What did You do on Tuesday Morning?

I was in a pickup truck when it lost control on black ice and crashed into a ditch.  I remember going into a spin and thinking "this is it". 

I don't scream or brace myself, I am not tense, I sit still and wait for whatever end is coming.  There is violent shaking and dark objects fly around in the cab; then blackness and calm.  Warm, wet coffee coats my face and head.  I am buried with luggage and equipment in the back seat.  My elbow feels cool against the frozen ground through the shattered window.  I hear someone calling my name.  He sounds panicked, so I quickly answer “I’m here, but I can’t move.”

I wait an eternity in a few seconds.  Someone moves the luggage and a light shines in from above.  There is blood everywhere, my blood.  I can feel part of my lip hanging in my mouth.  “Is that blood?” I ask for some reason; I know it is, but it seems like much more than from a cut lip.  I struggle to undo my seatbelt and I stand up in the cab.  The truck is on its side.  I brush cubes of glass out of my hair.  There is a man with a flashlight above me and our driver is already outside shouting for me to climb out of the truck.  I am disoriented, my neck hurts and I am bleeding.  I can’t find a foothold to climb out the passenger window.  The other passenger is somehow unhurt and still in the truck with me.  He provides a foot hold for me and I climb out of the truck.

I walk slowly up the bank in a daze and watch the northern lights dance in the sky.  I’m supposed to take a photo for my daughter, but it's not going to happen on this trip.  I look back at the pickup and notice my bag of PPE is still in the pickup truck box.  Someone hands me the bag and I carry it up onto the road.

Three cars have pulled over to help and someone tells me to get into a car with a woman named Maria.  A dog in the car is sniffing my hair.  Nobody has a first aid kit, so I am given a brown-stained paper towel to use for my lip.  I hope the brown stain is chocolate.  We start the drive to Whitehorse General Hospital.  It’s the longest 30 minutes of my life, and while Maria is hurrying to get me to the hospital, I am worrying we’ll hit black ice and get in another accident.  I can feel my cell phone in my pocket, but every time I think of my wife and daughter I feel tears well up in my eyes, and I don’t make the call.  I need time to get myself together.

It is daylight when we get to the hospital.  Maria and I walk into the ER and they ask for my Care Card.  I hand them my wallet and they tell me to head straight through.  They clean me up, take X-rays of my neck, and stitch my lip.  I have been in the Yukon for 12 hours when they discharge me from the hospital. 

I rent a hotel room so I can have a shower and wash off the blood and coffee.  I don’t even like coffee.   

I finally call my wife.  It is an emotional call, but I keep it together.

There is an accident debriefing meeting at their office.  They ask me if I received first aid treatment.  I didn't.  They asked if I felt I should have been taken to the hospital in an ambulance.  Probably.

I catch a plane home that afternoon.  My wife cries when she sees me at the airport. 

I am home.

First Hole They Dig at a Mine

The Commute

If you take a 2 hour flight, then drive for 4 hours to a heli-pad, fly for 30 minutes in a helicopter, then take a 2 hour ride in a snow cat, you can have your photo taken here:

The helicopter can't take you all the way because of the fog.  Yesterday it was freezing fog.  Freezing fog coats the seats and steering wheel of the ATV with layers of ice.  If the ATV had windows, it would coat the windows and then you'd have to scrape the windows; and nobody likes scraping windows.

Mining

"Mining is complicated.  First you drill, then you blast, then you muck.  Drill, blast, muck; drill, blast, muck; that's it."  (The muck is the rubble left over from the blast.)  "It's called muck when it's in the shaft, and when you take it out of the shaft it's called ore."

Cafeteria

The view from the camp cafeteria, if only it had windows.

Helicopter

This project site, high in the mountains of North Western British Columbia, is remote; helicopter remote. So I had my first ride in a helicopter, crammed in with 3 other guys and a bunch of gear. The pilot, a surfer type, gave us a quick orientation on helicopter safety, which mostly informed us how to avoid damaging the helicopter doors, and then we were off.

The 20 minute flight took us over massive glacier fields, between mountain peaks, and even included a quick circle of a bulldozer stuck in a crevasse on the ice road. When we landed in camp we unpacked and hunkered down until the helicopter flew away again, and like that it was over.

That was yesterday and I’m already eagerly anticipating my flight out.

Duck?

The ringer on my iPhone is set to quack like a duck, and every time it rang the good people of Masset looked up in the sky to see the duck. I love that about Haida Gwaii.