SUMMER 2002

May 1st to 5th: The annual drive across the country was a little more unlucky than anticipated. I should have known, from this being my 13th year of planting and 13th year driving the truck across the country, that something would go wrong. Well, to sum it up, we ended up stuck in Marathon, Ontario, for three days with a broken transmission and transfer case problems, which cost $4518 to repair. And we hit major snowstorms in 5 of the 7 provinces that we drove through. But at least we didn't get in an accident. Also, on a more interesting note, we found out that we could buy buffalo meat ($3.99/lb ground, $8.49/lb sirloin cuts) in Husky gas stations in Saskatchewan.

May 8th: Set up camp today, well organized for a change. We're in the same campsite that we were in last year when we had big problems with the pumps/showers, but we've got that problem solved this year - we brought in a couple of huge holding containers, and got them filled by a water truck from town, so we have great showers and water in the cook shack now. We checked out a few of the blocks after supper, and realized that we're going to have major snow problems in a week. Discovered that the entrance to one of the planting units was blocked with large blown-down trees - time to get out the chain saw.

May 9th: Day one of planting. Major truck problems. Greg's truck got a hole punched through the bottom of the radiator while driving down the highway, lost all of its coolant, and had to be towed to town for repairs. Byron got his truck stuck in a mudhole on the block, and while trying to pull it out, Jim broke his winch cable and burned out one of the solenoids on his winch. He did manage to get it out eventually though, but afterwards as they were driving off the block, Byron's other vehicle, a Ford Excusion, got stuck in another mudhole. We went back after supper to try to pull it out with three trucks, unsuccessfully, so we left it on the block for the night.

May 10th: My "supervisor" truck was having shifting problems, so I drove it into town very slowly in first gear (which took several hours), and found out that the torque converter had essentially exploded, so it is now in the shop for about two weeks. The nice part is that it is a warrantee repair, so in the meantime I have another new truck for a replacement. Greg's truck got repaired, and we eventually pulled Byron's truck out with the help of Jeremy Campbell (the ministry of forests supervisor) and a winch and pulley. The pulley is the slickest piece of equipment we have - it doubles the power of the winches and can pull almost anything out of the mud, as long as there is something to anchor it to.

May 13th: So much for Montreal in the playoffs. We've got a satellite dish in camp this year, which is saving a fortune in fuel costs because the planters don't have to drive into town if they want to watch the hockey games any more. We've got a VCR too, so we can tape afternoon games and play them at supper.

May 14th: Up at 3:15am to go flying for five hours, using the chopper to scan the blocks for forest fire hazards (none found) and assess snow levels. Unfortunately, we found that there is still a lot of snow on most of the blocks we need to move into over the next week. The snow is melting a month too late this year. So much for the theory about the greenhouse effect and global warming.

May 15th: I can't believe how many bears there are around here this year. I've seen a minimum of eighty to one hundred this week.

May 16th: The snow on the road to our blocks was so bad this morning that I had to hire a front-end loader (for about $600) to plow the road for several kilometres into his block, which took a couple hours before he could get started.

May 17th: Day off for the crew, most of whom went into town to see the new Star Wars movie.

May 18th: Byron, one of the foremen, left a full-blown first aid box on the side of the road by his block last week, and forgot to pick it up. I noticed it today and thought, "Oh great, I bet everything has been stolen out of that." Unfortunately for Byron, I was right. That was an expensive oversight.

May 20th: The planters have really been enjoying their first contract this year, but my camp is a bit stronger than I expected, and we keep running out of trees and having half-days and so on. The planters have had three complete days off so far, plus a number of half days, and we'll have another four days without work this week when we move to Alberta.

May 21st: Finished our trees in Prince George this morning. One of our other supervisors, Blake, ran into major snow problems tonight (actually, all of our supervisors are running into snow problems). Blake is on a job in Alberta where all the blocks are fly-ins, and a big snowstorm grounded the choppers in the afternoon, so everyone had to walk out at supper - 3kms in a snowstorm, in the middle of the woods. We're supposed to start working in Hinton/Edson (Alberta) on Saturday, but they're getting another snowstorm right now.

May 22nd: How does that Christmas song go? "Oh the weather outside is frightful ..."?? It now appears that we have fifty centimetres of snow in the forecast. None of our Alberta camps were able to work today. At this rate, we'll still be planting in September.

