Having a quick conference in the morning, to plan out the approach for the heli-block that the camp was planting that day.
An early-morning drive to the blocks. We were working pretty far from camp - the drive was two hours from camp to the blocks. We normally would never drive for more than an hour, if possible, but it made more sense to keep the camp in one spot and do long drives for a shift, rather than spending two days packing up the camp and moving it and setting it up, then moving it back to the original spot at the end of the shift. All of the planters just slept on the drives to and from the blocks, so it was hardest on the drivers.
Aidan Stanley.
Nick Frey, in silhouette.
Colleen, planting on one of the heli-blocks.
Andy MacCallum, one of our foremen.
Garbage and tarps being loaded into one of the canopy trucks at the end of the day.
Dustin Galenza, planting one of the burns.
Kent Borgstrom, looking slightly frazzled.
Jonathan Gaucher.
Brad and Terri, the contract checkers who were working for ANC.
Walking out of a block, back to the trucks.
Putting a tree into the ground.
Dylan Berry.
Kent, ready to check some trees.
Gavin Sullivan, ready to walk out of the block at the end of the day. The walk was pretty wet, through some swampy seismic lines, so he decided to wear his silvicool inserts on his feet.
Hooking a sling up to the chopper.
A dirty puddle. Strange as it sounds, we actually have to tell the planters not to drink the water out of puddles like this, for health reasons. It can actually get hot enough on the blocks sometimes that it's tempting to drink the water anyway.
Andy, giving directions to someone.
A sign to show drivers that our camp is just up around the corner.
Red and blue rolls of duct tape. For years, everyone used silver duct tape. Now, however, we have found a special kind of colored duct tape, manufactured by a company called Intertape (look inside the roll to find the manufacturer), and sold at Home Hardware stores. Intertape makes the BEST duct tape, by far, and the fact that they now have colored brands is a nice bonus. We've assigned certain colors to each crew, and the people on the crew tape all their shovels and some of the other gear with the proper color of tape. That way, when we look at a piece of equipment in camp, we can quickly tell which crew it belongs to. There are about eight or ten different colors available, and surprisingly, these colored rolls are only a couple dollars more than the regular silvery grey tape.
Travis McLellan, starting to look a little sun-burned.
A tripod cache with boxes of trees under it, and garbage boxes folded properly for helicopter slinging.
Scott Davey.
Adam Boult.
Ryan, our ANC representative, planning out flight schedules for the chopper blocks.
A planter working in a burned slashpile.
Gavin Sullivan.
Our camp quads, lined up for a mechanical inspection.
General chaos in the morning.
Sean Jackins.
People have said that I'm going straight to Heck. I didn't realize it was a real place.
The A-Star, sitting by some slings that are ready to go into the blocks.
Kristin.
Katie.
An aerial map showing all the blocks that we were planting. We had about two dozen old blocks to tackle one day, and each one had been planted a few years before, but then all the slash piles were burned during the previous winter. We had to go in and plant all the burns where the slash piles were. One block had an astounding 620 burn piles, according to ANC's statistics.
Ryan, checking out one of the tree caches that Andy put up.
Tina & Renee, heading off to make some money.