In the spring of 1951 after my mediocre two years at Victoria College, at the urging of a couple of friends I joined a Provincial topographic survey group. My brother Dick, with his west coast commercial fishing troller, didn’t need me that summer because he had a deck hand. The survey was heading for Northern BC - to the Stikine River country. It’s area had not been precisely documented and the government had embarked on a program to closely delineate the land contours, lakes, rivers and resource potentials. Traditional topographic surveying used a surveying instrument called a theodolite which had a fairly strong telescope and a mechanism for recording elevations and angles. It was housed in a secure heavy metal removable dome. Primitive by today’s standards.
Land contours were plotted by placing markers on prominent hills or mountains which could be viewed through the instrument and angles and elevation between “stations” could be measured. From these readings, land contours could be determined. This method was very slow. It was a standard apparatus for land surveying. I may have some details wrong.
After the war, in the later 1940s, new surveying techniques were required. The development of accurate air photography from the war and the emergence of small reliant helicopters offered a leap ahead for surveying large often remote areas. Carl Agar, a former bomber pilot together with others - I seem to remember the name Alf Stringer - formed the first local helicopter company called Okanagan Helicopters and the B.C. government signed a contract to provide services for surveying in Northern B.C on a trial basis. I think their first surveying contract was the summer of 1949- not sure.
The helicopters decided upon were Bell Jet Rangers, a small versatile two man machine which was modified with skids and mesh transporting platforms about six feet long for carrying surveying gear and supplies attached to each side. The helicopters in the MASH show were these same machines adapted by the Americans for service in the Korean War. They sent pilots up north for training in mountain flying which had been pioneered by Agar.
Carl Agar was an engaging character. There is a street named after him at the Vancouver Airport South Terminal. I think that he was somewhere in his 40s when I met him. He was brisk, heavy gruff voiced and smoked like a chimney. As a result he had a moist rattly chest with occasional moist cough. Some wondered how he passed the flying medical. He was a master piloting the helicopter and it was rumoured that he could load a carton of eggs on the side carrier and transport them intact. He was also rumoured to be able to roll a cigarette while flying the helicopter, a two handed job on these models. There was the main central control stick and a side stick to regulate the pitch on the big blade. I was flying up a remote valley with him one time and mentioned this attributed skill. Without a word, he wrapped his left arm around the pitch stick and with the hand free, pulled out his rollings and by jockeying both sticks, he deftly rolled his cigarette and LIT it !! Case closed !!
The survey party consisted of about a dozen guys. It was led by Gerry Emerson a full time surveyor with the Provincial Government in Victoria. He was very experienced. There were several similarly employed men who were land surveyors. The rest of the party were the cook and a number of young guys from college - nineteen year olds like me. I was in pretty good shape after a winter playing rugby at Victoria College. We were hired to be surveyors assistants or “mules” whose main jobs were to haul the 50 pound packs to the surveyors stations- usually up hill! I needed all my fitness.
We were flown to Prince Rupert on commercial air transport, then in groups up the Portland Canal in old Norsemen sea planes to the abandoned town of Stewart at the head of canal. Once a busy mining centre in 1951, it was a ghost town but intact. Houses and buildings stood, some of them with dishes on the table and blankets on the beds. It was eerie. We put up tents and checked the gear. Some one came up with a softball and using a piece of a branch for a bat, we played some ball on the abandoned diamond. Up the valley a short distance was a very long elevated cable that apparently transported ore down from the hillside. A road led a short distance past the still operating Premier Mine and bunk houses, ending across the Alaskan border at the small village of Hyder. We walked over and there was actually an operating saloon. I always remember the bar tender in a traditional apron came out on his porch and waved a greeting. He pulled out a pistol, threw a can into a big puddle and emptied the gun to make the can dance. We were impressed.
After several days we were ferried to Bowser Lake which was the survey finish point from the previous year. A base camp had been established there and we joined the helicopter crew. Besides Agar, there were several other pilots, a mechanic and helper. The mechanic was a great big guy. He was the first guy except for the police that I ever saw carrying a big handgun on his belt. He apparently had a phobia about bears. Someone said that this pea shooter wouldn’t bother a bear and maybe he could use it to shoot himself if attacked!
