The Renegades had a hockey game on Saturday morning of the Thanksgiving Long Weekend. It was nice to get the game over with early, and leave the rest of the weekend free. We faced off against the Icebreakers with a full bench, and a back-up goaltender. The Icebreakers also had a back-up goalie, but weren't so lucky with their roster. They only had 10 skaters, and then part way through the game one guy got hurt and had to leave. We skated to an easy 12-3 victory. One of our new players had a 7 point game which included a hat trick. After the game I went home, showered, and quickly packed the last few things into our trailer. The girls and I hit the road around lunch time, headed for the foothills...
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Open Photo 2012
I received an E-mail today advising me that my image, Anna's Swing, had been awarded an honorable mention at the VAAA Open Photo Competition. Back in the spring this image was selected, along with over 30 others, from the original submission of over 300 images. The exhibition opened in Calgary this past weekend, and the judge selected the "Best Overall", "First, Second and Third Runners Up" and six "Honorable Mentions". My image was one of these six. Rather ironic considering that I submitted this same image last year, and it didn't even make the first cut. Needless to say, Anna was thrilled.
This selection of photos shows at the Jubilee Auditorium in Calgary for about three weeks. Just before the end of October the show will be put up at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditoriun Kaasa Gallery, here in Edmonton. I will be attending the opening to accept a certificate.
More Film Processing
Final Camping Weekend at the Ranch
On the last weekend of September we headed down to the TL Bar Ranch for what will be our last family camping trip there of this season. It was also an opportunity for us all to celebrate Hailey's 10th birthday, which I had missed due to the Dinosaur Trackway Project. After Helena's dance class on Saturday morning, we headed down to the ranch, arriving in the mid-afternoon. There were only two other campers at the ranch, and one of those was Jim and his wife Amanda. It was very warm... almost hot, with clear skies, but the light had that fall crispness and clarity. The leaves were starting to turn color, and the grass was very brown and grazed quite short.
Hailey and Anna and I went out for a walk that afternoon. I took my view camera along and took a couple shots of the badlands, as well as some portraits of the two girls on some rocks in the river. The girls had a blast climbing around in the hills and taking digital snapshots and video clips of each other. Annelise captured this self portrait, camera in hand and case at her side...
Later that evening, after dinner, Hailey opened her birthday gifts. As we sat around the fire that evening, Jim and Amanda came over to join us. I gave Jim a CD with all my photographs from the trackway project so that he could take them back to work at Palcoprep on Monday.
On Sunday morning we went out for a trail ride. The river was very low, running only at about 18 inches of water. We crossed over and back on horseback, and enjoyed a beautiful afternoon ride. Later I took a few more large format photographs with the big camera before we eventually and reluctantly had to pack up and return home. We hope to get out camping one more time as a family, next weekend, for Thanksgiving.
The Trip Home...
On Wednesday morning, September 28th, with the fossil molding projects under control, I packed up for the return trip home. After having breakfast with Frank and Jim, I set out in the general direction of home. The other two guys were going to return to the Ammonite site and peel the mold. As it turned out, the silicone was not fully cured and they had to stay an extra day before the mold could be peeled off. But it all turned out well in the end, and mold came off nicely.
I made my way back up the Elk Valley, through Sparwood, and up into the Crowsnest Pass. Soon I was back in Alberta. I stopped along the way to make a few photographs... actually quite a few photographs...
First I shot some valley fog just outside of Fernie. Then later I explored all the little coal mining towns in what is now the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass. Lots of interesting buildings here, including the remains of some of the coal mining operations. I stopped at Frank Slide, and the Burmis Tree, and eventually at Lundbreck Falls. I was totally wrapped up in all the photographs I was taking. When I finally stopped and seriously checked the time, I realized that it was already 3:30 in the afternoon, and I still had five or six hours of driving ahead of me. So, I reluctantly packed up my gear and hit the road. It was a long and uneventful drive back home, and when I finally arrived it was nearly 9:00PM.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Update - Worlds Largest Ammonite [maybe...?]
After finishing up with the Trackway project at Line Creek, we headed back to Fernie. We stopped in town for lunch and then decided to pick up some bear spray. We had been warned that the bears were heading back down to the lower elevations and were hungry before looking to den up for winter. In fact when we were having dinner at the pub in the Fernie Hotel on Monday night we found out just how much of an issue the bears can be. Our waitress left the pub when her shift was over around 9:00PM. About 10 minutes later she was back. She said that she had tried to go home, but there was a bear on the front porch of her house, and she couldn't get in. So she came back to work, hoping she could get in later.
