Photos
These pictures were taken in late June and early July of 2010, in our fourth camp of the season, near Blairmore, Alberta.
Greg, doing some prep work in the rain at the start of the contract.
My truck, in the mess tent.
An approximate map of the blocks that I used when I started to plan the contract timelines.
Shelley is showing off her rubber ducky key chain, while Sarah tries not to laugh.
Heading to the block, with a herd of cattle as bodyguards.
Crew meeting, except for Jordan on the right. He's off dancing to the beat of a different drum.
A photo taken from the top of one of our blocks. Who needs a corner office when everybody in the company has a view like this?
Brad, working in a fill plant. I don't see many naturals, just a lot of dandylions.
Another one of our blocks.
Some dead trees. The entire valley that we were planting in was burned over by two forest fires in the past decade. I believe that the first was around 2001, and a lot of the blocks that were cut were salvage wood from that fire. Then, in 2007, I think another fire went through the valley and burned all of the blocks. We were replanting half of the blocks, while another company nearby did the other half.
Derek.
Amanda, doing some stretches between bag-ups.
Emma.
Shelley.
A couple of Northern's blocks, across the valley.
We really lucked out here. How's this for a quad bridge? Already built for us, so we didn't even have to get the chainsaw out.
Some of the rivers that we worked beside were incredibly clear.
The outhouses in camp.
Another early-morning crew meeting. Uh oh, looks like they might be making some more plot cords.
One of the hillsides in the valley, with thousands of burned trees. Even though they died years ago, it might be decades before most of them finally fall over.
A sign at the entrance to the valley.
Getting ready to unload a quad in the morning.
Another quad bridge. We really loved the ATV recreation trails that often led very close to our blocks.
More old burned trees.
Brian, of Bushmen Enterprises, the consulting company that functioned as the contract implementation team.
Cal, the owner of Northern, the other planting company that was working in the valley with us. Northern is a great company, and one of the very few companies that I would consider working for (other than Folklore).
More dead trees.
There are a lot of cattle on the loose throughout the valley.
A warning sign at the railway crossing. "Slow Bump" sounds like it would be a good name for a band too.
The Frank Slide. You'd better look this one up here, on Wikipedia.
A snake.
A beautiful prairie day. Lots of wind turbines outside of Pincher Creek, Alberta. There were hundreds of them. It's great to see that the area is so open to wind development projects, a clearn renewable energy source that makes so much more sense than burning more oil.
A closeup of one of the turbines.
This was a bit of a surprise one afternoon. Mantracker came through our staging area, chasing his prey. Although he didn't know it at the time, we saw the prey slip into the bushes beside the landing, less than a hundred meters in front of him. The chase continued for several hours through a number of our blocks - the final goal was only a couple kilometers from our blocks. Sorry, I can't spoil the surprise and tell you whether or not he eventually succeeded in capturing the prey (a pair of twins from Moose Jaw).
Mantracker, the producer, and the cast of this episode were on site working in and around our blocks for about four days in a row. After the actual chase, which is not staged and which takes place for up to 36 hours in real-time, the crew has to go back and re-shoot certain key scenes that they couldn't shoot during the actual chase, for fear of influencing the outcome of the contest. There is a cameraman who travels with Mantracker and the guide, and another who travels with the prey, to try to get some live footage, but of course some scenes need to be recreated after-the-fact. I think it would be pretty interesting to be one of the cameramen - they've have to be in very good shape, especially the one carrying the camera and travelling with the prey. This is a photo of the producer and one of the twins, taken after the chase was over.
Glenn.
Sarah. We have a lot of Sarahs in camp, if you hadn't already noticed.
Foreman Greg, cleaning up some boxes.
Jackie.
Part of the crew from Northern, relaxing at the end of the day.
And some of my Folklore planters, relaxing just up the road.
The satellite internet dish on the kitchen trailer.
Looking down on the mess tent from the roof of the cook shack, at 6am. In this photo, the planters are just getting up for breakfast on the last day of the contract.
I don't know what this was, but it was pretty scary. Although you can't tell the scale here, it is about the same size as an orange. In fact, I thought it was a really moldy orange at first, but it turned out to be some spontaneous sort of alien growth. Maybe a mushroom, sort of, although it had no stem? I also thought for a bit that it might be a puff-ball, but when we tried to dissect it, it didn't have the spores of a puff-ball, and looked kind of unlike anything that I had ever seen before, although maybe a bit like the inside of a mushroom. Needless to say, I didn't want to touch it, since it looked like it could be pretty toxic.