The camp was a short distance from Gunanoot’s grave, a First Nations guy accused of murder who was pursued by the police in the wilderness for many many years in the 1920s without being caught. He became a folk hero. Many felt that he was innocent but unlikely to survive white man’s justice. The grave was covered by a crude deteriorated wooden marker with the barely discernible inscription of his name. There are books about him.
The survey technique was to use the helicopter to leap frog a surveyor and “mule” (like me!) from mountain to mountain, up the sides of the valleys, as high as the somewhat under powered helicopter could land. I think the maximum was about 5200 feet. The pair would be deposited there with a pup tent, sleeping bags, Coleman stove and food. My issued air mattress slowly lost air and I gradually subsided onto the rocks. My thin short sleeping bag only reached the level of my arm pits so I slept in my heavy warm timber cruisers jacket zipped up for warmth.
Our job was to scale the surrounding peaks, sometimes 2500 feet above our camping point, to establish a view point for distant occupied peaks and also valley stations. Here we would setup the instrument, tripod and large heavy camera that I lugged on my back. Weather was always a problem so if visibility was poor because of cloud or snow we would have to hunker down until it cleared, sometimes a day or two. At this selected survey point, we would use the telescope in the instrument to pinpoint other stations and determine elevations and angles from which - back at the offices - land contours could be composed. The camera was rotated and a panorama view from the point was obtained. We then cemented a brass bolt with coded numbers on its large flat head into the survey point. A rock cairn was constructed about four or five feet high so other stations could visualize it from afar. Very full days. Exhaustion. Powdered food awaited. We were so hungry that it tasted delicious. One was French’s powdered potatoes that I acquires a taste for. Powdered eggs dusted on canned Spam and fried was considered a treat. Sometimes we supplemented our diet with ptarmigan, a plump native bird bigger than a pigeon. They could be approached closely and a well aimed rock would result in a breast and drumstick delicious meal.
Helicopter rides and landings were sometimes an adventure in themselves. Gusting winds, irregular surfaces and ceiling limitations were often a challenge. Carl would choose a landing spot at a maximum height and park at the edge of a cliff or over a glacier thousands of feet below. We were in a doorless bubble and looking down. The view was unobstructed and scary. There was regularly not enough lift to get us off, so we would wait on the cliff edge with the engine at full revolutions for an inevitable wind gust coming up the mountain. When it was felt, Carl would bounce the machine forward and dump it in free fall to gain air speed. Great for focussing your attention - similar to being sentenced to being shot sunrise. Judicial maneuvering of the pitch stick to control the big blade was like bumping the brakes on a car driving on ice - the helicopter would gradually pull out of the free fall after a few hundred feet. My stomach usually stayed at the departure point. I was always careful to pee before this event !!
Base camps were in the valleys or on lakes to facilitate incoming supplies. They were flown in by Queen Charlotte Airline’s pre-war float planes. One time after two weeks in the mountains, I was rotated through a well placed camp where I had swims and good meals for a while. The best one was on the shore of Kinaskan Lake, a largish beautiful valley variety. It was heaven. Several American pilots were there training with Carl. I could see trout jumping, so after supper a couple of times, the cook, Freddie and I went out in the camp collapsible canvas boat and - using his small telescopic fishing outfit and a clipping of some of my red shirt tail as a lure - we trolled and continually caught and released 12-14 inch native rainbow trout in profusion. Fish dinners were on offer. One evening we released over sixty fish in a couple of hours.
It was during my camp visit that we lost the helicopter. Gerry our boss had a special licence to shoot deer, moose or sheep for camp meat. At Kinaskan, a young moose was spotted across the lake and Carl took Gerry with his rifle over and shot it. Carl landed in a nearby boggy area to let Gerry butcher the moose. On take off he caught the end of a skid and it flipped the helicopter over. The big blade shattered and sprayed the bush with shrapnel bits. Gerry dove behind a log and Carl ended upside down hanging from his harness. No fire. Gerry was calling to Carl to see if he was ok- he was. As he climbed out under the bare blade mast there was as stream of cursing ending in “that cracks it." A large part of the blade was discovered washed-up on the other side of the lake days later.
