Mapping Field Trip in the Cannadian Bush!!!

Okay, so this week and a half is contains my last Canadian memories ... it was kind of bitter sweet, although it defiantly ended on a high. We took two minibuses and two cars up north of Lake Huron to Whitefish Falls near Espanola ... a ‘fine paper town!’ where we stopped off for food and drink supplies. We stayed in log cabins on a small river out of Lake Huron. The first day we spent driving around the area stopping off at lots of small sites to get to know the area and its geology. On the second day we were assigned field partners and given a traverse to complete from the roadside through 3Km of bush, swamps (where I almost lost a leg) and cliffs. having done a fair bit of navigation in the past me and my field partner made it out alive only one degree off our initial north bearing which we were to keep for the whole 3km, although we were looking very bedraggled. After sorting out with the local natives about aspect into our field sites for the next week we returned to the cabins and all had a BBQ and a well deserved pint with the very laidback professors. Over the next week or so we were up at the crack of dawn and out into the bush to map our areas. I was the designated communicator in my area (area D) and had the challenge of trying to understand the awe full reception on the walkie-talkie between Patricia, Laura and Oz as they bush-waked and canoes around the islands to rescue us in our hours of geological need. I won’t go into all the detail of mapping as I would need a whole new blog site for it. We spent the evenings transferring our field map and notes to our office copy and then meant up with the rest of the group for a social drink and chill out or a reading of the original fairy tale book which are more like horror stories.

Back to the bush ... me and my field partner spent the whole day terrified of bears about 2km into the bush tracing out the sandstone/argillite contact in blistering heat. on the 5th day ... we woke up to a full blown blizzard, abandoning the mapping, we drove out to the islands for a day’s fiend trips which proved to hazardous driving and most people were unprepared for the unforgiving conditions so we turned back after the first few sights as we couldn’t see the rocks for all the snow, ice and horizontal hail and gale force winds anyway. The rest of the week the weather was back to being hot and we finished our mapping in enough time to start having mid afternoon maps … sandstone can be very comfortable =].