We’re stopped on Highway 37 just south of Bob Quinn Lake. It’s a beautiful day. At that point the highway runs through a narrow valley with mountains rising on both sides of the car. The landscape is awesome. The bugs are awful.

Other drivers get out of their vehicles to see what’s going on, or to perhaps start chatting with someone, but are quickly driven back inside by the mosquitoes. Chris Brinton grabs his camera and starts shooting a few scenics, but pretty soon he’s also driven back into the car. After the doors being open we’re battling the bugs inside the car too. I’m getting somewhat antsy.

We’re late for a meeting with the spokesperson for Alta Power, who is supposed to give us a tour of the Forrest Kerr power plant on the Iskut river.

But I do recognize the irony… we’re being held up by right of way clearing for the power line that brought us up here in the first place. Without the Northwest Transmission Line, Forest Kerr wouldn’t be built, and the Red Chris Mine wouldn’t be under construction, and we wouldn’t be here. Finally the traffic began to move and we were again underway, but still late. I was driving, and I have to admit I may have exceeded the speed limit by a kilometer or two racing to our rendezvous.

We work in a business where, despite planning and foresight, a lot of the success of a shoot depends on luck. I am always somewhat surprised when people actually show up for a meeting with a TV news crew and are willing to let us into their lives. We arrived at the airstrip at Bob Quinn Lake at 12:30 p.m., about 30 minutes late. Except for the three or four guys partying in the parking lot, there was no one there. Bob Quinn is not a town. It’s basically a highway’s yard and a lodge. The air strip is literally just that – a gravel strip. No terminal, no tower, just a couple tanks of fuel someone left at one end of the runway.

We’re in the car trying to decide what to do and I notice a twin engine plane approaching from the south. The aircraft is quite high --- and I believe it must be flying on to Dease Lake, but it banks sharply and descends. Chris hauls out the camera, we set up the tripod on a picnic table and shoot the landing.

The plane speeds past what we thought was the “terminal” and stops at a parking lot at the end of the runway. Unseen by us, there are several cars waiting for it there. We meet up with Neil Mackie from Alta Gas and begin our trip to Forest Kerr. We were late but so was the Mackie’s plane. Another crisis passes.

The road to Forest Kerr is gravel, and winds through wild mountainous terrain (I deleted “Every kilometer the driver has to rattle off his position over the radio… “pickup in at 22” etc.”) and it took us about an hour to get to the construction site from the highway.

The Forest Kerr power plant is a massive project. Construction cranes swing back and forth over the area where water from the Iskut river will be diverted down a tunnel and through a turbine to generate electricity. Our tour guide is a young man from Calgary who says he likes the camp job. This plant will produce enough power to meet the needs of 70,000 homes, but this is about supplying power to industry not homes. It will feed into the Northwest Transmission line when it’s complete in 2014. BC hydro will pay the company a premium for power generated here in order to make the project viable for Alta Gas. Critics say the power line and power project amount to a subsidy to the mines and other industry expected to use the juice.

The shoot at Forest Kerr went well. It’s a huge camp housing about 300 workers.

It’s a completely self contained place – and even if snowed in during the winter the camp could survive for weeks without re-supply. And they eat well.

(As someone who worked in camps years ago, I can tell you that’s a very important factor.) The chef says the workers seem to have a separate stomach for gravy, because they want it for every meal.

A construction site with lots of interesting machines making noise is candy for a television cameraman. Chris shot some amazing pictures, including a trip underground where the power house is being constructed. Editorially, it’s a good story, about infrastructure being put in place to power significant industrial development.

It was about 5 p.m. by the time we got back to the gate at the highway. Unfortunately the gate was locked, and the guards were gone. Our guide had taken down the combination for the gate, but it didn’t seem to work. Another glitch in an already long day. The gate was about a kilometre from the highway where we parked our car. I decided to walk down to collect the car and return for Chris and the gear; we had to make some miles. I walked down a gravel road in the middle of nowhere and the guys behind me yelled that I should watch for bears. But before I got out of sight, somehow the combination that wouldn’t work, worked and the gate was opened. They picked me up, we returned to our car and continued on our way the Tagogga Lodge. Around every bend I’m struck by the natural beauty and remoteness of this corner of the province.