Some more Oil Gypsy stories and a small promotion update.

[Christopher Hoare]

Deadly Enterprise hasn’t had much promotion this week, until yesterday when I started another blitz of review sites to get more takers. The early part of the week I was busy finishing up the last of the last novel clinic, and then went out to begin the annual firewood collection. The forestry has been closed because of the drought and extreme fire hazard, so I collected a load from along the CPR track. It was harder work that usual because I couldn’t drive to the wood and had to drag it out by hand.

I spent another day on my GPS survey project for a local landowner who wants to replace two and a half miles of fences – into the mountains. I checked the location of a replacement survey corner pin that had been installed by a pipeline company’s surveyors, and after most of a day of calculating and estimating – these hundred year old surveys in the mountains were not perfect in the first place – decided they were as close as it was possible to be. It means some of his fences are not as far off as he suspected, so the next thing is to discuss the project with him.

The dogs and I surprised another bear at the beginning of the week. I never did see it, just heard it crashing away through the berry bushes. The dogs ran out into the open field barking and stood where they might get a good head start if it turned to come out after them. I continued walking to where they were, listening carefully for the location of the sounds in the brush. It didn’t come out or go away any farther, and dogs and I continued our walk.

Now for another couple of tales from Oil Gypsy, that I call --
Fun in the snow.

I worked across Deep Valley Creek, where it flows into the Simonette River, on two occasions separated by nearly twenty years. The first time I was crew surveyor, and had to lay out the line and then survey it; the second time I was catpush – in charge of overseeing the crew sent to clear the lines.

Deep Valley Creek has to receive one of the biggest snowfalls in Alberta, below tree line anyway. I say that based on my two experiences there.

In 1981 we were re-shooting an old line as well as cutting a new one. While Rudy, my chainsaw man was cutting the new handcut line across the creek, working on snowshoes, the rodman and I chained the open line we’d snowploughed with a Cat. We ended one day’s work at the end of the snowploughed line, peering over the huge pushed up snowbank into the creek below. “We’ll do that bit tomorrow morning,” I said. “Park our truck on the other side and walk across the creek to pick up the chain and carry on.”

It was a good idea, but I should have taken a tip from Rudy, who was a local guy and worked on snowshoes because he knew what to expect. We started our trek across the creek quite confidently, until we plunged off the snowbank into the undisturbed snow. It came up to our necks.

Luckily, the rodman was a strapping youngster, so I sent him ahead to break trail. We wallowed, shoved, pushed, and damn near swam through that snow for two hours to get across the half mile of creek bottom to the other side. Snow found it’s way into every gap in our clothing and melted there. We were soaking wet and the air temperature that day was about zero, but we weren’t feeling cold. We sweated like pigs.

At least we didn’t feel cold until we stepped out onto the cleared line and looked at our chain laying where we’d left it the evening before. Somehow it didn’t seem too smart for two wet and exhausted guys to set off across that creek again right away. We walked up the line and found Rudy.

He obliged us with a pile of logs high enough for a beacon to warn of invasion. A few splashes of chainsaw gas and we had a blazing fire. We stripped down to our underwear and draped all our wet clothes on branches before the fire. We hopped about in our bare feet, drying our skivvies and keeping ourselves warm as we drained water out of our snow boots and dried the linings. In a half an hour or so we were dry enough to dress again and set off to continue our chaining.

Even though we had made the crossing once, and could use our beaten path, the return was almost as exhausting as the first trip. By the time we reached the truck, we’d been at work for four hours, had chained a measly half mile and were beat. We drove back to town and told the party manager we’d go back out to work again in the morning – as long as he bought us some snowshoes.

Working on snowshoes proved a new trick to master. Rudy’s helper, an out of work truckdriver he’d hired in the bar, proved remarkably proficient at cutting into the snowshoes with his chainsaw. We had a good laugh when we found him tromping along on snowshoes repaired in several places with sticks and twine. We surveyors got to be fairly competent snowshoers after three days – we didn’t fall off into the snow anywhere near as often.

Surveying from snowshoes proved a novelty. At my first instrument setup I pushed the tripod with theodolite attached down into the snow until it met solid ground. Then I looked down at the eyepiece – on a level with my big toe – and wondered how I was going to look through the telescope. Only one way – unstrap myself from the shoes and jump off into the snow. Climbing back on at the end of the survey was another new art to learn.

We got a laugh out of the drillers when they arrived. “You’ll find a lot more snow here than the last prospect,” I told a driller’s helper as he climbed the snowbank with a permit tag to affix to a tree. “So we were told,” he answered as he stepped off the bank into the piled up snow.

“Bloody hell!” were his next words. We peered over the bank, and all we could see was his toque on top of the snow.

It must have been around 1999 when I returned with Cats to snowplough the existing lines for a new job and with a crew of Newfoundlanders as my chainsaw guys. For some reason best known to the God of Confusion, the saw contractor had teamed up two guys who despised one another. One was tall and gaunt and the other a short, fat roly-poly fellow. The only disadvantage I found as their boss was that I couldn’t understand a word they said if they broke into Newfie – an accent with only a passing acquaintance with English. But they were good and generally, uncomplaining workers.

I drove them to the far side of Deep Valley Creek and pointed them to an old handcut line crossing the valley. Telling them they had to cross on foot and clean up all the deadfall and snags as they went, I handed them a handheld radio and said I’d drive around and meet them on the other side.

Tall and Gaunt started his saw and climbed over the snowbank; Roly-poly picked up the saw gas, supplies and radio to follow. The snow seemed only waist deep where they started, but I knew it’d be a lot deeper when they reached the valley bottom.

I drove over to the place where the handcut line emerged from the creek and waited. And waited.
I called on the radio after an hour or so. I couldn’t understand Roly-poly through all the panting and Newfie. Ah, well – they were still down there and working. I could hear the saw periodically.
Another hour passed. At last, Tall and Gaunt emerged over the snowbank, dropped his saw in the back of my truck and climbed into the cab.

“Where’s your partner?”

He shrugged and jerked his thumb toward the line. “Back there, somewheres.”

We waited some more, and then I decided to call again. I had been carefully instructed in permissible radio calls for Newfies. If you don’t want to be baffled by a barrage of incomprehensible dialect, you ask, “Where you be at, boy?”

The answer to this was muffled and indistinct, but he spoke for quite awhile, even though I couldn’t understand a word. I looked at Tall and Gaunt. He shrugged.

I then asked the other allowed radio question. “What you be doin’?”

At this I received another long transmission, punctuated by panting and strange Island swearwords. I did catch the word “snow” quite a few times. It turned out that snow up to Tall and Gaunt’s armpits was way over Roly-poly’s head. He eventually emerged but averred that he’d be damned if he’d ever go back down there again.

I couldn’t argue with that. Deep Valley Creek had affected me the same way nearly twenty years before.