn't seem fazed by the bear bangers we shot or at us yelling. Another one came up close to my group as well, I got a couple of pictures but I didn't have time to set up a very good shot:


I kinda had to brighten the picture a bit, I think the rain streaks are kind of neat in it.

So, it's been okay here but we could definetly use some sun! I hear it's pretty hot down south so hopefully you guys can send us some of that soon.

Take care!
Mel

Mel found some spare time!

I know it has been a long time since I've posted, but it has been incredibly busy for me. We've been working very long days. Our first flights out are usually at 7am and usually we are back at a decent time, but a few days it's been 6:30-7pm. Then we work in the office for the rest of the night. The field work is great and we are getting caught up in the office so I think soon I will be able to institute a 'no work past 9pm' rule for myself!

The weather was great for a while, we definetely enjoyed it while it lasted. We have been seeing a LOT of wildlife. The neatest day was when a wolf walked RIGHT by us. That was really cool, but then it got even better. There were actually 3 caribou right around the hillside from us, and the wolf started chasing them! He wasn't fast enough to catch them but we could watch him stalking the caribou, it was amazing. Like the Discovery Channel but right in our own backyard!

Here's a picture of the wolf, his eyes were really yellow.


We also celebrated the solstice in camp on the 21st. We were lucky enough to get flown up to the top of a mountain over camp to watch the midnight sun. The crowd enjoyed some activities such as fossil hunting and chucking rocks down the mountain:


Trust me, throwing rocks down big hills doesn't get old and the middle of nowhere is a great place to try it out. We settled down to watch the midnight sun:


It was a nice break and it was neat to say that I've now seen the midnight sun during the Solstice. I hope everyone takes a look at the video that Mike posted - it's pretty cool. And hopefully my parents are having a good time in Mayo, I wish I could be there. Thankfully Mike will be 'taking them for lunch' tomorrow. Hopefully we will be able to post some pictures of that soon.

Take care!

Well Hi There.

Here is a second video for you all to watch. Another chopper video. This one is a bit linger than the one below, but has a bit of nice scenery and music added. It is a down-sampled version to fit on the web, but be sure to ask about the high definition version this fall. Most of the footage here is from our search mission for some hot springs rumored to be in the area.

Cheers,

Mike.

Hello Again,

It has been few days since the last post, but I am back and I have more photos to share. Everything is going well out here at Blende. The drill is spinning and we are getting lots of core to keep us busy. The weather has been wonderful and sunny for about two weeks, and we are getting a bit of rain today, which is a bit of a nice change but I hope it does not stay. Just like last year there are marmots and ground squirrels around, only this year they have taken a liking to the plywood in camp instead of just the old core boxes at the old camp. There have been a few caribou around the area, which is nice to see as we only had a single caribou sighting last year.

We are off of the pad that is in the picture, and onto a sweeter looking spot... stayed tuned to see some photos when I get some. Have great time wherever you are!

Mike.

The drill sitting up on a ridge East of camp. The second drill set up. This pad had a 1500m vertical lift.

Emily, our geotech/geology summer student logging some of the core.

Jordan, one of the core splitting boys... splitting core.

The core splitter

Mike, our camp maintenance/core splitter dude

Hi Again,

Things are going well here at Blende, we have finished drilling our first hole of the summer and after an 8 hour drill move we are two shifts into the second. It has been interesting running the camp this year, too much to think about, between figuring out logistics, tracking the budget and getting supplies into camp, there is normally some time to do a bit of geology. I think it has been a good experience and I am learning a great deal.
We have some sweet drill pads in the western portion of the property, they look pretty rad when the fog rolls in. The pad builders had a little avalanche roll down beside them when they were working on this particular one.
There was also a Hughes 500 that stopped by camp for a few minutes the other day so I took a few shots of it, for those that have never seen one. I think they are a cool little machine. I believe it was designed as a gunship for the military... it is super maneuverable, this guy can even do a full upside down roll!

Ciao for Now,

Micheal.

