Mike Pearson's Adventures on a Pale Blue Dot

Here are a few more Cut 9 photos from photographer/videographer Joe Tompai. With notes that I have added to orient you to what it is you are looking at. I've added one of my older photos for contrast between the beginning of the cut and a later stage. Here are a few photos of the Cut 9 wire mesh being installed by the scaling crew....these are all taken by Joe Tompai Me, Joe and machine operator Randy returning from a photo shoot, the landing area is between Cut 7 and Cut 8....photo by Robin MacGregor

 So...in the interest of fairness and telling the other side of the story, I dug up a few Eagleridge Protest/Betty Krawczyk videos. You'll see some of the action at the Bluffs, and hear how the court system dealt with the protesters.  All the workers on the project were given written and verbal instructions to not engage the protesters at any level. We were instructed to stop all operations, call the project manager and wait for an official response. This was the first time that I had seen a protest up close and personal...never mind that it was directed at what I was doing!....This resulted in my curiosity about the passions of protesters...and the photos of anti-Olympics rallies, DTES marches, and the various anti-war/anti-poverty rallies at the Art Gallery. I had a difficult time pulling TV news footage off the web...if any of you can do it...please forward it to me

The Sea to Sky Highway project was a lightning rod for protests and meetings of concerned citizens. The Eagleridge protesters were concerned that their favorite backyard play ground was getting ruined and that the whole thing was a waste of tax payers dough. The local residents were worried about noise,dust, traffic changes and large scale blasting operations in their exclusive West Vancouver zip code.  Along the way, a group of people who lived nearest to the blasting areas, threatened the contractor and government with a class action lawsuit for disturbances caused mostly by the blasting operations. The contractor sent a consultant to meet with several members of the group. He ended up talking in technical terms and further infuriated the residents that he met with. One of the big stumbling blocks for this fellow was that the people he was talking to, were accomplished, successful and smart businessmen. Having someone tell them to just never mind...was a bad move. Worried peopl...

Cut 9, on the Squamish highway project was legendary before we even touched it. Steep, high, covered in trees and pretty much looming over the existing roadway, it was an intimidating sight. Approximately 185,000 to 200,000 cubic meters of rock needed to be removed, while keeping the highway and railroad far below, intact. Cubic meters of rock...to put it into perspective. envision a two story, flat roofed house. 10 meters long ( 33 ft +/- ) and 10 meters wide, 10 meters tall...a cube 10x10x10 meters...that would be 1000 cubic meters. A highway legal dump truck with tandem axles can haul about 8 cubic meters of rock...maybe more maybe less...but let's go with 8. The point being...we had to safely and efficiently remove the equivalent of 200 two story houses, or 25,000 dump truck loads of rock from a ledge that was perched 100 meters above the existing highway. We tried to get loggers in before we started....the heli-loggers wanted the highway closed while they worked...th...