Click HERE to see pictures from the start of May.

May 24th: I heard that Joe's camp lost their water pump ... it was on the shore of the river, but not tied up, and washed away during a heavy rainstorm.

May 25th: Got to try out a new machine - the Polaris. The Polaris is basically a six-wheeled ATV that looks like an all-terrain golf cart, with two seats and roll bars. It can carry 16 boxes of trees, and go through some fairly nasty stuff. We were skeptical at first, but after using it all day, realized that under the right conditions (long runs into blocks that the truck couldn't quite handle, but clean enough for Polaris) it could be extremely useful. Unfortunately, it died at the end of the day - ate a belt and the clutch self-destructed. Apparently, it has always had problems of this sort, being very high-maintenance. I think we're going to trade it in for another quad. The quads are without doubt the most versatile and useful machines out here, and the field maintenance is reasonable.

May 26th: Saw a what looked like a wasp's nest in the trees, but I was about 400 metres away so I thought there was no way it could be that big. Got closer to find out that it really was - the eye surgery still works well! It was the largest nest I've ever seen, about twice the size of a basketball. We run into a lot of nest out here (especially in July/August) but three quarters of them are underground, so you don't know about them until you open a hole and are sticking your hand in the ground to find it covered with wasps.

May 28th: Had to rescue two "red-neck tourists" who wandered into our camp after supper and asked if someone could help them pull their truck out of a mudhole down a seismic line. At least they were smart enough to get help from professionals! [The next day, they dropped a flat of beer off for the cooks].

May 29th: I did what was quite possibly the stupidest thing I've done in a while this afternoon. One of the quads had a flat tire, so I went back to camp to get a spare (about an hour and a half round trip). I ended up getting a bunch of phone calls on the way and picked up several other items in camp, and when I got back to the block, I realized that I forgot to grab the spare tire, which was the whole point of the trip.

May 31st: The planters are starting to hit their stride now. After only planting about 450,000 trees between May 8th and 24th, due mostly to snow problems, the camp has been averaging close to 100,000 per day for the last week.

June 3rd: Things are running too smoothly, and my planters are doing too well. It looks like most of my camp will have a break from June 12th to 24th because we're planting our trees too fast. A lot of the industry seems to be having problems because of the snow this year, but our company seems to be an anomoly - we've got several camps that are hungry for some extra planting, pretty much anywhere in BC or Alberta. It looks like my camp might get a week-long break in mid-July also. Despite the breaks though, the planters are really happy with the way things are going this year.

June 4th: Had a cow moose and calf walking on the road in front of me today. The mother was about the same height as my pickup, but the calf was tiny, only a few inches higher than my front tires.

June 8th: Saw a bear on the road the other day. It's pretty rare to see bears in Alberta, and after a few minutes of silence, I remarked to the person I was driving with that it was the first bear that I had seen in Alberta in a couple years. Just then we turned the corner, and I had to say, "... and there's the second." Today, three of the four crews had bears on their blocks. Strange.

June 9th: For years I've been wondering why people don't recycle the cardboard boxes that trees come in. I've always been told that the high wax content of the boxes, used to keep the cardboard stiff in wet conditions, is the problem that keeps them from being recycleable. Well, it turns out that Edson has a recycling station that now composts and reuses our tree boxes. That's pretty good for the environment, since our camp goes through between twelve and fifteen thousand boxes each summer. Good job to Weldwood [Hinton Division] who really encourages us to take advantage of the facility.

June 10th: Jim Logan, our "area coordinator" and a person I've worked with planting for over a decade, just announced that he got engaged, to Nikki Steele. I think I'll get everyone in my camp to sign a sympathy card for her.

June 11th: Four of my planters went to do an "experimental block" for another Licensee today. They were to plant about two thousand trees per person. Normally, when we plant, the trees come in bundles of from ten to twenty trees, and these bundles are wrapped in plastic which has to be unraveled (time consuming and annoying). Imagine the planters' delight when they found out that most of the trees, being experimental trees, came in bundles of either four or only TWO trees each.

June 12th: We had a pretty serious "near miss" incident to report today, on the last day of the contract. One of the drivers fell asleep for a moment while driving his truck in the middle of the afternoon, and ended up in the ditch. Luckily, he wasn't hurt, but it just shows that it's a good thing the crew has a week off right now to rest and recharge their bodies. Our camp has planted a million trees in the last eleven full planting days.

