The Summer of Living Dangerously (But Safely) - California Land ...

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hard 40 minute ride I found his ATV parked on the dusty dirt
road next to the tracks. He was off setting a cross. In the carry
basket on the back of the ATV was a headless rattlesnake
body, 46” long and with 13 buttons on his rattle. Alive, it would
have been over four feet long. The carcass had several puncture
wounds and I’m guessing that adrenaline took over when
Conor started spearing. At home that night, he skinned the
snake and pinned the skin to a board to dry. The skin, with rattles
intact, rode in the back window of his car for a few days
and is now in a frame on the wall of his apartment.
One of the tasks that I have to do annually at a couple of
the mines is to survey the tails, both above the water line and
below so as to determine the amount of material placed there
since the previous year. The portion in the water requires primitive
hydrographic techniques. I have a small flat-bottomed
boat that I have outfitted with a rod, clamped upright to the
side. A GPS antenna sits atop the rod and the transponder for
a depth sounder is affixed to the bottom. I sail around the lowlevel
cyanide solution collecting data, which is postprocessed,
into a topographic map of the mud surface. This
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The Summer of Living Dangerously (But Safely)
requires someone to drive the boat while I collect data, someone
like Conor. The only real hazards are launching the boat
from the HDPE-lined embankment and getting in and out of
the boat. Typical desert winds can add a bit of chop to the
water and you breathe a certain amount of acrid cyanide mist
but it’s not any worse than the air in some of the cities I have
been in. Conor became quite adept at trolling for topo in the
course of surveying two of the larger tails ponds.
And so at the end of summer, the boy went back to
school. He survived all of the hazards to which I had subjected
him and actually seemed to like the whole experience.
Whether he ends up hearing the call to become a surveyor or
not probably depends more on whether his wicked slider continues
to develop, but at least he has seen some of the more
interesting things that we surveyors do. Someday NSPS
hopes to produce a surveying safety video, an effort that I
wholeheartedly support. I hope that along with the obvious
discussion of traffic, high-rise and electrical safety, that all of
the hazards discussed above are mentioned, along with dangerous
falls; exposure to poisonous minerals such as realgar
(high arsenic content) and sulfides that in contact with rain or
snow generate plumes and rivulets of sulfuric acid; ticks; poison
oak and ivy; poisonous spiders; killer bees; sun burns;
dehydration; heatstroke; drowning; frostbite; tunnel cave-ins;
radioactivity; alligators; mountain lions and bears. Should I
mention angry landowners with guns?
Not every surveyor will work in an environment where he
or she can encounter such potential dangers, but rest assured,
if there is a hazard somewhere, a surveyor is working alongside
it, (and safely, I hope). Whether working or just going
about your day, remember that safety is an attitude.
Note: the author’s company, Alidade, Inc. received an
Excellence in Safety award from Newmont Mining
Corporation for 2008, having compiled over 3000 man-hours
on various Newmont properties without any accidents.
www.californiasurveyors.org