Me, the photographer (aka MMO) and the assistant with the white screen (aka medical with dry erase board)

The photo shoot in action

one of the actual shots. I'm not sure what look I was going for?

The moment when I realized that Keith was watching.

The motley crew that did the photo shoot.

Spare Time

I am now back in the North Sea. Our current prospect straddles UK and Norwegian waters – we are just about due west of Bergen and North East of the Shetland Islands.

The boat is a limiting place (but potentially liberating?) – I only have 250 feet of space to move around in, therefore you get creative. Last trip our party chief had polo shirts made for everyone commemorating our vessel leaving Asia, as Emerald had been working in Asia since 1992 when she was launched, so it was quite momentous for her to come to Norway. In the instrument room I tried on the T-shirt and modeled it / walked around, pretending I was on the runway. Also – when our Helideck is folded up for bad weather, all that is left of the round deck is a rectangular runway, which I always thought was a hilarious image on a vessel like ours – a catwalk on a seismic ship.

The other day I was eating lunch with one of our MMO’s (marine mammal observers) and it turned out in his off time he does a lot of video-work, but has also done some fashion photography. Half joking, I said “we should do a photoshoot on the helideck with me in my coveralls” and thus our hilarious afternoon on the helideck was born. So we started planning. Sam, one MMO’s would be the photographer, Mark, the medic would hold a dry erase board as the white thing that reflects light onto the face, and Dougie, the other MMO would photograph us doing the Photoshoot. Now I knew this was utterly ridiculous, but I didn’t care, only, I didn’t want one person to stumble upon us and that was Keith, the party chief.

So off we went to the Helideck. Sam telling me where to stand and moving Mark for the perfect light angle. Dougie had his bandana on his head, making him look particularly artsy – photographer style. After a few shots in the middle of the helideck we moved in back towards the vessel. I was pretending to pull on this rope when I looked up, when who did I see staring down at us? Leaning over the railing – Keith - shaking his head saying “my my what do we have here?” in his strong British accent. I about died. I dropped down into the fetal position; however he wouldn’t leave until we continued, so we did. And to top it off, the next day as Sam and I were looking at the pictures, who is the ONE person to find us looking at the pictures. Yeap – Keith. You can believe that I will NEVER hear the end of this one.

The route that we took up Mount Little, one of the "Ten Peaks".


Me climbing Mount Little


Ondrej and I at the top of Mount Little

This is the snow covered valley.

Reliable Sources

Rarely do people go on vacation with someone that they have met for just an hour, but I did during my last break. After 2 weeks in Houston, I flew to Seattle to meet up with Ondrej, the UVA college room mate of my cousin Landon. We had met once briefly a few Christmases earlier at Landon’s house, but that was it, and now here I was flying to Seattle so that we could go on a mountaineering trip together in British Columbia in Yoho and Kootney parks (on the border between British Columbia and Alberta - just west of Banff National Park).

I arrived in Seattle on a Thursday evening and we spent the next day going over our gear, buying food and eating lunch with a girl that I had met at geology field camp3 years earlier. Then Saturday morning we were off. We had to rent a car, because neither of us had a car and in the previous year the total driving hours between the 2 of us was next to nothing. But off we went.

The Trans-Canada Highway through British Columbia is really amazing. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this much diversity. It went from rolling / flat farm land to high tree covered mountains to high dry desert hills and then to steep jagged peaks. We spent the night in Glacier national park giddy that we could see glaciers and continued on the next morning and that next morning happened to be Canada Day.

Like responsible hikers, we stopped in at the national park visitor center in Field (that’s the name of the town) to get current trail information. A WARNING – the Canadian Park service is not the place to get trail information. We asked about the trail to the first hut we were going to stay in. The first woman didn’t know, so she got someone who did. We told her our destination – Fay hut and she said “ Ooohhhh that trail is snowed in. winter conditions.”

“when you say ‘winter conditions’ what exactly do you mean?” we asked. She responded with, “At least knee, likely waist deep snow”. This was frustrating, because we knew we could do it, but it would be very slow going, and it was already noon and we still had a some driving before reaching the trail head. Then another woman came up and said “oh my friend’s parents did the hike 2 weeks ago – it was great. They started hiking at 5 am and with all the snow made it by dinner time, but it was beautiful”. Hmmm, just what we needed to hear as the minutes were ticking away. Then they brought out the binder with trail info to show us that the trail was indeed snow covered. We just looked at each other with frustrated faces. Then another woman came up and said “I think Fay hut burned down.” Just what I needed to hear. Luckily I knew that it had burned down in 2003, but it was rebuilt in 2005. Clearly the park did not have their facts straight. Meanwhile, the first woman, the one who couldn’t help us at all said, “Do you want some free Canada Day cake?”

We weren’t getting any closer to the hut by standing talking to the park service, so we continued on our way to Lake Louise and stopped in there, hoping for better information. None. I was given the safety warden’s phone number. I called. I asked about snow conditions. He said “the trails are clear to Fay hut”. I asked again, “so no snow?” he responded “if there is any snow its really small patches.”. My eyes were wide by this point. I said thank you and hung up. I went to tell Ondrej and we were off. We decided, what ever was there was there and we were going hiking. It was another 30 minutes of driving and as we were going down the valley towards the trail head, there was not a patch of snow to be seen. Anywhere. There were acres and acres of burned trees from the 2003 fire, but no snow. At 3:30pm we pulled into the parklot, tired from 2 days of driving and with 13 km of hiking ahead of us. All we could do was stare at the complete and utter lack of snow that had caused us sooooo much worry and frustration all day.

Over the course of the week, we ended up climbing 2 peaks that are featured on the back of the Canadian $20, which shows the “Valley of the Ten Peaks”. Four of those days in that area we saw no one but ourselves. On the second venture into the wilderness, we ended up meeting an amazing couple, who spent 20 of their years making films for National Geographic. They would do everything – propose the film, go shoot it, edit it, and then send the final thing to National Geographic. They said not once did any of their ideas get turned down.

We made it back to Seattle in one full day of driving. It was crazy to think that we started the day in a hut up in the mountains and ended the day in Ondrej’s apartment – a truly amazing contrast.