Mel's Journey in to Camp

It was quite the hop-skip-and jump into camp. Last time I posted, I was in lovely Yellowknife waiting to leave for Norman Wells.

We left Yellowknife in a Cessna Grand Caravan - which was the smallest plane that I had been on at that point. Apparently we were on the "indirect route" to Norman Wells and had to make a few stops.

Here is a pic of the Grand Caravan:


Then we landed in Deline (Fort Franklin) on the shore of Great Bear Lake. It is only accessible by winter road or by air. There, we had to switch planes to get to Tulita (Fort Norman). Our next plane, was a Twin Otter, which was kinda fun.


We had to stop at Tulita on the banks of the Mackenzie River. Quite a pretty little town. Next (finally!) we were on our way to Norman Wells. We stayed overnight and had a chance to visit the local museum and see the local golf course (maybe 3 holes?). It was actually a really nice museum, mostly about the Canol Road. They also had a lot of beautiful locally made moccasins and other crafts. And then we were off to camp, in a Pilatus Porter, by far the smallest plane I've been in:


Here we are loading the plane. It was pretty darn cozy! It is the only one of it's kind that is still functioning in Canada. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing! It is highly useful because of it's landing distance, it can stop in 300 ft - a Twin Otter requires 1200 ft to stop. Our runway at camp is apparently 1250 ft...not a lot of room for error, and a long drop at the bottom. it was quite the stop anyways.

Here we are , just outside of Norman Wells, flying over the mighty Mackenzie, it's really impressive.


I thought it was neat that the pilot had to turn a crank to operate the flaps!


And finally, we made it to camp. Things have been coming together, but we're functioning pretty well. Our outhouses and showers don't have doors yet, and today when I finally got to take a shower (they just finished the plumbing) the hot water heater stopped working so I had a very 'refreshing shower'. It's a beautiful location though and there are some existing buildings that are pretty neat. Here is our lovely kitchen:


We have 2 really great cooks, and there are a lot of other great people working in the camp. Our view from camp is really impressive, we are right on a lake (read: mosquitoes) in a broad valley . There is a little canoe here that I will hopefully have a chance to take for a spin sometime soon.


So, take care everyone and I hope that you are all doing well!
Melissa

Back in Yellowknife

I left foggy Edmonton today and said goodbye to the family and Bailey and landed in sunny gorgeous Yellowknife this morning.

The first thing on our agenda was to cram for our Supervisor certification exam. A BIG manual on lots of stuff to do with underground mining. Considering that I have never been in an underground mine, I had a bit of a rough time with the terminology. BUT, we passed. Thank goodness.

We went for supper in Old Town, which is a pretty quaint part of Yellowknife. There are lots of gorgeous houses overlooking the lake and today because of the great weather there were a lot of people taking advantage of the lake:


Another neat thing about Yellowknife is the fact that there are a lot of houseboats in the bay. They are REALLY brightly coloured, and so darned cute. The thing is, it's a lot of work getting back and forth between them and shore, especially during freeze up and break up. I have friends that live (or lived) in houseboats in the bay and there are more than a few stories of dumping canoes in the half-frozen lake on the 'daily commute'.

We had an awesome dinner and then took a stroll around town to try and see some of the sights (and the rocks, who would have guessed...). I saw a ton of ducks (canvasbacks, methinks) in the ponds around town plus we saw the headframe of the big Con Mine, a old gold mine right in Yellowknife.


So tomorrow afternoon we fly to Norman Wells and stay the night. Then off to camp - finally! I'm excited to get into camp, where I don't have to cart my huge amount of stuff around for a couple of months. I'm excited to go to someplace new, I've not seen the sights of Norman Wells. I hear it's the Paris of the NWT...really!

Take care everyone!
Mel

Let the Pad Building Begin

Hello All,

Sorry for the long delay with the posts, I had to wait for something to happen and to get some sweet photos to share.
Things are going very well here at Blende camp. The camp is up and running smoothly. We have had a couple of pad builders in camp for about a week now building us some very rad drill pads (see the attached photos). The drillers are beginning to arrive and the drill will be in on June 11, so it should be spinning and producing core within a couple days or so.

