I think we got our annual allotment of rain last night. If it had come as snow it would be about 4 feet.
Our cooling world
- Thread starter Walter
- Start date
I'm facing some logistics issue for an up coming job in the Manitoba muskeg that isn't frozen hard enough.
After breaking through goose lake last march in a D6 I have had enough of the ice.
I allmost got out but the tracks froze solid in about 10 seconds.
Took me about 2.5 seconds to get out of the cab.
Usually just keep the snow clear so it freezes deeper. I'm no road builder. My job is to find the shortest point from road to site by helo or high water and back again with drill, pipe, accom. men, food and toilet paper and 10,000m to 16,000m of core to bring home.
A first timer. My sister in-law. She a great cook but a complete bitch. LOL It will be fun.
Ya,I can imagine,especially if shes feeding core drillers.
Any Boart or Major guys drilling up there?
Crazy fuc*ers! lol!
I know quite a few of them as they were at my camp north of Rankin(Meledianne camp) and also at meadowbank north west of Baker lake.
Great company. Great equipment.
We had Major this year at goose lake for Sabina gold,they had real nice equipment.
They had a nice little dozer and fuel sloop train and a nice Alltrack with a boom and flatdeck.
Boart had a couple old beat up timberjack skidders that rarely ran to skid the drills.
H
Hope your sister in law can handle this,we had to take the seats off the ****ters when boart was doing the drilling. lol!
It's all worth it though,I used to fly from Winnipeg sometimes and it just gets to be some harsh country after that,put the winter gear on at Thompson and soon your on the "other side" . Are you into the barrenlands or still in the treeline?
Not many people get to see that country never mind be responsible for the whole camp and logistics in a place where lots of time in winter your just surviving.Run out of fuel or have a gen break down and it's just a matter of how fast can you bug out of there.
The camp I was at last year will try and be up and running by the end of february,still too much darkness up there.
I dont think I'll go back,I allmost got killed 3 times up there and allways by frenchman,the last time was when I went through the ice last year.Unfortunately they own the arctic.
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lmao I'm with you on that .... except for the "god help us" stuff.
What were you doing there with such narrow pads on? And there are such things as machines with rubber or composite pads, you know? lol
lmao I'm with you on that .... except for the "god help us" stuff.
What were you doing there with such narrow pads on? And there are such things as machines with rubber or composite pads, you know? lol
That is as wide a pad as you can get on that machine and we did have a challenger but they couldnt handle the snow on the runway enough to build a herc strip,you need big iron to move that much snow.Your also dragging Core drills and 5000 gallon fuel sloops and at that temperature rubber or plastic doesnt last long.
I dont have a say on what machinery they have as it takes a year to get it to camp,sometimes a week long drive over the empty tundra just to get it there so you use what you have.
Ive been building ice roads and strips for years in the Arctic as well as managing the remote camps at the airstrips and that far north the ice builds an inch a day up to ten feet thick in some places so usually falling through is because of someones screw up or going to fast on the ice and haveing a wave going in front of you. Thats what happened a couple years ago at Ferguson lake,kid went over a pressure ridge in his cat,the machine dropped over the edge and shocked the ice so bad it tilted,the machine slipped under the ice and it then the ice went back to where it was and he was gone in seconds.
The reason I went through is a brain dead leadhand drilled a profile hole in the ice right next to the runway I was building and the snow you move is very heavy so the weight of it was forceing the water up from below the ice,he then took a skidsteer and covered it with snow,further insulating it so it wouldnt freeze and he never said anything to anyone.He didnt know that the snow has to be off the ice for it to thicken.
I am very good at what I do and working with amateurs is not my cup of tea,theres a lot of frenchmen in the arctic with 2 years experience and a level 2 supervisor certificate that makes them think they know it all because they spent a couple summers there.
I kept a remote summer camp open all winter and not many have ever done it that close to the arctic circle ever unless by accident.
I dont envy Petros,the worst part of winter is yet to come and northern Manitoba can be brutal.
A sight like this makes it all worthwhile though.
This last picture was north west of the tip of hudsons bay and at that time of the year that sun and it's sundogs go all around the horizon like that,getting a wee bit higher every day untill it's straight above you at the equinox and you can get a sunburn at 3am.
You can have a nice view complete with sundogs 24 hours a day for weeks at a time,thats why the north is so awesome!
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