Just before Christmas I got the word that I was heading up to northern Alberta to work on site for my company Kiewit Energy. At the moment we are building a bitumen froth plant that extracts bitumen out of the oil sands up North.
So a week ago I was sent up in the role as Project Controls Engineer, I think my bosses got a kick out of sending the new Aussie up north in Jan and Feb which are usually the coldest months of the year and general daytime temperatures at our site during these months are -30 degrees standard....
Usually I would have been on a 14 days work and 7 days off to fly back to Calgary but upon arriving at site our company was having problems with the camps that we were utilising for staff and trade workers and our company had reached a cap on the numbers of beds they could use. So I spent the week up there on site and will hopefully be back there in a couple of months time when the bed situation is sorted.
In my time up there though I found out that these Canadian trade guys are pretty hardcore working outside in -20 to -30 (if not lower) temperatures. I went out for an hour and a half last week in -32 to watch a steel module being set in place and my hands were pretty numb afterwards.
From a construction view it gets much harder to get a number of things done but these Canadians have figured out ways to get around them like when they pour concrete in these temperatures they have little shelters around the pour area to heat the concrete so it will actually stand excavating in the winter becomes much harder as the ground is also frozen.
So the job is a froth plant which basically filters out the bitumen out of the sand that is dug up in the surrounding oil sands. Below are some photos of the construction that show how big the project is, my companies section of the works is a bit over $1 Billion worth... Quite an extraordinary project.
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| Overview of the site up at Kearl Lake |
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| The froth plant at sunset in winter |
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| Night works constructing the plant |
So I have come back to Calgary now in the meantime and I am straight back into it with snowboarding on the weekends, learning to ice skate and play hockey and back to hanging out with some friends.
On the weekend we went to Lake Louise snowboarding as Suzy and I usually do. It was a cold weekend on the mountain sitting at about -23 degrees without the windchill but was a super sunny and lovely bluebird day. We had a great day playing around in the sun and having a couple of beers on the hill. Below are a couple of good shots that we took over the day in the forever beautiful rockies. I keep going every weekend but I never get bored of the views and surrounding scenery of these mountains.
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| Some of the views on the drive to Lake Louise |
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| Strapping in for a beautiful day at Louise |
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| Just hangin out today |
Also it's a running joke that I keep telling Suzy that she is a useless guide because I took her home to show her koalas and kangaroos out the back of mum and dads place and she is yet to find me any wildlife (though she really has shown me a fair bit) but just as we were joking about it on the way home and she was saying keep your eyes out for some wildlife when we spotted about 10-12 Elk just chilling in a kids playground on the way back to Calgary. It was quite funny because the sign there states that dogs aren't allowed in the park, but apparently a dozen Elk is ok. These guys don't have any horns but were quite curious to take a look at us when we pulled up. Such lovely animals and a good end to a great day.
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| Elk chilling in the park (1st Feb 2014) |
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| The elk in the park again with the sign pretty funny |
I am just waiting on a new Go Pro camera so hopefully some more exciting photos soon in coming blog posts. Bit hard to use the old phone camera to get action shots and have out in the snow so the new camera will def help out.
So another part of Canadian life style as you may already know is ice hockey. So I have been to a couple now but managed to go watch a really good game last week Calgary Flames vs Chicago Blackhawks. I mean Calgary is a pretty rubbish team and Chicago are unreal but was a really good game to watch and surprisingly Calgary ended up winning 5-4 in overtime. Below is a photo of the teams during warm up.
Also these crazy Canadians had a cool halftime show where they did human bowling down the ice. They slingshot people down on little tobogans and try to take out the plush pins. Would be super fun to be apart of and was pretty cool to watch. Here is some footage, I was pretty far away but you get the general idea.
#anaussielivingincanada
#dingotravels #aussie #canada
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