North Slope - part 2

Last blog showed a little about "camp" life on the slope with respect to basic living conditions, but the coolest thing is that there are ways to entertain yourself outside of work!

What you see when you're working

Game Room

Here's a photo of the game room.  There's a few pool tables, darts, foosball, some round tables that is conducive to playing one of the many board games laying around or watching some football.

 

 

Meeting room I spent all my time in

The photo above is where I spent all my time working.  This meeting room would be packed with operators, engineers, instrument technicians, etc.  I was controlling a program on the TV and documenting scenarios that may have safety or environmental impacts as well recommendations to mitigate the hazards.  The following 3 photos is where I spent all my free time. 

Atrium/Greenroom

You'll notice that this is a glass room on all sides with the ceiling open to the above floor which contains the gym and track.  Also in the above photo you can see a few little rectangle windows with their shades drawn.  Those are rooms that employees sleep in while they're on their 2 week rotation.  The room I had (from last blog) was an exterior room with a window to outside whereas these unlucky guys have interior rooms with lots of gym and basketball noise.  The facility is a 24 hr work environment, so some of those guys are sleeping during the day.  Bummer!

Atrium/Greenroom

There's a few little tables in the atrium.  That's where I sat to talk to Wayne and my mom. 

Atrium/Greenroom

You can't see it but there is a little rock garden waterfall toward the back wall so you hear nice peaceful water sounds.  So, it was a tranquil zen environment that was ideal for calming me after long workdays. 

Living Room

The above picture is essentially the living room.  This is where I watched Bronco preseason games during my off time.  Other operators were siting in this room cheering for their teams.  The only thing that seemed amiss was that there was no tailgating!  No wings, no beers.  The campus is COMPLETELY DRY!

Theater

A very cool feature is this theater.  They play various new movies twice a day to accomodate both the day and night sleepers.  The theater contains stadium seating with pretty cushy chairs that recline!

Lap Pool

The camp also contains a lap pool, wet and dry saunas and a hot tub.  Pretty cool huh?  You'll notice that there is one window with no blinds.  That window goes to a hallway toward employee's rooms.  It's pretty funny you could see people swimming at eye level while walking to your room.  You can see three additional windows with their blinds drawn. On the other side of those windows is the game room.

Gym with Vollyball Courts

As I mentioned previously, the atrium is 2 floors high.  In the photo below, you can see the tree on the right.  In the above photo, you can see windows to operators rooms and around the gym/volleyball area is a full track.

Gym

Here is some of the gym equipment and a few leaves from a tree from the atrium.

Tundra

I had no idea what "Tundra" was.  There it is above.  Looks like dried up/dead grass sitting in lots of water.  It's basically like grassy swamp land but it's really important for the permafrost.  Here is some more pictures of the facility.

Pipeline

Facility

 

Pipeline

 

Mountains on the flight home

 

Lots of water on the Slope

Pretty cool to visit it once especially when it's not -50F.  Didn't see polar bears but I did enjoy an experience and visit a place that not many people ever experience/visit.

 

Love,
      Heidi
           &
           Wayne