Day 8 (in the big bruuther house). ….continued
Got taken to 2P ice pad by Brett. I don’t know how they come up with such imaginative names for the ice pads, but 2P is a loading pad for the rolligons. This is where the next phase of our journey begins. Said our goodbyes to Brett and felt quite sad, although he was very quiet he looked after us well and you could tell when he did speak it was heartfelt and sincere. (He was kind of like an aged Charlie Bronson on ice.)
After waiting around for a couple of hours in the galley watching TV, our rolligon convoy rolled in looking like something straight out of Space 1999, all giant space buggy wheels and dazzling headlights lighting up the fog, bouncing around like they’re in zero G on the snow covered terrain. A mean ‘blow’ picked up (what they call a minor wind and what we would call a major blizzard) and we spent the next 3 hours filming the hands load everything from fork lift and pick up trucks to other weird space buggies and bits of the rig onto the back of the rolligons – all in an unrelenting gale of spin drift blown sideways. It looked unbelievable, like the entire ground for as far as the eye could see was a river of moving snow, all the machines steaming with vapour fork lifting massive space age and everyday construction vehicles on pallets onto the back of even larger and even more space age vehicles.
The whole scene looked like a very expensive and professionally lit and ‘dry iced’ set for a high budget sci-fi film - a real cinematographers dream. Unfortunately it also seemed to be a camera’s absolute nightmare – two of our Z1’s started showing error messages within minutes. Both Iona and Odette bit the dust (Mentorn like to name their cameras after Grannies it seems, which is slightly surreal), and only Ivy had the balls to see the blizzard through.
After scoffing down a quick, but very tasty meal – we filmed the rolligon drivers safety meeting as well as we could through a window (we were afraid the temperature differential between inside and out would screw our last working camera) and then it was time for the convoy to hit the road. Altho’ to be more accurate to hit the trail, because the entire point of this epic 14 hour journey was that there weren’t any roads to were we were going otherwise the rig, the camp, the workers and all the equipment and vehicles needed to set it up would have been driven out by trucks, even if it was only an ice road. (They build a lot of roads out of ice sucked out of wells, so they don’t damage the tundra and melt away in the summer.) But Noatek, our remote destination was too far to build an ice road to and only the rolligon’s could reach it cross country without damaging the tundra. Everything - and I mean everything - from the 150ft rig derrick and giant crane/drilling JCB down to the last toilet roll or half litre bottle of water, has to be strapped to the back of a rolligon and taken cross country at 6 miles an hour for 12 – 14 hours for 100 miles to the middle of fucking nowhere, where they are hoping that there’ll be enough oil to make an economically viable oil well.
The purpose of this entire operation (worth over $20 million) is to prove the geologists and seismic surveys right, by providing solid evidence (90ft samples of drilled strata) that there is enough oil here to make an economically viable rig in about 5 years time – which must also be able to cover the hefty extra costs of working in such a remote location. 2 out of every 3 exploratory missions like this prove unfruitful and waste that $20 million lay out. Just how much money are these oil companies making?)
However, because Alaska is so heavily protected, the oil companies are only allowed to carry out such operations in the winter when the ice protects the tundra. This means that there are only a few months of the year that such exploratory drilling work can be undertaken. As such, time really is money.
The knock on effect for the rolligon drivers who have to make about 120 round trips of around 24 hours to Noatek and back, is that they work 24 hour shifts with only 8 hours sleep, if that, at the end of it!
On the day we turned up, they got back in, had dinner and maybe 3 hours kip (while the rolligons were re loaded, refuelled and patched up) before setting off again for another 14 hour trip back to Noatek. At Noatek they unloaded, had another meal and then headed back to 2P – which took another 10 hours – before they could have another meal and if they were lucky another 8 hours kip before doing the whole round trip all over again. And they do this for 8 weeks at a time – no weekends!
No wonder most of our drivers were complete zombies, so interviews with them were a bit of a deadloss, but the machines themselves and the back drop more than made up for this.
Being from Discovery we got to ride up front with the rolligon drivers themselves in their cabins – which from the inside were all 70s military-esque, like riding in a world war 2 amphibious vehicle or early soviet space program moon buggy. Each of the enormous 24 tyres, can be monitored and inflated or deflated directly from the cabin - although they are kept at a pressure of about 24 psi which is incredibly low (kind of like a deflated giant football, in comparison to a car which is like 160 psi) – this is so that they don’t damage the tundra, however it does make for a slow and very rough rolling kind of motion.
The lead driver of the convoy of 5 rolligons was happy for us to request filming stops so we could get ‘up and bys’ etc…. Scarily enough one of them was meant to coincide with us switching from the lead vehicle’s cab – filming the entire convoy passing in between - to jumping on the final vehicle. When the final vehicle failed to spot us, even with Sam running along side waving his arms frantically, we both nearly shat ourselves. It didn’t take much imagination to see them trundling off into the night unawares, marooning us in minus 20 degrees - too far to walk back to the base, even if we knew where it was in the pitch black. Six miles an hour doesn’t sound like much, but in full arctic gear and on foot in deep snow, you might as well be swimming behind a cruise liner shouting for help. I was just about to pull out my whistle, which we sensibly bought for just such an occasion, although I doubted it’d be heard above the thundering noise of the massive vehicle, when – thank god – it ground to a halt 20 metres passed us.
To the drivers credit they were very careful of us, despite they’re blatant sleep deprivation.
