First Impressions

So...Elkford. the Wilderness Capital of British Columbia. What exactly am I doing in this crazy little town? The easy answer is of course the one you all know: doing my co-op term with Elk Valley Coal for the next 7 or so months.


To answer in more detail, I'm figuring out what I actually want to do in my career as a mining engineer, assuming that I even want to do that. Since, this is my first time working at a mine, I'm starting out in surveying. I spend probably around half my time in the office and half my time in the pit. The pit work essentially consists of going around the mine with various GPS equipment and recording elevations and coordinates, as well as putting in stakes for the dozers, shovels, drills and blasters. In the office, we take the data that's collected while in the mine and organize it in a CAD program called MineSight which then is used for a variety of purposes which I don't really want to go into as I feel the technicalities aren't all that important/interesting.

It's a pretty cool job, and definitely much better than last summer's fabric cutting hell. There's a good variety of tasks, a solid amount of responsibility (with a lot more later in the summer when the actual surveyors start going on vacation) and even some thinking involved. Working outside is pretty cool most of the time, although I'd say it has snowed over half the days I've been working. Nonetheless, the scenery is pretty sweet, and as surveyors, we get to hike around places that nobody else in the mine goes to(tops of cliffs and such).

Did I mention explosives? Yeah, there's a lot of explosives. The mine has about three blasts per week, each blast is usually about 300 holes with each hole containing about the same explosive power as the Oklahoma City bombing (sorry to use a sad/morbid example, but it's how it was explained to me, and it gives a better frame of reference than some number in Joules). I'll get some pictures/videos of blasts once summer actually starts here (i.e. the snow and fog stops).

As for Elkford itself, well it's pretty tiny. Basically if the weather sucks (see above) there's not a whole lot to do. Luckily the long weekend was really good weather so I went camping down by the US border which was pretty cool, and hit up a bar in Fernie one of the nights where they had GIANT BOTTLES OF CORONA!(see picture below) That's 710mL of quality cerveza.

Also they definitely deserve the title of Wilderness Capital of BC. Every morning on the way to work I pass by like at least thirty elk and there's deer around all town the time. Also seen a some big horn sheep, although they're definitely much rarer than the other two. I need to get some pictures of that too...

That's all I'm really feeling in terms of posting for right now. I might post again later this weekend, but we shall see.

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." ~ Lao Tzu