The snow was everywhere when we arrived in camp ten days ago. Now it is pretty much gone. On hot days we could almost watch the snow melt from the cirque above camp. The photo of the pad being built is the same slope as the snow covered ridge... just a few days later. We had fresh avalanches on that slope a couple of days after arriving into camp.
I included a photo of the camp for those that forgot what it looked like from last year.

All of the holes that we drill this year will be serviced by the helicopter that is in camp for June. The drill will be flown from pad to pad and crew changes will be done with the chopper, no road access this year.Hopefully my next post will have some photos of sweet mineralized core for you to gaze at through cyberspace.

Ciao for now,

|mike.|

Well,

Mel one-upped me there with some photos, so I give you a video. Our chopper pilot is sweet!

Mike.

Mel has hijacked the blog...

Bwa ha ha - Mike's too slow to upload pics (not his fault) so I've decided to post a pic myself. This is Mike in the snowy Yukon - a picture courtesy of his work buddy Chris.


He never would have posted a pic of himself anyways....It's good to see he is doing well though.
Thanks to those who left comments on our first post - it's great to hear from all of you!
Take care,
Melissa

Hello All,

Welcome back to our blog for the summer of 2007. The internet in camp here has been a bit slow so far so I have not been able to post my first entry of the year until just now. As you were told by Melissa, I am currently in Blende camp up here in Yukon. The camp is pretty much the same as last year (I even have the same bed), and getting the camp up and running again was a fairly smooth endeavor. We are getting right into things here with planning the drill holes that will be drilled. This year is a bit different than last as the drill will be moved around with a helicopter this instead of the Cat that we saw last summer. This means that we can also drill off of the road (we'll get to see some pictures in a couple of days).

My flight up to Whitehorse and then up here to Blende was uneventful, which is just the way it should be. The weather has been quite nice so far, partly cloudy most of the time with temperatures around 20 C.

This is a short bit to update everyone and let you know that I am alive up here... stay tuned for photos to come in future posts.

Ciao,

Mike.

Micheal is on his way north!

So, Micheal jumped on a plane last night to Whitehorse and it sounds like he made it in okay.

It was tough to see him go, but he is really excited to get back to his field area.

He should be on his way to camp today, and hopefully within a few days he will have internet access and posting up a storm on the blog!

The last few weeks have been a bit busy with travelling all over western Canada for geology field school, work, and a conference.

Field school was really good. We travelled across southern BC and saw a lot of neat rocks. Mike did such a good job as a TA:

Nice face Mike...

He was even told on his student evaluations that "Mike was just as good at being a TA on field school as in the regular school year, it's hard to improve on perfection"....*Mel rolls her eyes*

We just got back from our road trip to Yellowknife for the Geological Association of Canada's Annual General Meeting. It was really good, and Mike gave a great talk. The drive was great fun. We saw lots of neat wildlife like:

Here's a BIG Bison:


Here's a baby Bison:


Mel to Mike "If any of the Momma Bison start to look angry...floor it!"

Sandhill Cranes:


And lots of other wildlife like bears, moose, deer, and a fox.

We were lucky enough to stop in Beaverlodge on the way to and from Yellowkife to see Micheal's grandparents. Mike got a chance to play a round of golf with his Grandpa, which was fun to watch. Plus, we were spoiled with good home-cooked food by his Grandma. Thanks SO much!


Here's Mike 'putting' on the temporary green with his Grandpa.

The last few days were spent running around Edmonton getting everything together for Mike's trip. We had some spare time though, so we did end up going canoeing yesterday morning. It was really nice out. Mike and I are hoping to rig up a way to carry a canoe on the Golf when we get back in the fall...

Here is Mike taking his turn in the front of the canoe:


We tried using Mike's new wee tripod...with some success. I guess we need a little practice:


So, I'll be off to the field on the 11th of June. It should be a good field season, I'm excited to go back to the beautiful Mackenzie Mountains.

See you later,
Melissa