Believe it or don't, but when I finally finished that job for the wealthy customer, and the balance owing was a tad over 10,000 bucks, he paid without fuss or phone calls within a week. So a happy ending for that one after all.
I started to prep for the move to work on the Sea to Sky Job immediately. I had to tell customers and digging contractors that it was all over and to start calling the other guy from now on. I would say that my wife was less than impressed with me working away from home at this point. It's not far as the crow flies, but we would be separated by the Langdale/Horseshoe Bay ferry ride. Kiewit set me up with an apartment in North Vancouver, only a few minutes drive to the project. I went home on weekends and during the week sometimes if it was at all possible
A brief side tour.
How did it come to be that the monster company Peter Kiewit Sons ended up making that phone call? Well let's go back a bit. I was working on a subdivision job on Gambier Island with contractor Pete Husband. Pete mentioned that he met a guy who needed some large boulders blasted. I was going full tilt on the island and was only mildly interested. I asked who the the job was for, and he responded, Peter Kiewit. I had never ever heard of Peter Kiewit or his sons, so my next question was......
Does he have any money?
As it turns out, Peter Kiewit Sons is not a guy and a pick up truck, but is an employee owned mega construction contractor in North America. And yes, they probably have enough dough on hand to pay me for blasting a few boulders. The job was at the McNair Creek IPP project which I'm thinking was one of the originals in this area, and also one of the first ones ever attempted by PKS. Here I met people that that would be my connections to the Sea to Sky gig. Jean Beaudin, Rick Berg and Dave McLellan were all here and we got along great. I think it helped that I usually showed up after my days work on the island or on weekends, so things were generally a bit more casual and friendly. The boulder busting work was drop dead simple, it just involved a ton a hard work and scrambling around on cabin sized rocks. After the relatively small job was done, I never heard from them again, until Jean phoned on that magic day with the life altering call. Exactly why they made that call, I really have no idea, I'm just glad it worked out that way.
Now to be honest, I thought that I was going to be part of an established rock blasting team in the company and learn how the big boys do things. It didn't quite work out that way. Not even close, and in the next two years, I went to new heights in my blasting career ( and several lows ) , that I never would have dreamed, even in my most feverish moment.
So what I will do now is take you on a little pictorial tour of some of the individual jobs that made up the project and tell a few tales along the way.
These stories are focused on the blasting part of the project, and are told from my perspective. All the photos that you will see ( and later videos ) are mine.
Let's start with a picture tour at....well....at the beginning.We'll start off easy with a photos of the massive Komastsu 1250 excavator being assembled in the Eagleridge parking lot. The same area that anti-highway protesters would soon occupy ( whole other story )
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| Spring 2006 two big cranes setting up in Eagleridge parking lot to lift the pieces of the PC-1250 into place ...the parts were trucked from an Eastern Canada minesite |
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| PKS mechanics planning out the next moves |
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| The "house" of the excavator the low-bed truck, Bowen Island in the background |
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| Crawler components going together brand new blast mats in the background |
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| Lifting the house from the truck to the undercarriage |
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| Not something that you would want to drop | |
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| Getting ready to add the other track set up |
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| The boom lifted into place and pinned |
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| 769 Haul trucks that we would use much later in the job when the haul roads got better and not so steep |
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| The 12,000 pound digging bucket waiting to be attached (that's more weight than the average hoe can lift in total ) |
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| The stick being lifted on, and hoses attached |
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| Adding hydraulic plumbing and pins |
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| Done deal, a monster machine is assembled |
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| Testing it out, the machine worked very little on the project before it was taken apart again and sent to a job in Oregon |
The next set of photos shows the very first blasting to be done on the Segment One section ( West Vancouver ) The Tamrock Ranger 800 drills were not ready yet, and we had a crew hired and ready to go. We went out and bought handpluggers and started a small part of the project with hand drilling. It didn't take long before the anti-highway and anti-Olympics protesters would show up.
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| Scoping out the job with driller/blaster Paul Cooper |
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| Eagleridge overpass and the highway to and from from the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal |
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| Handrilling with pluggers and hanging in harnesses |
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| Brand new blast mats waiting for the first shot |
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| The lady who lived across the street asked us to stop and rescue some of the residents of the rock before blasting started, so we all pitched to catch lizards and put them in buckets for her |
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| Handrilling in a fine setting with a fantastic view |
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| Most of these guys had not ever touched a hand plugger before, after this they were very happy to see the Ranger 800's show up | | | |
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| And the protesters set up camp |
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| A couple of shots done, and then the mats are piled on the broken rock to cover the higher up blasts | |
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| The protesters camp, complete with porta-cans and Starbucks deliveries, taunting us with " the rocks have feelings and your hurting them" as the news helicopters circled overhead |
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| Nice results from a small shot |
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