June 13th: I just realized, while driving from Alberta back to Prince George today during a storm, that aside from the snow, we haven't had any real rain yet while planting this summer. There have been a few rainy periods, but only at night. That's pretty rare. The air temperature hit 28 degrees Celcius today, and the ground temperature hit 43 degrees.

Click HERE to see pictures from the start of June.

June 14th: Did another dumb move today. I was fueling up my truck at the PetroCanada cardlock in the BCR site in Prince George, and looked at the pump that my truck was parked beside. It said, "Marked Diesel," so I thought, "Hah, I'd better not use the marked stuff, I'll just use regular." Unfortunately, "regular" means regular gasoline, not unmarked fuel. Luckily, I realized what I had done before I started the engine, so all I had to do was get the tank drained, slightly cheaper than $6,000 for a new engine. I'm going to write a letter to the Cardlock, to let them know they should print "gasoline" in big block letters under the "regular" sign on pump 2, for idiots like myself.

June 15th: Ok, the block that we're doing right now is the most complex block I've ever seen in thirteen years of planting. We're just doing a tiny part of a contract with a small crew of about a dozen people that I'm running, while the rest of my camp has a short break. It's a good thing that I've got some really experienced people working on the block right now, since it's an experimental block for UNBC. It's got a clearcut section, a selective cutting section, and a selection retention section. The selective cutting means about twenty patches cut out of the woods. The selective retention means a lot of residual patches are everywhere. These sections all have to be planted with a mix of Cedar plugs and Spruce bareroots, except the patches marked not to plant. There are also five test strips through the block, and the East 15m of each strip has to be planted with a mix of three species at a different density. There are also patches to be planted off the block under the canopy, and other challenges. Oh, and the block is steep and covered with slash. As one of our old supervisors (Greg Macfarlane) would have said, "It's a dog's lunch."

June 16th: I take back whatever I said earlier about there being minimal mosquito populations this summer. I think I'm getting dizzy from blood loss. Those of us wearing shorts are getting used to our legs being a constant burning throbbing sensation from all the bug bites. Apparently this is going to be the worst year for mosquitos in Prince George since 1972.

June 19th: Finished the experimental block. Finally, a full day in town to try to catch up on paperwork and equipment repairs, before heading back to Alberta tomorrow to begin preparations for the summer season.

Click HERE to see pictures from special UNBC research block planted in mid-June.

June 21st: The camp as a whole doesn't start work again until the morning of the 24th, but a small group is working right now on an experimental planting block. The requirements are pretty crazy: the block is taking 12,000 trees, and every single tree has a specific spot to be planted in, as indicated by steel pegs already laid out all over the block. In addition, as we plant each tree, we have to mark down on a map exactly which tree it is, according to a complicated numbering system including the stock family, etc. Not one tree on the block can be planted out of place, since this is for an ongoing seed progeny trial that will be held over the next several decades, and almost every tree comes from a different set of genetic crosses or something like that. Each planter (four in total) has their own checker to write down map readings for every tree, and there are two more checkers just to double-check the people following the planters. Needless to say, this isn't a rush job, and we have to work very slowly and carefully. It's funny to look at the block - there are so many steel pegs, stakes, spray-painted lines on the ground, and ribbons flying that it looks like a used car lot. The color-coded map of the block, created on an Excel spreadsheet with 12,000 individual cells, must have taken about a week to make!

June 22nd: Ok, now I've seen it all - individually wrapped bundles of ONE tree apiece. It was thirty degrees all afternoon. I am as red as a cooked lobster, and don't care in the slightest. I love my job. I just can't figure out why. Maybe I thrive on misery? I've had lots of planting days in the past, however, that were more miserable than any this year.

June 23rd: We were driving around trying to locate upcoming blocks this evening, and came across an overturned pickup in the ditch. We were backtracking, and had been in the same spot a couple minutes before, and I didn't think the truck had been there before. We stopped to look inside, and found a person, and managed to extricate her and get an ambulance (my first aid license is expired, but I was with Max, who luckily is a licensed paramedic). That was a good reminder about how dangerous these dirt roads can be, and how easy it is to flip a truck. Besides that excitement, I also had to kick some visitors out of my trailer today. I hadn't realized it, but I had a wasp's nest in it.