The loss of the helicopter meant that another had to be flown up from Vancouver, a long trip in stages. My return to the mountains was delayed. Oh well, I lounged around the base camp eating, reading and fishing a bit. I helped out in the kitchen. The cook, Freddy, was a short chubby guy and we got along well. Years later I met him again in the post mortem room of St. Joseph’s hospital in Victoria where I was doing a summer medical student job in pathology. He had serious heart disease and died relatively young.
Bye and bye the replacement helicopter arrived. My holiday was over so back to the mountains I went. One other base camp on Edentegeon Lake further up the valley was nice and we spent a few days there. Freddy the cook had departed and the new cook was kind of a jerk. He had brought a small gold pan with him and was often seen panning away in the gravel of any nearby stream. The guys borrowed his pan, took a file and shaved some crumbs off one of the brass bolts. They then went to a small stream next to the camp, picked up a bit of sand in the pan, sprinkled the golden brass bits in and brought it back to camp with straight faces. He was very excited. I left shortly after but I was told that he was so angry and humiliated when he found out that he later quit .
The summer, and the helicopter marched on. We frequently saw wild life - bears, moose, deer and lots of smaller furry things. One time they put us down in a swampy area in the valley to construct a wooden teepee of logs around which we wrapped bolts of white cloth. This could be seen from mountain stations for triangulation purposes. The only drier spot to pitch our tent was on an obvious game trail. OK, but in the night there was quite a few heavy hoof beats and loud sniffing around the tent. There were lots of signs of bears but they kept away.
Near this camp was a guided American hunting party of men and several young women who packed-in from Telegraph Creek. The girls looked good to us through the telescope. I had a terrible patchy beard and my clothes were in tatters. Fortunately the lake provided a bath but we were forbidden to fraternize. Lucky for them. We looked like wild men.
My last assignment for my summer surveying job was to fly into the Stikine Rver town of Telegraph Creek to prepare a site for the following base camp. This suited me fine so off I went in the helicopter with an axe, saw and back pack. Us students were allowed to depart home before Labour Day in anticipation of the impending school year. As the helicopter swung over low above the town I noticed people coming out of their houses looking up. The only flat spot to land was on the school yard above the town. We touched down in the middle of the field, thinking that school was out for the summer. However, there must have been some sort of an assembly inside. As we were shutting down, I became aware that we were in a ring of First Nations adults and children who were standing around the helicopter. It departed, and here I was in the centre of this speechless group. Apparently it was the first helicopter that many of them had seen and the first one into the village.
My partner came in later and we cleared a base camp spot in the bush at the outskirts of the village. I remember having a very old native man pointed out to me, who was saddling and mounting a horse. He was said to be over 100 years old. Shortly after, I caught a ride with a supply Norseman float plane back to Prince Rupert. Lovely flight and I found a pocket book in the back seat where I rode. It was Nabokov’s “Lolita”, just published and banned all over the place for its explicit content - which meant of course that I had to read it!! Next to the pilot, there was a documentary camera man with a huge camera which he used to take pictures as we weaved in and out between the peaks.
After our arrival in Rupert, I met-up with the other guys in the party and we were put up in an older hotel. Showers and early nights were the order on arrival. Sleeping on a soft mattress was fitful after sleeping on the rocks for months. I couldn’t get comfortable so I slept on the floor. The next morning everyone was still snoring after 9 am so I dressed and slipped out of the hotel to found a barber shop. My hair was almost down to my shoulders and my beard was a mess. The barber did his best and as I walked back to the hotel I approached my companions, who walked right by me - nobody recognized me!
So I flew back to Victoria and shocked my mother. I weighed 220 pounds when I left and was 180 when I got home. She immediately began to push food at me. I told here about the delicious French’s powdered potato’s, and powdered eggs. With an arched eyebrow she prepares some for me. Totally disgusting !! If you are famished and are climbing mountains anything tastes good .
So off to UBC the following week. But that’s another story.