Got taken to 2P ice pad by Brett. I don’t know how they come up with such imaginative names for the ice pads, but 2P is a loading pad for the rolligons. This is where the next phase of our journey begins. Said our goodbyes to Brett and felt quite sad, although he was very quiet he looked after us well and you could tell when he did speak it was heartfelt and sincere. (He was kind of like an aged Charlie Bronson on ice.)
After waiting around for a couple of hours in the galley watching TV, our rolligon convoy rolled in looking like something straight out of Space 1999, all giant space buggy wheels and dazzling headlights lighting up the fog, bouncing around like they’re in zero G on the snow covered terrain. A mean ‘blow’ picked up (what they call a minor wind and what we would call a major blizzard) and we spent the next 3 hours filming the hands load everything from fork lift and pick up trucks to other weird space buggies and bits of the rig onto the back of the rolligons – all in an unrelenting gale of spin drift blown sideways. It looked unbelievable, like the entire ground for as far as the eye could see was a river of moving snow, all the machines steaming with vapour fork lifting massive space age and everyday construction vehicles on pallets onto the back of even larger and even more space age vehicles.
The whole scene looked like a very expensive and professionally lit and ‘dry iced’ set for a high budget sci-fi film - a real cinematographers dream. Unfortunately it also seemed to be a camera’s absolute nightmare – two of our Z1’s started showing error messages within minutes. Both Iona and Odette bit the dust (Mentorn like to name their cameras after Grannies it seems, which is slightly surreal), and only Ivy had the balls to see the blizzard through.
After scoffing down a quick, but very tasty meal – we filmed the rolligon drivers safety meeting as well as we could through a window (we were afraid the temperature differential between inside and out would screw our last working camera) and then it was time for the convoy to hit the road. Altho’ to be more accurate to hit the trail, because the entire point of this epic 14 hour journey was that there weren’t any roads to were we were going otherwise the rig, the camp, the workers and all the equipment and vehicles needed to set it up would have been driven out by trucks, even if it was only an ice road. (They build a lot of roads out of ice sucked out of wells, so they don’t damage the tundra and melt away in the summer.) But Noatek, our remote destination was too far to build an ice road to and only the rolligon’s could reach it cross country without damaging the tundra. Everything - and I mean everything - from the 150ft rig derrick and giant crane/drilling JCB down to the last toilet roll or half litre bottle of water, has to be strapped to the back of a rolligon and taken cross country at 6 miles an hour for 12 – 14 hours for 100 miles to the middle of fucking nowhere, where they are hoping that there’ll be enough oil to make an economically viable oil well.
The purpose of this entire operation (worth over $20 million) is to prove the geologists and seismic surveys right, by providing solid evidence (90ft samples of drilled strata) that there is enough oil here to make an economically viable rig in about 5 years time – which must also be able to cover the hefty extra costs of working in such a remote location. 2 out of every 3 exploratory missions like this prove unfruitful and waste that $20 million lay out. Just how much money are these oil companies making?)
However, because Alaska is so heavily protected, the oil companies are only allowed to carry out such operations in the winter when the ice protects the tundra. This means that there are only a few months of the year that such exploratory drilling work can be undertaken. As such, time really is money.
The knock on effect for the rolligon drivers who have to make about 120 round trips of around 24 hours to Noatek and back, is that they work 24 hour shifts with only 8 hours sleep, if that, at the end of it!
On the day we turned up, they got back in, had dinner and maybe 3 hours kip (while the rolligons were re loaded, refuelled and patched up) before setting off again for another 14 hour trip back to Noatek. At Noatek they unloaded, had another meal and then headed back to 2P – which took another 10 hours – before they could have another meal and if they were lucky another 8 hours kip before doing the whole round trip all over again. And they do this for 8 weeks at a time – no weekends!
No wonder most of our drivers were complete zombies, so interviews with them were a bit of a deadloss, but the machines themselves and the back drop more than made up for this.
Being from Discovery we got to ride up front with the rolligon drivers themselves in their cabins – which from the inside were all 70s military-esque, like riding in a world war 2 amphibious vehicle or early soviet space program moon buggy. Each of the enormous 24 tyres, can be monitored and inflated or deflated directly from the cabin - although they are kept at a pressure of about 24 psi which is incredibly low (kind of like a deflated giant football, in comparison to a car which is like 160 psi) – this is so that they don’t damage the tundra, however it does make for a slow and very rough rolling kind of motion.
The lead driver of the convoy of 5 rolligons was happy for us to request filming stops so we could get ‘up and bys’ etc…. Scarily enough one of them was meant to coincide with us switching from the lead vehicle’s cab – filming the entire convoy passing in between - to jumping on the final vehicle. When the final vehicle failed to spot us, even with Sam running along side waving his arms frantically, we both nearly shat ourselves. It didn’t take much imagination to see them trundling off into the night unawares, marooning us in minus 20 degrees - too far to walk back to the base, even if we knew where it was in the pitch black. Six miles an hour doesn’t sound like much, but in full arctic gear and on foot in deep snow, you might as well be swimming behind a cruise liner shouting for help. I was just about to pull out my whistle, which we sensibly bought for just such an occasion, although I doubted it’d be heard above the thundering noise of the massive vehicle, when – thank god – it ground to a halt 20 metres passed us.
To the drivers credit they were very careful of us, despite they’re blatant sleep deprivation.
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