Chaos in Chibougamau: The First Week of Fieldwork
August, 2020. After months of solitude during the first COVID lockdown, our research team was finally somewhat liberated and on the move again. Our supervisor, Lucie, had secured us a three-week fieldwork campaign in northern Quebec. Two trucks. Two teams of two. Adrien and Nesrine, our group’s Master’s students. Alexandre and I, the PhD students. We set off north from Chicoutimi toward Chibougamau, the road stretching deeper and deeper into the boreal wilderness.
A Proper North American Truck
Even though I had recently obtained my Quebec driver’s license, I was still chickening out of driving. I was more than happy to let Alexandre take the wheel, especially since he seemed to prefer it anyway. Win-win.
The university had provided us with a pair of Ford F-150s. It was the largest truck either of us had been in, let alone driven thus far. Its size and power was clearly impressive. Sitting high above the road gave a commanding view, with very spacious and comfortable seating and engines that had more than enough muscle for the long northern highways. However, for the kind of forest roads and tight access tracks we would soon be navigating, the sheer size of the trucks would prove highly inconvenient.
The long drive north passed easily enough. Alexandre and I filled the hours with endless conversations, comparing cars, sharing relief about finally escaping our pandemic-induced confinement, and making plans for the weeks ahead.
We also had an unusual passenger with us. Alexandre had decided to bring along his cat, Turalyon. Leaving him alone in Chicoutimi for four weeks didn’t feel right, so Alexandre arranged for the cat to stay at a small animal shelter in Chibougamau while we were working in the field. Every few days, after returning from long days of sampling and driving through the wilderness, we would stop by to visit him.
Turalyon was not particularly fond of long car rides. Alexandre had to pull over a few times to clean up some cat puke along the way. Just another fun little bonus activity during our drive north.
Music also became a major part of the journey. Both of us were enthusiastic listeners with overlapping tastes, so the truck stereo quickly turned into a rotating playlist of band recommendations and rediscoveries.
The kilometres rolled by as the forests thickened and the towns grew fewer.
A Mining Town in the Boreal North
Chibougamau is the largest town in northern Quebec’s administrative region—an immense, sparsely populated territory that covers much of the province’s interior. Surrounded by endless boreal forest and lakes, the town sits within the traditional lands of the Cree Nation.
The region first drew attention during the 19th century when prospectors began exploring its mineral potential. But it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that Chibougamau truly emerged as a mining center, after significant copper and gold deposits were discovered in the surrounding area.
Today the town remains an important hub for exploration and mining operations across northern Quebec. Geological surveys, drilling campaigns, and mineral development projects continue to bring researchers, geologists, and industry workers through the region. Companies such as SOQUEM maintain a strong presence, supporting exploration efforts across the vast northern landscape.
For a group of geology students heading into the field, it was very much the right place to be.
Barracks Living
Once in Chibougamau, we settled into our temporary accommodation at a SOQUEM work barracks on the edge of town.
It was certainly no Hotel Manoir D’Auteuil—a luxurious stay we had enjoyed during a conference trip the year before—but it provided everything we needed to get through the campaign. Well… almost everything.
The tap water, for instance. It smelled… swampy. And it tasted just as questionable. As we soon learned, the facility wasn’t connected to the city’s main water system. The barracks relied on its own untreated water source, which explained the unusual flavour.
Alexandre and I quickly made the executive decision to stick to bottled water. Adrien, on the other hand, decided to wing it. His stomach protested the decision rather violently. After several days of intense bathroom visits, a valuable fieldwork lesson had been learned.
Organizing Ourselves
Lucie would only be joining us during the second week of the campaign. Until then, we were largely responsible for organizing and coordinating the work ourselves. Without a clearly defined leadership structure, the early days required a bit of improvisation. Lucie had informally suggested that Adrien take on a coordinating role, mainly because he had already spent a year working in Quebec and was somewhat familiar with local field protocols. However, it wasn’t presented as a strict hierarchy, but more of a practical suggestion.
In practice, this meant that everyone approached the work with slightly different ideas about how things should run. Adrien tended to lean toward established field routines and procedures. For example, he suggested that we follow a schedule similar to one he had used during a previous placement with the Ministry, where Sundays were reserved as rest days. Alexandre and I looked at the situation a bit differently.
Our campaign was limited to just four weeks, and we had a substantial amount of work to complete. From our perspective, it made more sense to remain flexible and take advantage of good weather windows whenever possible. Rather than fixing a weekly day off, we preferred to let the weather dictate our rest days. As it turned out, that approach worked out quite well.
We ended up working straight through several Sundays when the weather was ideal. Later, when a particularly miserable stretch of rain rolled through during the week, we simply stayed back at the barracks and took that opportunity to rest while the others pushed through damp conditions with limited progress.
Time Versus Caution
Another topic that sparked some discussion was the question of daily working hours. Adrien suggested we follow a strict afternoon cut-off time. No matter what we were doing in the field, we should be heading back toward the barracks by around 4 p.m.
