Sublimity…

So here I am in the middle of nowhere, yet these days even the middle of nowhere isn’t very far away due to the miracles of satellite internet service. We arrived at the Snap Lake mine camp this morning, and have spent the day so far getting our final “orientation traning” and then getting our gear all prepped up so that we can start working tomorrow. It’s quite a place here, and it’s taking some time to get used to the fact that I’m really on a mine site 220km NE from Yellowknife with nothing around for… well… 220km.

So I left the 34 degree (42 with humidex, and looking like there will be no change for the rest of the week) sauna of Ottawa on Tuesday at 1:20pm and flew off for Yellowknife. I was pretty excited, especially since we ended up getting booked on the “scenic” route, through Winnepeg, up to Rankin Inlet and then across to Yellowknife. I’m sure you’re all sick of me yammering on about how amazing the north is, and how I really want to be able to get out and see it all, but it’s true, and so I’ve got to say it one more time. This routing meant I’d get to see the Hudson Bay coastline, a completely different part of the arctic, and then the interior tundra wasteland instead of flying across endless stretches of bland prarie (which look even more boring from 35,oooft) which is what would have happened if we’d taken the normal route out to Edmonton and then north to Yellowknife. The fact that the scenic route cost nearly $1000 more is the fault of the travel agent who booked my supervisor’s ticket (I was just told to get an identical ticket and didn’t think to question the price, though $2700 did seem a little steep, even considering that we only booked the flights two weeks before we went) but since the government is paying all my travel expenses, it doesn’t really matter to me. Yes it’s not the best use of the project money so I was a little upset when I found out there were better fares (too late), but as I said, this routing allowed me to see more of Northern Canada, and so in some ways I’m really grateful to the poor agent. I’ll just try to work a little more efficent to see if we can save helicopter time here to make up the difference and ease my slightly guiltly conseince (at $1500/hr, saving one sling trip with smart packing could make the difference).

485The scenic route turned out to be everything I had dreamed of, and more. The Hudson coast is an amazingly gorgeous region, especially from the air. The weather cooperated completely – a beautiful sunny blue-sky day with a few cool clouds to add some spice to the horizon, but not too many to obscure the scenery. My only complaint was the bright sun shining into my window, making the faint reflection of my pants and shirt appear on the window and thus slightly degrading the photo ops (but not too badly, and I took the photos anyway – they were too good to miss. You’ll have to wait till I get back to see them though since I didn’t bring my cable, and doubt that the shared computers here at the mine would have the required drivers etc.) The most important thing I learned was that there isn’t really a sharp solid “coastline” along the bay, but instead hundreds and millions of small inlets, islands, lakes and headlands creating a region severa tens of kilometers wide where the land and sea intermingle. The land is nearly all barren rock, some smoothed by glaciers while other parts are more ragged cliffs and hills falling into the bay. The bay itself is a beautiful deep blue offshore, but in close to land the sand shines on the bottom creating spectacular turquoise shallows that remind me of the Carribean. The small icebergs and small remenant sheets of the pack-ice floating on the bay quickly dispell this Caribbean feel though, but at the same time just make the scenery even more beautiful. Add the western sun glinting on the lakes and shallows as we flew just offshore, leaving a golden band of water off to the side, and the picture was near perfect. I can’t wait to get up to Igloolik and see what it is like up there, if it’s anything like the “southern” part of the coast that I saw, I’ll be in heaven. Or better yet, to be able to sail the coast, hop one of the barges going north from Churchill perhaps, or take a sea kayak around Rankin Inlet, now that’d be the life.

Rankin itself is a pretty small place, but considering that everything else in the area is a tiny place, and that there is regular jet service to Rankin, it’s the regional centre. We only stayed long enough to unload the cargo and take on some new passengers, but they let us off the plane so I got to stretch a bit and see the immeadiate scenery better. We couldn’t wander too far though as we could be called for boarding at an time, so I didn’t get to explore. Another day perhaps…

393The flight out to Yellowknife was less exciting, just endless tundra spotted with lakes large and small. It truley lives up to its name “the Barren lands” and stretches on forever. Wouldn’t want to get lost out there… Yellowknife itself was much larger than I expected, with a population of 19,000 and some building over 10 stories tall, in the north it truely is a city. I’d only stopped at the airport on my way north last summer, so this was my first time there. 395The treeline veers north east of Yellowknife, so there are a fair number of trees, but they’re all pretty scrawny and stubby, with the taller ones about 15ft high. The newer part of the city, with all the offices and tall buildings is laid out on a perfect grid, with stoplights on all the corners and really feels like a city. The main street (50th St, not to be confused with 50th Ave, as all the roads downtown are numbered, with streets going roughly East-West and avenues going North-South, took me a minute to figure out how we could be at the intersection of 51st and 51st, and then go around the block to 52nd and 52nd…) is even two lanes each way, and the parking meters along the sides read no parking from 16:30 – 18:00, I assume because of the rush hour traffice… It’s very clean, and as cities goes is pretty nice, and best of all lacking in the annoying insects that plauge this part of the country.

