The Alaska Expedition of 2010

Earlier this year (between mid June and late September), I spent a decent amount of time working in Alaska. The majority of the work was for a pipeline that's proposed to go in way down the road, but a small amount at the beginning was spent outside of Fairbanks, working at a mining camp. Unlike most of the survey / excavation that I've done in the lower 48, a lot of the work involved hiking several miles a day (along the sides of steeply sloped mountains on more than one occasion), regardless of the weather. Since there's only so many warm months in the great white North, they utilize every day no matter how cold / rainy / miserable it might be. All in all it was a great experience, and despite three straight months of solitude deep in the arctic circle, I had a lot of fun. In my mind, there's few things that I've seen recently quite as incredible as the Northern lights, or weeks and weeks of continuous sunshine. On top of that, seeing my fair share of wolves, and a grizzly bear fight, I wouldn't hesitate to head back up if the opportunity arose.

Oh, and the pay was friggin awesome.