Alexandre and I once again leaned toward a more flexible approach. In August, daylight in northern Quebec stretches well into the evening, and it felt almost wasteful to leave productive field sites while the sun was still high in the sky. Our instinct was to maximize our time outdoors whenever conditions allowed.
At the same time, Adrien’s caution wasn’t without merit. Fieldwork in remote terrain carries its own set of risks. If something were to go wrong—vehicle trouble on a forest road (foreshadowing), an injury on an outcrop, or getting temporarily stuck somewhere off the grid—it might require assistance from the other team. Pushing too far into the evening could mean that any unexpected situation would have to be dealt with as daylight faded, increasing the complexity and risk of resolving the problem.
In other words, what Alexandre and I saw as maximizing productivity, Adrien viewed through the lens of field safety and contingency planning.
Neither approach was inherently right or wrong. It was simply a reflection of different working styles. Alexandre and I tended to focus heavily on efficiency and optimization, while Adrien leaned more toward structured procedures and established routines. Like many field teams thrown together for the first time, we were still figuring out our rhythm.
Two Projects, Two Field Strategies
Because Alexandre had more intensive fieldwork to do in the immediate area, we decided to divide our schedule somewhat strategically. Weekdays would be dedicated to his work, while weekends would be used for my own sampling campaign.
Alexandre’s PhD research focused on the Chibougamau pluton, a massive granodiorite intrusive rock body underlying much of the region around the town. Formed roughly 2.7 billion years ago during the late Archean, the pluton represents an ancient magmatic system associated with significant gold mineralization in the region. His work aimed to conduct a detailed petrogenetic study of these rocks—essentially reconstructing how the magma formed, evolved, and ultimately crystallized deep within the Earth’s crust.
My own project took a somewhat broader approach. Instead of focusing on a single intrusion, I was sampling a number of different late-Archean syenite intrusions scattered across the region, which Lucie and I had preselected before the campaign. These locations were much farther from Chibougamau and often required long drives from our base.
In simple terms, both of us were chasing light pinkish rocks formed from very ancient magmas—just slightly different kinds, and in different places. Alexandre was studying the internal story of one major intrusion. I was comparing several others in order to test the validity of a somewhat debated geological model known as intrusion-related gold systems. Different scientific questions, but somewhat overlapping regions of work.
Day One in the Ghost House
The first day began under a murky sky with light rain in the forecast. We drove northeast out of Chibougamau, gradually leaving pavement behind as we followed increasingly questionable forest roads winding through lakes and dense boreal forest. Somewhere beneath us lay the Chibougamau pluton itself. The intrusion stretches across dozens of kilometres beneath the region, extending beneath the large lake in the area.
The roads we were using had once been logging or mining access routes. Many had clearly not seen much maintenance in years. Some looked like they had not seen any maintenance at all. This particular road was a pretty good contender for the worst we’d encounter.
Branches increasingly scraped along both sides of the truck as we pushed forward through narrow overgrowth. Every few minutes I would optimistically reassure Alexandre: Look, it’s getting better. Almost immediately another set of branches would slap aggressively against the doors and mirrors.
This was also where the size of the F-150 started to work against us. These trucks are perfect for the big wide, preferably paved, northern roads. But not for these tight abandoned roads that were slowly being reclaimed by the forest. Now, some people might have suggested parking the truck and continuing on foot. But the distances Alexandre needed to cover for his sampling were enormous. With limited time and an efficiency-focused mindset, we decided to push forward with the vehicle and see how far we could get.
At some point early in the trip, while driving along one of the forest roads, I noticed a strange button on the truck’s key fob marked with a little exclamation point. I had never seen anything like it before, so I jokingly asked Alexandre if it was the panic button. Curious himself, he pressed it—and the truck immediately erupted into a series of loud honks that echoed through the quiet forest, catching both of us completely off guard. So yes… it was indeed the panic button. From that moment on, that’s exactly what we called it.
Later that same day, after wandering through the misty woods in search of rock outcrops, we eventually decided to head back toward the road. The problem was that we weren’t entirely sure where the road actually was anymore. We thought we had a decent sense of direction, but just to confirm, Alexandre pressed the panic button again so we could listen for the truck. The honking came from the complete opposite direction—not slightly off, but entirely wrong. And this wasn’t even in the dense jungle-like forest we would encounter later in the trip. It was a humbling reminder of just how easy it was to lose your bearings out here without proper navigation equipment.
The First Day’s Results
And cover ground we did. By the end of the day we had pushed as far along that road as we reasonably could without wasting too much time wandering blindly through the forest on foot. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much reward waiting at the end of the drive.
Outcrops were scarce. Most of what surrounded us was dense forest, marshland, and the occasional lake. Not exactly a rocky paradise for an ambitious geologist on his first field day. Still, we had managed to survey a large area, collect a few samples, and, most importantly, get a better sense of the terrain.
The mood remained high throughout the day. Music played through the truck speakers while we joked constantly about the excellent road conditions and weather. But on the way back, our spirits took a sudden hit.
Remember those branches scraping along the truck? Well… some of them were larger than others. Quite a bit larger. In several places the vehicle had essentially been squeezed through narrow sections of overgrown road. Forced through might actually be a more accurate description. Somewhere along that journey, without either of us noticing, the passenger’s side mirror decided to take a hike. Not the entire mirror assembly. Just the glass. Gone. Vanished into the northern wilderness.