June 24th: Just heard about another interesting twist on planting, at a SilvaRam camp in the Spray Lakes. The chinooks are bad there, so they are required to do obstacle planting, with every tree having to be placed on the north-east corner of obstacles, which is not unusual. However, on this contract, if they hit an area of bare ground with no obstacles, they have to build their own obstacles from nearby debris.

June 25th: Well, we were warned that the beginning of this next contract would be tough, with a whole lot of small NSR (not sufficiently restocked) blocks to be attacked, with little patches in each block to be planted (kind of like fill plants, except that we were only to plant the mounds). There was only one block out of the first twenty-five that was calling for more than 8,000 trees, so it looked like it would be a logistical nightmare for the foremen (and it was). However, we still somehow managed to finish nineteen complete blocks in the first half day - half the blocks on the contract! Luckily, the rest of the contract is normal-sized straightforward blocks of 30,000 to 100,000 trees each.

June 26th: I guess one of our other camps just ended up putting diesel fuel in a bunch of the gas-powered vehicles. Perhaps putting black barrels of both diesel and gasoline together in the same fuel cache is not such a wise idea.

June 27th: What a day! Just when I thought I was running out of interesting entries for these diary pages, along comes an "adventure day." It started off by having to fly crews into the blocks - for a few people, their first chopper ride ever. Next, we had four planters working together on a hill, and for some unknown reason (religious intervention, perhaps), they suddenly split up into two pairs, and a few seconds later a huge cottonwood silently fell down right between them, a few feet from crushing anyone (yes, they were wearing hardhats, not that it would have helped much if any of them had been hit). Next, a freak windstorm suddenly hit Paul's block, knocking an entire section of forest down within the span of a few seconds. About fifty trees fell across the access road, trapping his quad on the block. Then, a lightening strike started a forest fire a few kilometres away from our block just when we thought the adventures were over and were getting ready to go home for supper. I sent a crew with my cell phone to find a service area and warn Weldwood and the provincial fire-line, and then went to see if we could help. All in all it was a pretty exciting day. I even learned to reprogram the automatic door locks on my truck during a lull in the adventures!

June 28th: It rained a lot, and was not an exciting day. "There was no joy in Mudville." Production was pretty high though - once you accept the fact that you're wet and you're going to stay that way all day, it doesn't really matter if it rains or not. It's just the first ten minutes that's hard.

July 1st: Jim was running errands in Edmonton today, and one of the supervisors asked him to pick up fourteen foamies. He meant the little sponges that we keep in our planting bags to retain water and keep the tree roots moist. Unfortunately, a foamie also refers to a large piece of foam padding that the planters use as a bed to sleep on. I can just imagine what Jim's truck must have looked like with fourteen huge foamies strapped to it!

July 2nd: Whitecourt Transport was supposed to deliver a truckload of trees to us this afternoon at 4pm. The truck didn't arrive until 6:25pm, which really annoyed the helicopter, plus the twenty planters and myself who sat and waited for the truck for two and a half hours. This is the fourth time this summer they've been late, but this one was the worst by far.

July 3rd: During some helicopter work this evening, I contemplated the fact that there were lightning bolts striking within a kilometre around where we were working (so far, the closest I've been to a lightning strike was about thirty feet - it knocked a couple of us to the ground). As I was hooking up slings, I started thinking about how lightning occurs when there is a conduit formed between the storm and the highest grounded point. Then I thought about how the helicopter would certainly be the highest point each time I was standing there hooking up the sling to the long line, effectively grounding the chopper. Then I thought about how strong the static charges were that I was getting shocked with each time I connected a sling (worse than a wall plug). Then I thought about the fact that one of our foremen was hit by lightning last summer. Then I decided it was a good time to stop thinking ....

July 4th: I came really close to hitting a deer today, or I guess I should say, having a deer run into my truck. The first thing that caught my attention was the sound of it snorting beside my open window as it was trying to stop from hitting the truck, and the sound of the gravel skidding under its hooves. Another four feet and it would have stuck its head in the window.

July 5th: Today was the perfect day for planting. Decent land, every crew on a block for the entire day, overcast weather all day with a cold wind, and a slightly later supper than usual. About fifteen people had their best day ever, many of them who have planted for five years or more. I predict a lot of tired planters with low tallies tomorrow.