We were planning to hike up to the Fernie Ammonite, so we decided to take no chances. It turned out later that we didn't see any bears, or any sign, but better safe than sorry.
The Fernie Ammonite has been known for decades. It is partially a cast and partially an impression of what might be the world's largest ammonite. Under scientific rules it does not count as the largest specimen, or a new species unless it is collected and housed at a museum, university, or some such similar institution. We had previously made a proposal to cut this sample out of the rock face that it is preserved in, and move it to a museum. This met with mixed reviews. Some were interested in having it recognized, but others wanted it to stay where it was so that people could hike to it and see it first hand, in its final resting place. As no one was willing to come forward with the funding to pay for it's extraction, we dropped the idea. But now, since we were right in the area, we decided to take a mold off of the specimen. This would allow us to make casts of the fossil, for display by anyone interested. Although this would not count in terms of the world record, or as confirmation of a possible new species, it would at least provide a record of the specimen. The fossil was slowly deteriorating, and people had been stealing chunks of it. There were concerns that it was not going to be around all that much longer. A mold had been made years previously, and we are told that the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller actually possesses a cast from that mold. But, the cast is not on display, and it seems that the mold is no longer in existence. Surprisingly we found traces of latex or silicone in the cracks of the fossil, residue from the previously taken mold, years prior. This current project was undertaken by our company entirely on spec, with the hope that someone might be interested in purchasing a cast of it. As this process does no harm to the fossil, and as it is situated on crown land, we went ahead with our plan.
We drove up the Coal Creek Road just outside of Fernie. At the right spot we crossed Coal Creek and hiked about a mile up one of the small tributaries. This was a rather strenuous hike through fairly rough terrain, with significant elevation gain. It was a good thing that it is fall and the water levels in the creek and the tributary were very low.
It was quite warm on this afternoon and we quickly realized how steep the terrain really was. There was no way that we could have brought our compressor up to this site and used the spray-on silicone material that we had used at the trackway site. Instead we brought up pails of a two component silicone material that we would mix and hand apply to the fossil. Even though the two five gallon pails were not full, they were heavy enough and we struggled to get them up to the site. But, it was all worthwhile when we went around the corner of an outcropping rock and caught our first glimpse of the impressive fossil.
By this point it was already mid-afternoon, so we set to work. We started out by cleaning all of the dirt, debris and moss off of the fossil. Once that task was completed, we stood back and marvelled at how impressive this specimen really was.
We had brought up mixing bowls, rubber gloves, spatulas, brushes and other related supplies. We mixed up the two component silicone in small batches and started applying it to the fossil. We must have mixed up at least a dozen bowls of the stuff and kept going until we ran out of material. We were careful to work the rubber material into all the nooks and crannies so that it would yield the best possible mold. By the time we finished, it was late afternoon and approaching early evening. We cleaned up the site, packed up all our gear and headed back down to our vehicles. We would have to leave this silicone material to cure until the next day, when the mold could be peeled. The next morning I needed to leave and make my way back home to my real job... the one that pays the bills... But I was really appreciative of the opportunity to experience this and be a part of the team. Frank and Jim would hang around long enough to peel the mold and pack it back down the tributary and bring it back to the shop in Drumheller.
Trackway Project - Day 2
Monday was my oldest daughter Hailey's 10th birthday. She was a good sport about me being away and urged me to go and take part in this project. I made sure and phoned her from the top of the mountain and wished her a happy birthday. She went out for a birthday dinner that evening with her Mom and her sisters, and I promised that we would celebrate her birthday again when I returned home. Tuesday morning saw myself and the Palcoprep guys up early and on our way back into the mine. This time is was easy to quickly check in with security and gain access to the site. We stopped at the mine office and had one of the staff members escort us up to the trackway site.
