Back to Chetwynd

So after our well earned break, it was back to Chetwynd for the remainder of the season.

The last few weeks were good - we actually had a couple of blocks that *didn't* involve a walk-in, which was a novelty this year. Overall though, the blocks in the last contract were all just a little bit silly. Weird pricing and half of them were closer to our bush camp than they were to Chetwynd, and involved some very early starts.

Speaking of which, I suppose that was the main defining feature of this contract - the early starts. By the time we got back to Chetwynd it was properly summer - 30*c+, and soooooo hot. Eventually this becomes somewhat detrimental to your ability to plant trees, so we took a vote, and decided to get it all out of the way earlier in the day. Sooo, thus started a couple of weeks of trucks at 4am (!!??!?!); that means setting your alarm clock for 3.30am or before., which in my opinion is very much the middle of the night. Sigh. It had it's advantages - it was waaay better, until you started to fall asleep at 11am...  meh.

Easily the most exciting thing that happened the whole season was on our last full day of planting. After weeks of having trees helicopter'd in to us, we finally got our chance to actually ride in one! :D (And get paid extra for the trouble!)

It was super-fun, and the land on our block was pretty creamy for the most part too. We did get fantastically wet at the end of the day as a storm moved in, but, all in all, very good fun.

Some pic-a-tures:

A nice day to fly around the mountains

Loading the slings

Mountains in the backdrop and our block starting in the bottom-right corner

Prettiful block from the ground!

Prettiful secret waterfall from the air...

...and me stood next to secret waterfall on the ground!

My poor boots finally disintegrating after 2 seasons... expertly patched holes at the front...

Sending the rubbish off at the end of the day

Ok, enough of the helicopter photos...

Soooooo, then there were just a few more trees to finish up. The next day we had a lie-in - trucks at 6am! Woop! And then the whole camp headed off to the few remaining blocks to 'cattle plant' them out - that is a fre for all, put 24 planters (as oppesed to 3-6 planters...) on a piece and hope they don't screw it up tooo badly...

All closing in on the centre - i'd given up trying to find a spot on the line at this point

So after a couple of hours of ridiculous 60 person planting lines, we were done. So we made a party field with our remaining flagging tape...

And I planted my very last tree of the season...

And I admired a season's worth of hand tan... (nb: some of that is actually mud...)

And then we all went home. Or, rather, we tried...

We got massively stuck headed home on our last day because there was crazy accident on the highway not too long before we got there, and so the highway into Chetwynd was closed for nearly 9 hours... It's at this point that you appreciate how little there is in Northern BC, because there was absolutely no way of getting around this block (including on old logging roads - we tried) without driving for hundreds of kms. You are just completely screwed. Weird. Eventually most people abandoned the trucks down a side street and everyone just walked the 10 or so kms into town in the blazing heat. Having been in the group who decided to try and drive around on logging roads, we didn't - we did eventually find a way around up a quad track that was totally not meant to be driven on my anything except a quad, but hurrah to our super trucks that did indeed get up it, eventually getting us back into town at around 7pm... weird day. But, that was that for another season. After doing some admin, we all got some pizza and beer and had a party. Excellent.