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Aerial hero to cut block zero?

Date: 3rd August 2011

I’m out, ripped to shreds by the alder and cut block debris but stoked for the last two days… Not sure what the next move is but got a ride to revy and planning tactics. Making this up as I go for sure, great adventure so far. The freedom of going anywhere in the air is great, but I’ve learned some lessons.

edit–I just looked on the Spot tracking page, the satellite photo is NOTHING like reality on the ground! Nothing!! The photo must be from 20 years ago, most of the roads in that photo are no longer visible at all…

Not all cut blocks are launchable. In fact most are barely landable!! Logging roads grow over to the point where they are worse than the bush, even if they show on the gps. BC bush is really fierce. There’s a fine line between vol bivouac and vol bushwhack, and I got well on the vegetation side of it…. I landed high in Plant creek about as deep as you can get in the Monashees, thought I had an ok cut block (logged area) that would be good to launch out of but wound up hanging 6 feet off the ground. Solved that, good thing i had a wrench for links on lines and can climb ok, nice night with morning bear, could not escape my block for hours in the morning. Priorities went from launching to finding a place to launch to just getting out of the valley I was in, epic bush. Totally impossible to move through that logged bush at more than a few hundred meters an hour. Finally called my mom on sat phone (you know it’s bad when u call mom) who found a way out on google earth. Hiked about 10k of bush nasty grown over skidded trail and another 20 of road, got ride (thanks Becky!) to Revy. Happy to be here, developing new plan and solving tech issues with Spot etc

The flight was super fun, walking from the greyhound station in vernon to launch fun, fighting out of bc bush 80k later not so fun but not boring!! Flight conditions were not great, really happy to have flown what I did.

I’m not done yet. Forecast today not so good but I’m destroyed anyhow, see what I can come up with. Will solve Spot issues this morning…


A huge thanks to Doug N. for the help in Vernon!

-sent from my rotten Apple.

Posted in: Blog

Comments

  1. Kim Graves   August 3, 2011 3:45 pm

    Adventure Will Robinson, Adventure! Sounds like you're having a blast.

    Are you having trouble with your SPOT? Don't know if it's the same problem but I was too. Turned out to be "user error." my problem was inconsistent sending of "I'm OK" and special messages. Sometimes Masha would get them and sometimes she wouldn't. Turned out that I was turning the SPOT off as soon as I saw the blinking email light. But SPOT has a 20 minute cycle in which it sends 3 messages in case the 1st or 2nd don't go through. You have to wait till all the lights are off before turning the power off. This is buried in the manual, but who reads that?! And SPOT customer service was inept. Took me 4 calls to find someone who actually knew what was going on.

  2. Will Gadd   August 3, 2011 4:36 pm

    Thx Kim–is there any way to make the Connect start in Track mode without the App? Thats the problem…. My iPhone was low on juice and Bluetooth was acting up not pairing with spot….

    Thx for any info u have.

  3. Kim Graves   August 3, 2011 8:06 pm

    Will, I assume you have the new "Connect" model. As I understand it, you need the smartphone and app to do everything other than send an SOS signal. But I don't use this model. I have a standalone unit. Hope you have better luck with customer service than I did. Cheers, Kim

  4. prolix   August 4, 2011 5:10 am

    I have enjoyed reading your articles. It is well written. It looks like you spend a large amount of time and effort in writing the blog. I am appreciating your effort. .

    Safety Equipment

  5. Anonymous   August 4, 2011 9:28 am

    hi will,

    always use the standalone spot

    never use the bluetooth unit

    your problems will be solved…

  6. Anonymous   August 4, 2011 9:28 am

    hi will,

    always use the standalone spot

    never use the bluetooth unit

    your problems will be solved…

  7. Anonymous   August 4, 2011 7:41 pm

    I tried out the Connect but could never get it to pair with my phone more than once without having to reinstall the app and start from scratch. So returned it and got a SPOT 2, which works fine. -Josh

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