It still took us some time to get from Fernie, to the mine site, and on up to the top of the mountain. It was about 9:00AM by the time we got started. The silicone rubber had cured nicely so now all we needed to do was peel the mold away from the shale surface. This was relatively straight forward. We decided to split the mold into three pieces for ease of handling and transport. They could easily be patched back together to make a future cast of the trackway. In all likelihood any cast that is ever made would likely have to be made in sections anyway. Except for a large exhibition gallery such as in a museum, most display spaces probably will not permit the installation of a one-piece cast that will measure roughly 6 feet by 15 feet. We cleaned up and packed everything into the truck and made our way back down off the mountain. We stopped at the mine office and dropped off all the gear and radio that we had borrowed, and made our way out of the site.
At this point in time our contract was only to make a mold of a portion of the trackway. It remains to be seen what we actually do with these molds. Undoubtedly we will be producing one or more casts of this trackway for display. Perhaps in one of the Teck facilities, or the local visitor information center, or perhaps a museum. With this project sucessfully completed, this left us the afternoon to tackle our next project... the Fernie Ammonite.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Dinosaur Trackway Project
Palcoprep in Drumheller, a company that I am involved in, got a contract to take molds of a Dinosaur Trackway in a coal mine in Southwestern British Columbia. We proposed this idea last year, following a visit to the site by my business partner Frank. This fall the operator of the mine, Teck, decided to go ahead with the project before the site suffered any further damage due to erosion.
Teck's Line Creek Operation, north of Sparwood, British Columbia, is approaching the end of it's operating life. Teck has made application to expand the mine onto two ridges north of the existing site. If approved, this expansion would add 16 years to the life of the existing operation. In advance of that application Teck constructed some rough roadways onto Burnt Ridge and Michel Ridge. They bored some exploratory holes at various locations to determine the amount of coal available to be mined. It was at one of these bore hole locations that a sloping rock face was exposed. Actually "rock" is probably not the right term as it is more like hard shale. This shale face was once the shore of a river, lake, or perhaps the ocean. In it are preserved the tacks of numerous Dinosaurs. There are the tracks of some large Sauropods [plant eating dinosaurs] walking along what would have once been the edge of some sort of water body. These are the large long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs that were amongst the largest creatures to ever live on earth. At one point on the site the tracks of one of these individuals stops and circles back, before continuing on. Was this creature alarmed by a predator... or did something else catch its attention? There are also the tracks of several raptors [meat eating dinosaurs] on the same site. It is impossible to determine if the raptors were there at exactly the same time, 150 million years ago, as the sauropods, but something made that big creature stop and circle back...?? Today, what was once a near horizontal surface, is tilted up at a pitch of nearly 12:12, by the uplifting Rocky Mountains.
Teck hired Palcoprep to take a mold off of a section of this site to preserve what had been exposed by the exploration work at their mine. I decided that I needed to take part in this project as I felt it was a once in a life time opportunity. So, I bailed out of my day job at Mac Plastics for three days to take part in this exciting project. This was the reason that the weekend camping trip of September 22/23 got cut short to a day trip. After taking the girls out for a day of horse-back riding at TL Bar Ranch, I headed back home to get ready for this trip to the Trackway site. I got up early on the morning of September 23rd and found myself back on the road to the badlands. This was my third trip over this stretch of pavement in less than 24 hours. I arrived in Drumheller just after lunch, to meet up with Frank, and our employee Jim. By mid afternoon we were ready to go, and headed off towards British Columbia. We arrived in the Elk Valley late in the day and stopped for a bite to eat, and checked into a local motel. We were staying in Fernie, just down the valley from Sparwood and Teck's Line Creek Operation. The next morning we put our gear together and headed up to Teck's office in Sparwood. After checking in with the staff that had coordinated this project, we made our way up to the mine. In addition to the online orientation training that all three of us had taken prior to our departure, we had to check in with security at the entrance to the mine. Here we had to take another orientation course specific to this site. We all passed with flying colors and soon we were driving up the canyon into the operating mine...
We had all of our proper safety equipment in place, and had checked in with Security, we drove up to the office on the site. Here we met with one of the company Geologists, that would escort us up to the site. I was in awe at the size of this operation, and the equipment that Teck has on site. And this is one of their smallest operations! They are basically starting at the top, and cutting down the mountains to expose the coal. The rock overburden is removed, exposing the coal. This is a grade of coal that is well suited to steel production, and a lot of it is exported overseas. A series of drill holes are made, charges are set, and the mountain is blasted open. The overburden is removed and piled out of the way as the coal is exposed. The sheer scale of it all is something to marvel at.
