The Daily Archaeopteryx: September 2009

This past week of work has been pretty amazing. On Monday I rode a four wheeler to do some water monitoring, which was a blast because the leaves are turning colors and the temperature was perfect. Tuesday, I spent the day hiking. The hike was great, again because it's Fall. I saw a couple of deer and just got to enjoy the outdoors while being paid to do it. Wednesday was another memorable day. We were abandoning a monitoring well on top of a mountain and I was sent out to be the helper. We rode a helicopter over to the site and then they had to "Long Line" equipment up to us. Long Lining is when a helicopter has a cable (in our case 100 feet) hooked to the bottom of the helicopter that he uses to pick up equipment and fly it to a site. Because the area is mostly National Forest we can not ride ATVs to any remote locations so we use a helicopter. Anyway, we had to mix cement and pump it down the well to seal it. The helicopter also had to fly in loads of water using what they use to put out wild fires. To top things off they flew a basket over to us with lunch in it consisting of a huge stake, corn on the cob, fruit, potatoes, a drink, and a roll. That was probably the most expensive lunch I have ever had (we pay the helicopter something like $1,500 per hour). After we finished abandoning the well we had to fly everything out which means I got another ride. Thursday was another day of hiking. I was dropped off on top of the mountain and hiked down into a canyon to do some flow monitoring on a stream. I stopped and talked to the sheep herder (Peruvian I think), so I was able to use my spanish. I later hiked up to another canyon and joined my co-worker Gregg to finish the monitoring and hike out.
This has definitely been a tiring week but Totally Worth It. Friday I plan to spend in my office just doing office work, nothing too exciting.

A small water fall from the monitoring on Tuesday