July 6th: Some of the tallies were pretty low today. Between yesterday's efforts, and the heat today, I'm not surprised that production dropped fairly significantly. That's ok - everyone should now be rested up for a big day again tomorrow.

July 7th: Byron just had his sixth flat tire of the year. None of the other foremen have had any flats on their trucks, just on the quads and the trailers.

July 8th: A day off for the planters, and a good day for minor disasters. First, we lost an $800 handheld radio that fell out the door of one of the crew's trucks. Luckily, a grader operator for Weldwood found it and turned it in to the radio place - thanks Bob! Next, the wooden canopy blew off the back of Tim's truck. Finally, Tower hit a deer, only the second deer anyone in my camps has hit in thirteen years. No damage to the truck, but unfortunately, I can't say the same for the deer.

July 9th: Well, today was a long-awaited day. It was "dress and skirt day" for the camp - the thrift stores in Edson did well in the days leading up to this contest! Top prize was 2,000 trees (almost $200) and the runner-up got 500 trees. The only significant rule was that the contestants had to wear their costume all day, from breakfast until after supper, and especially while planting all day. You'll probably get quite a laugh out of the photo section at the end of this contract! Thanks to the lovely ladies at Dynamic Reforestation for this idea ...

July 10th: Byron just had his eighth flat tire of the year.

July 11th: The air temperature hit thirty-seven degrees Celcius today, the hottest I've seen since I was planting near Hyder, Alaska in August of 1991. The ground temperature in some of the old burn piles was close to sixty degrees! Needless to say, production was not at a premium. It's not often that it gets this hot, except maybe in areas like Clearwater down to Kamloops and further south.

July 13th: Started to break down camp this evening. It was pretty strange breaking down a camp that we'd stayed in for almost two months - usually they only stay in one place for a couple weeks at a time. We found one funny thing while packing everything up - a hornet's nest that had been built underneath one of the outhouse seats. That could have led to a pretty painful experience for someone!

July 14th: Before driving back to Prince George, we did load checks on the trailers. I looked at a pair of old propane tanks attached to my camper, and decided that I should probably remove them since I never used them. When we tried, it appeared that they were rusted into place and wouldn't come off. Imagine my surprise a few hours later outside Mount Robson, when I saw a propane tank bouncing down the highway behind me at 95 km/h. Luckily, it didn't hit any other vehicles. I'll never figure out how it came detached while on that smooth highway, after staying stuck (bolted, no less) to the trailer for a couple years on various bumpy logging roadsMonday, September 16, 2002.

Click HERE to see pictures from the Weldwood Hinton summer contract - mostly from "cross-dressing" day!

July 17th: We're back at work outside Prince George now. It was a bit of a rush for the foremen to get everything ready for this contract, as they only had about 48 hours from the time the last tree went into the ground in Alberta to the time camp was supposed to be set up in BC. As a result, not all of the foremen managed to get out and find their first blocks before starting work this morning, and get trees out to them. I went with one group to find a block, and unfortunately didn't bring my chain saw because the truck was already so full of stuff. As luck would have it, this was the block which had nine downed trees across the road in the three kilometres leading up to the block. We ended up cutting them all out with the axes in the fire gear, which took a couple hours.

July 18th: Last night, Paul's truck got stuck in an area that we weren't working in yet (he was checking out blocks in advance) and he ended up calling on his cell phone for a rescue at midnight. We went back after supper tonight to try to get it out. We were having problems getting it out since we broke a couple of tow ropes, and my winch cable broke a couple times. After an hour or so of pulling with two other trucks, we finally got it moving just moments before the ETV showed up from camp with an extra tow rope. As we sat there in our trucks, talking on the radio about it, the ETV (the one that had just driven down to help us) suddenly had smoke pouring out from under the hood. Paul yelled "Fire!" on the radio, and we all got out of our vehicles, wondering what he was talking about. I looked underneath the ETV, and saw some sort of fluid (which I thought was diesel fuel, but turned out to be tranny fluid) pouring out onto the ground, burning fiercely as it flowed out, and a puddle on fire underneath the vehicle. We suddenly realized what was happening, and everyone ran for fire extinguishers. After emptying three extinguishers on it, it continued to burn. We didn't dare open the hood because it would get more oxygen, and by this point flames were already coming out from under the hood. We all stood there thinking that the truck was about to become a total writeoff, and we couldn't do anything to prevent it. Tower starting pulling the radio out of the truck, and other foremen started removing people's gear. Suddenly, we heard a big muffled explosion, and saw a huge amount of steam and smoke come out from under the hood. It turned out that the radiator had burst from the heat of the fire, and the coolant, under pressure, had sprayed the engine and put the fire out. It was incredibly lucky that the truck didn't burn to the ground.