I was expecting that the trackway site would be within the mine, but I was wrong. We cautiously drove up through the active haul roads of the mine, and eventually made our way to the upper levels. From here we proceeded on some much rougher, narrower and steeper roads onto to the upper levels of adjacent Michel Ridge. We wound along eventually getting up to an elevation of over 7650 Feet above sea level, and near the top of Michel Ridge. Here we came upon the exposed shale face and the trackways. At first we were all somewhat disappointed... Jim and I because the tracks were not all the obvious, and Frank because there had been so much weathering and deterioration of the trackway since his last visit about a year ago. But, we unpacked our gear and set to work. The more time we spent looking at the surface, the easier it became to pick out the tracks. The raptor tracks that Frank originally planned to mold had become quite weathered, and were not worth our effort. So, we set to work clearing away some of the scree that had accumulated at the lower edge of the exposed slope.
This slope is larger and steeper than it looks. It is at an incline of nearly 45 degrees. We were not permitted to work too far up onto the slope due to the safety regulations of the mine. We probably could have made application for some equipment or safety lines to be put into place, but it would have taken weeks or even months for this to be organized. By that time it would be winter, and by the following spring, erosion may have permanently eliminated portions of this trackway. So, we made the best of it, and set to work. The area that we decided to work on included two large oval shaped sauropod tracks that were oriented in a left/right direction. These large indentations were about 1-1/2 by 2-1/2 feet in size. Running up the slope across these large impressions were a series of three-toed raptor tracks. There were at least four of them that were obvious, and they continued up beyond where we were permitted to work. We set up our compressor and our spraying equipment and after clearing this portion of the site of debris and cleaning out the tracks, we set to work to spray them with a layer of silicone rubber. This process took most of the afternoon. Later we used some silicone rubber in paste format and troweled it in to some of the deeper portions of the trackway impressions, following this up with another layer of sprayed on silicone.
The large oval shaped Depression just to the right of Franks' head, in the above photo, is one of the Sauropod tracks. Approximately three feet to the left of Franks' face there is an obvious three-toed raptor track.
The following photograph is one of the raptor tracks just beyond the area in which we took off the mold. As the sun began to set and the light got lower, more and more of these impressions became obvious all over this inclined shale face.
By the end of that first day we were tired, but satisfied with what we had accomplished. We decided to let the silicone rubber cure overnight, rather than attempt to peel back the mold that day. So we drove back down off of the mountain, and out of the mine, and made our way back to Fernie. We went out for a couple of beers and something to eat in the pub at the historic Fernie Hotel. We knew that we needed to get up early to be back up into the mine the next morning to peel our mold. So, we didn't make it too late a night and turned in moderately early.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Winter Hockey - Game Three
While I was away to British Columbia, the Renegades played the third game of the winter hockey season. I had a full roster of players lined up to play, including a spare to step in and play in my spot. The game was on Sunday evening, against the first place Ballers. The guys fell behind early, down by a score of 4-0 at the end of the first period. They rallied back to make it close, but ended up with our first regulation loss by a score of 7-5.
Weekend Plans
Originally we had planned to go camping last weekend. The girls really wanted to go back to the TL Bar Ranch and do some trail riding. But, then I was suddenly offered the opportunity to go out into the field with Frank and Jim from Palcoprep. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to go to an active coal mine in British Columbia and take a mold off of a dinosaur trackway. So the weekend camping plans were put on the back burner so that I could take advantage of this opportunity. But, I had promised the girls a trail ride and I wanted to live up to that. Sure made for some very busy times. We got up early on Saturday the 22nd and blasted down to the ranch. Just the two older girls and I went out for the day, while Margarit stayed behind with Helena so that she could go to her dance class. We gave her the option of riding horses or going to tap dancing class and she chose the dance...
The girls and I arrived at the ranch just after noon, and went out for a two hour trail ride. It was just beautiful as the fall colors were starting to pop, the temperature was really nice and warm, and there were no mosquitos. We really enjoyed the ride and after it was done we blasted back home to Edmonton. This was just a taste of the driving that I would do in the coming days. The next morning I had to get up early once again and drive back down to Drumheller. This time it would be to meet up with Frank and Jim and continue on to southwestern British Columbia. More to come on that trip in the next post.......
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