Last June I went to Alaska to train a group of surveyors how to produce land maps using helicopter-based low altitude photogrammetry.
The survey was centered on Huslia in the remote bush north of Fairbanks and was a big success. In conjuction with Topcon and the client, a two-piece article was written and published in the world's survey press.
For me the trip was an adventure to a part of the world I'd always wanted to visit. After leaving a wet, grey Wales, a sweaty stopover in Mineapolis, landing in Fairbanks was just like landing back in Cardiff (grey and wet) - but with more trees. I joined the survey barge which departed 2 weeks earlier after a four hour helicopter flight. The pre-flight briefing involved showing me a loaded pistol under the pilot's seat for shooting bears (only in the eye socket as their heads are too thick to penetrate with a bullet), and a mosquito net ("if we go down and you're too smashed up to walk then the mosquitoes will eat you before the bears get to you") said Chris the Swiss pilot.
Click here too view a slideshow of some of my photographs of the trip