July 19th: It looked like things were going to go well this morning until Tim got his truck stuck in the road leading into the block, with mud up to the tail-lights. At one point, before we finally got it pulled out, I thought we were going to have to call in a bulldozer to help. If we hadn't been able to pull it out, four other trucks would have been trapped in the block overnight.

July 21st: Byron got two more flat tires this morning. I think he's cursed. He finally got on the road at 7:15am, half an hour late. When we eventually got out to his new block, the planters looked pretty scared, because there were a lot of rocks on the block (and it was steep). In fact, some of the rocks were bigger than our trucks. Big rocks are generally ok though - and in this case, it turned out that there was a lot of soil to work with on most parts of the block.

July 23rd: Tim's crew was on the beach at Summit Lake today on a day off, and were watching some young people jump off a cliff into the water. One of them didn't jump far enough, and was killed, right in front of them. I spent most of the day fixing flat tires and vehicle problems, while the other foremen dealt with garbage.

July 24th: CNN announced today that a large asteroid is expected to hit Earth on February 1st, 2019. I wonder if we really need to bother planting our green jungle blocks up the Herrick this week?

July 25th: One of our top planters has been sick for several days, although he's been desperately trying to keep planting each morning. He finally went into the hospital in Prince George last night to see what was wrong, and was diagnosed as having contracted malaria.

August 1st: I was driving on the Bowron-Tumuch FSR today, following a moose pretty slowly since it wouldn't get off the road. After a couple minutes, three bear cubs suddenly jumped out of the bushes and the moose almost trampled them. As I was wishing I had my camera with me, a mother bear suddenly jumped out after the cubs, and then charged the truck. I've been within "petting distance" of bears three times over the years, but this is the first time I've seen one mad, and it was pretty impressive.

August 2nd: We got in trouble today for dumping empty tree boxes in a restricted, unmanned municipal dump. Somebody tracked us down through either the boxends or our license plates, and gave our company a fine. I guess that's why it's a good idea not to have your company name on your trucks, and to rip all the boxend stickers off the empties before discarding them. I don't feel that guilty about the incident however, since the dump had a sign saying that we were allowed to dump cardboard.

August 5th: We're almost finished, and there isn't anything else lined up with Folklore, but I think I might have managed to get some work with another company. I'll find out tonight how many people can come, and how long it will last.

August 6th: Well, we finished planting today, and broke down camp. We had a year-end party at the bowling alley, with food and drinks. I've never seen large bowling balls before - I think Nova Scotia only has candlepin bowling. The big winner of the night was company owner Kurt Hawkensen, with a score of 177. Afterwards, I left to work on paperwork, but the planters all went out to the bars, so it will be interesting to hear the stories in the morning.

August 7th: We turned in the rest of our trucks and equipment today, and a dozen of us are on our way to Chetwynd to plant for a smaller company for a week. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out. Oh, and we did a final count on flat tires on the trucks over the summer. Tim, Greg, myself, and Scirolli each had one; Paul had two; and Byron was miles ahead of the rest of the pack with sixteen!

August 8th: Started planting for another company today, called High Rise Contracting, based out of Chetwynd. They're a smaller company, only doing a couple million trees per summer with just three crews (plus the people I brought). Things seemed very organized for us when we showed up, so that should be a good sign for the days ahead. They don't have a lot of work left, but they were able to let me bring a crew of fourteen planters out for about one more week of work.

August 12th: Finished working for High-Rise, and it looks like we're done for the summer. The five days with High-Rise went well too, prices were decent and Mike and Theresa, who run the company, were very easy to work with - a nice way to extend the season by a few days.

Click HERE to see the last set of pictures from the 2002 season, taken while wrapping up our season outside Prince George.

That's it for news from this season - check back again next summer for more adventures!