Pics from Camp

Too cold to stay there watching TV..



Otherwise, looks great for an holiday adventure..

BM. My wife has just seen your pictures, Mame, and she wants to come up there to work with you.

Can you organise that for her please?

I spent a large part of my career eating what we called "campaign food" . A drill rig is usually never shut down u nless something breaks. So eating was pretty much a day and night affair.

I never minded all parts of the world that were overly hot or sub freezing. The only thing I ever hated was doing all that from a ship in cold water.
Food is always a unifier, and Im here to say that our cooks are always chosen with great care. Our ongoing work in ARgentina has several campaigns a year and were in the development stages , but the cook is like royalty. If were ever attacked , the joke has always been to protect the cook and the field data, in that order.

Farmerman: I need to 'splain what Mame means when she says "If it gets too warm, they can't drill." Huh?



Oh, and I looked up the next godforsaken place she is going.


Joe(yikes)Nation

Squinney - I froze my butt at the loo at 4:30 this morning! Ouch! It snowed and froze overnight - good for drilling, bad for going to the bathroom

I am working with a bunch of really great guys - I am very lucky because you never know who you'll be working with and 6 weeks in a remote camp can be a verrrrry long time. With good people, it goes fast and is enjoyable and you bond like you wouldn't otherwise.

That loo is being used as a storage room because it's too close to camp to use as a loo. The other two (in use) are about 100 m away and that's a long tramp at 4:30 a.m. when you really have to go.

You're right, FM, about the cook - I have heard of drillers walking off the job when they had a bad cook and it used to be that cooks were paid more than the geologists and camp guys. Now that's not so because the demand for geologists outstrips the supply.

This is fun. It's an adventure!

DD - thanks for that fish recipe. I am going to use it. We don't have any racks at present, but I should by tomorrow night. A guy is going into town to get some more propane and will get me some necessary kitchen items.

Last night the president of the company (pic to come later), the VP Ex (the guy I flew in with) and I played cards for about an hour after dinner then we all hit the sack (no, not together ) around 9:00 p.m. Four a.m. comes early.

Today I'm going to visit the core shack and tomorrow I get to see the drills - I've never seen drillers in action, so I'm going to enjoy that.

Joe - Lac de Gras isn't even that bad Think Baffin Island!

Looking good, Mame.

What a riot.

(I feel bogged down in rat race issues these days....this is an appealing fantasy... I did a similar (ish) something late in my teens many moons ago)

BAFFIN ISLAND AAAAAAAGAGGAGGAGAHAHAGAHAGAHAHAH. I spent half my life there on a three month campaign. Mame, usually the geologists are given an "override" a percentage of the developed find. Ive got overrides that are kicking in from work I did in the 1980's so the , rule has usually been "Jam now or jam later" with us.

Anyway, a geologist usually starts their career as a "juggy" for seismic crews or as a "log monkey" doing core pulling sampling and separations of mud, sand or rock (depending oin whatever the heck theyre wanting us to find).


Your up near the diamond mines eh? Are they keeping garnet samples?

Mame
Mame, I showed your camp pictures to Dolly and Madison. They immediately ran to get their sweaters and jumped up into my lap, shivering, to get warm.

Silly dogs.

BBB

Joeblow - you intrigue me - what is it you did in your youth?

FM - Most of the diamond explorations are in NWT and Nunavut and most companies now do JVs because there are so many of them up there it saves a lot of money and headaches. BC is still primarily precious metals-based and because of the provincial govt's policies, mining is now once again not only acceptable but promoted. As a result, northern BC is riddled with juniors doing their thing. There are great tax breaks for investors, too, so there's no shortage of money. It seems just about anyone can raise $$ for exploration.

Your post also intrigued me - what do/did you do for a living where you know so much about so much? What were you doing on Baffin???

Wow, Mame!

Home, sweet, home!

Beautiful setting and well done, Mame!

Now I feel silly because the similar (ish) experience in my mind had a lot to do with the sense of adventure, not your actual situation.

I answered an ad in the local newspaper for seasonal workers at a resort in Algonquin Park. In my 17-year-old brain, it was the un-fathomable "North." Alone, I had to get to the bus terminal (I forget how I did it now, I don't think my town at the time had public transportation at that point), grey hound it to Huntsville, where resort staff picked me up for the drive into the park with the very final stretch down a five-mile, one lane rut. Staff quarters were a tad sight harsher than yours, though there was running water in the communal staff bathroom.

Because of an unfortunate incident with hot knives the night before I left, I wasn't fit to be displayed if front of paying customers (I was supposed to be part of the wait team) and I ended up doing an unsuccessful stint as a chambermaid (horrors) before settling into "kitchen help." The dishwasher there (what the hell was his name?) had a position of some status in that microcosm for some reason, and I learned from himself the quickest, most efficient way to load the commercial dishwasher (puffs out chest). I eventually healed and as part of my wait staff duties, learned of the joys of cleaning the dining room windows with vinegar and newspaper. I had my 18th birthday there (the legal drinking age at the time) and felt…independent, strong, and adventurous...in the middle of nowhere (snickers now).

I suppose that I felt a connection to your pictures, and the idea that you would just up and off like that. It made me…remember (goofy smile at Mame).

Ahhh, I get where you're coming from. Sounds like an adventure for sure. And "unfortunate incident with hot knives" made me laugh. Been there, too.

BBB, jespah, ehBeth, JPB: wish you were here freezing your butts off with me. Bet we'd have a grand old time.

Ohmygosh, I would not survive a single day there.

Mame, these pictures reminded me of *Mash* - where the hell is
Klinger?

Also, why do they have the satellite dish up on the loo? This would
make me nervous, very nervous.

I've got to hand it to you gal, you're a trooper. There is nothing you can't
handle, and I am certain, your cooking is out of this world too.

Kudos to you!!

So, are you just going to ignore my request, then?

:wink:

Some people at my work place complain if it's not seventy degrees.

The other day, someone I work with was complaining that it was, "freezing outside."

It was mid-50s F.

Mame, I was a chemist in rare earths an exploration geochemist and did a lot of "hunting" for rare earth minerals. I then taught economic geology, then I ran a big geo/geotech outfit for an environmental company for a few years but got bored with the reg lingo, so I went back into the field with my own company. We deal mostly in Titanium and some rare earths,but usually no gold . (I did a brief contract where we evaluated old 19th century gold mine dumps and iron slag piles for any small "lattice" gold, that was fun ) We also did do some platinum development from dissolved Pt in ground water.
I also did some rare earth exploration with oil field work.
I spent time up there in the N in BAffin Island and off the coast on a series of long holes for Rare earths from nickel/sulfur emplacements. I still have sites in E Canada

I haet all offshore crap, my middle ear is all f**ked up from explosions in Nigeria so I cant even do a decent ferry boat crossing of the Delaware Bay without puking. In all cases, with my company or others that Ive worked for, the cook was the king or queen. Never piss off the cook.

How long have you been associated with exploration work as a cook? Were you ever a field geo or tech?

I put some time in, in central Maine, no electricity, no running water. Loved it. But it was also summer (so nighttime temps didn't get below 25 F or so) and I was 12 - 15.