Besides running a few errands to pick up last minute supplies and safety gear (apparently steel-toed boots are mandatory at Snap Lake, even just for walking from the accomodation building to the helipad which is basically all we’ll be doing on site) the only major thing we had to do in Yellowkinfe (or YK as it is sometimes reffered to) was take a 6hr training course so that would be allowed into the Snap Lake camp. I had a bad feeling about this before we even got into the room, but in the end it was even worse than I had feared. Imagine 5hrs of endless PowerPoint slideshows and tackey safety videos outlining all the fundamental health, safety and environmental policies and practices given by a monotonous sub-contractor who seemed to enjoy giving the presentation even less that I enjoyed watching it. We learned that you should pull the fire alarm in case of fire, that power tools are dangerous, and that de Beers is very concerned about the Health, Safety and Environment of it’s workers and the site at the Snap Lake project. The only thing I really learned was something called a lock-out/tag-out system for ensuring equipment is shutdow when doing repairs, some basic camp rules, and the rest of it was all common sense stuff that anyone should know, and even if they somehow didn’t, would have picked up in first aid, WHIMS and all those other similar required training programs. They gave us pizza for lunch, which only put me to sleep faster afterwards, but we survived it and finally escaped. I guess I could understand a one, maybe two hour training session for that material, but 6?!? Come-on! I’d like to be able to swear that I will never EVER do another silly, boaring training session like that, but something tells me that if I am ever going to officially work with a company, or on a site owned by company, I’ll be sitting through something similar again. Guess I’ll just have to suck it up.

The one thing that got rammed into me at the session was much security is involved in this operation. Once you think about it, it makes sense. Diamonds are generally tiny little pieces of rock that not easy to find, but once found are also easy to hide again and then can be sold for a healthy sum of money. Any unlike other mining operations there is no refining needed, so if you do happen to find a (rough) diamond, you could easily sell it, whereas to get the same amount of money from a hunk of some ore you could find in a metal mine (copper, nickel, even gold), you’d need to take a piece at least the size of a truck which would be a little hard to conceal, and then it would still have to be refined in a $30 million processing plant, something you’re not likely to find easily accessible, before it would have any real value. Anyway, all this means that de Beers doesn’t want to lose money to people stealing their diamonds, and they take it VERY seriously. Any activity that would increase the chance that you might find a diamond, unless approved by management, is regarded as a serious offense and can easily lead to you being fired and removed from the camp immeadiately. So, collecting rocks of any sort – for any reason is absoutely forbidden, and even just looking at the piles of gravel on the side of the road could arouse suspicion. Makes life here in camp a little less fun for a geologist, I was looking forward to seeing my first piece of kimberlite and even maybe keeping a piece, but that is obviosuly not going to happen now. We can’t even take samples from our station sites away from the main camp, if an unauthorised sample is taken from their property, or even if it only passes through their camp/airport/helipad, you’re in BIG trouble. All baggage is x-rayed going into and out of the camp, and anyone can be searched (even strip searched) at any time if they have any reason to suspect that you may be taking rocks. Metal mines never seem to care, they’ll give you samples right from the mining pit – sometimes even containing visible samples of the metals being mined, but that will never happen here. So remind me never to work in a diamond mine/camp…

One final thing that needs mentioning is how stupidly small this world is. Example #1. I’m sitting in a Vietnamese Noodle House in Yellowknife, NWT eating supper with my co-workers after a day of training and errands – the one day that I will be spending in Yellowknife for that segment, and half way through supper I look up and see this person who looks slightly familiar walking into the door. By the time he reaches the counter, I drop my jaw in amazement and shout “Hey Trystan, over here”. Yep, that’s right, Trystan G-M has just walked into the resturant. Turns out he’s just stopping in Yellowknife for the night too, on his way back to his job at an exploration camp outside Rankin Inlet after a vacation at home in Vancouver. I don’t want to think of what the odds are of this kind of meeting (nor could I even attempt to figure it out). Out here in this vast nothingness above 60N, we happen to meet when we are each passing through YK on the same day, and end up at the same resturant seperated by 20min! YK is small, but there’s still a fair number of options for food, so even this last part is not insignificant. Regardless, it was great to see him and hear about his experiences in the North, and in particular in a small exploration camp. Sounded like it was a good time to me, a great summer job, but might get a pit tedious/lonely if you stayed for longer than that. 473We tried to take a walk around the outskirts of the city, but after climbing a small ridge just off the road, we were driven back by the mosquitoes who had come out in full force. There are nearly no bugs in the city proper, so I was wearing my shorts, but as soon as we crossed the road, they swarmed in and covered my legs. The scenery was pretty, and we found some awesome pillows in the meta-volcanic that made up the ridge, but the bugs were just too bad and so we went back to the hotel. We chatted until sunset (around 11:30) and then we both figured we should get some sleep so he left. All in all, a wonderful surprise! Next morning we woke up and went out to the airport to catch our plane for Snap Lake, with no major surprises.

The cafeteria just opened here, so I’m going to have to run for my supper shift. We’re planning on being here at Snap Lake until the 20th, so I’ll try to write some more soon about life at the camp, and our work. Cheers for now!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2005 at 5:56 pm and is filed under Arctic, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.