Mike Pearson's Adventures on a Pale Blue Dot

Most of the beautiful old iron has been dragged away now. The park like setting of West Coast forest and rusty machines that were carefully tended and landscaped for years is now bare. These photos are some from my collection that have not had too much public exposure. The sexier images are elsewhere in the blog. ( the story of finding the property is back in Oct 2011 ....the links to other Sterloff property images are here.. http://adventuresinmikeslife.blogspot.ca/2012/07/sterloff-trucksmid-1940s-peterbilt-and.html Collapsed roof on part of the sawmill that was off to the side of the property Sawmill in the Sterloff property Sawmill and spit cedar shake roof Radiator for the power plant on the sawmill deck

Cut 5 wasn't the biggest or the nastiest piece of blasting work on the Sea to Sky project. It was however perched directly above the ferry terminal ticket booths at Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver...all 40,000 cubic meters of it. The usual way to blast, is to start at the "free'" face and send the blast outwards. As powerful as the explosives are, they have their limits on what can be accomplished. Shooting to a "free" face, allows the rock to easily move away from the wall behind. Blasting to a "free" face also greatly minimizes the vibration in the ground when the shot is fired...and offers much more control of fly-rock. Loading a Cut 5 pre-shear blast The roll of green stuff that looks like garden hose...is actually a very high strength explosive The way that Cut 5 was situated, prevented us from doing things the usual way. There were two reasons for this. One was that the ticket booths were in the direct line of fire, if we shot aw...