We hadn’t thought to fold the mirrors while navigating what increasingly felt like a boreal jungle. Another lesson learned. Alexandre immediately slammed the truck into a U-turn and we began carefully retracing our path in the hope of recovering the missing mirror. Despite a thorough search and a considerable amount of backtracking, we never found it.
Not Exactly According to Plan
The unexpected mirror recovery operation also meant we pushed our return much later into the afternoon than originally planned. By the time we rolled back into the barracks, it was well past the time Adrien had suggested we should be safely heading back from the field. The situation did not exactly improve the ongoing debate about field schedules and safety margins.
Another tense discussion followed between Adrien and a very frustrated Alexandre, fueled by our late return, the damaged vehicle, and the already diverging approaches to how we thought the field campaign should run.
For the moment, Alexandre and I quietly decided to keep one particular detail to ourselves. Namely, that the truck was now missing a mirror. We were off to a spectacular start.
The Terror of the North
A couple of days later the skies finally cleared and we were rewarded with several bright, sunny days. With the warmth and sunshine, however, came one of the true terrors of northern fieldwork: the insects.
The boreal forest is infamous for its seasonal waves of bloodsucking pests. Four main culprits dominate the warm months, each appearing at slightly different times of the summer, sometimes overlapping in particularly miserable combinations. The most famous worldwide is the mosquito. Ironically, these were often the least annoying of the group at least during the daytime.
Then came the true terror of the north: black flies. These tiny specks looked almost like fruit flies, but they were relentless carnivores. And where there was one, there were usually thousands. They crawled into every opening they could find—ears, sleeves, collars—biting and harassing you constantly. Walking through the forest meant being surrounded by a cloud of them, endlessly probing for exposed skin. They were absolute hellspawns.
The other two members of the northern insect quartet are deerflies and horseflies, but thankfully we encountered relatively few of those during this particular adventure. The black flies, however, were more than enough.
The Jungle of the North
Some days were worse than others, and some locations were far more tolerable. Around town or along major roads things were manageable. But the moment we stepped deep into the forest, or near lakes and swampy areas, the insects quickly reminded us who really owned the place. But for us newcomers, it was pretty brutal.
The forest itself didn’t help matters either. In many places the vegetation was so dense that moving through it became a full-body workout. Progress meant constantly pushing through branches, tangled bushes, and young trees fighting for sunlight. Coming from Europe, it felt almost surreal.
This wasn’t the kind of forest I had grown up with. Not even close. It was more like an overgrown jungle. Without a machete, you were essentially swimming through vegetation, pushing your way forward against an endless green current.
More Bad Luck
On one of the weekdays during our first week, we were traversing a section of what I would generously describe as medium-density forest. That meant it was still somewhat walkable. We carried our usual gear: hammers, sample bags, notebooks. Alexandre had his tablet, and I carried his Garmin GPS unit clipped to my belt.
After finishing our work in the area, we returned to the truck. That’s when I noticed something odd. The only thing still clipped to my pants was the carabiner and the battery clip. The GPS itself was gone. When I had changed the batteries earlier, I had apparently failed to properly lock the safety latch back into place. Somewhere during our trek through the dense vegetation, the bushes must have caught the device and ripped it clean off.
I felt terrible about losing it. Alexandre, meanwhile, was already becoming increasingly demoralized after the string of mishaps we had experienced so far. To make matters worse, the device design itself seemed almost engineered for failure. The small clip used to attach the GPS to your belt was mounted on the battery compartment, not on the main body of the unit. Meaning if the clip came loose, the entire device simply vanished.
Improve your device design, Garmin!
The Quest for the “Pluton de France”
During the first weekend we dedicated Saturday to my project. My target was a large pink blob on the geological map labeled Pluton de France, a sizeable Monzonite intrusion located northeast of Chibougamau. From literature it seemed close enough to what I was hoping to sample for my study.
We tried several old logging roads, driving long stretches only to eventually encounter dead ends. Some roads had collapsed entirely. Others had been completely reclaimed by vegetation. It quickly became clear that any industrial activity in this area had likely been abandoned for many years.
Rather than return empty-handed, I decided to improvise and sample several interesting-looking outcrops along the way. Fieldwork often requires adapting to reality on the ground. After all, there’s only so much you can determine from a rock in hand before laboratory analysis reveals the full story.
At one point we reached a large open clearing left behind by past logging operations. The place felt strangely peaceful. Calm. Quiet. Even the bugs seemed to take a break there. But then we spotted something on the ground. Bear droppings. Suddenly the calm silence of the clearing felt a little less comforting.
A Couple of Hours to Kill
After trying, and failing, to reach the Pluton de France from several different directions, I eventually admitted defeat. We still had some time left in the day, though, and curiosity got the better of me. Just north of our location on the map was a massive lake with a peculiar shape, almost like a giant claw mark carved into the landscape: Lake Mistassini.
From the map it didn’t seem that far away. At least not when zoomed out. We were already roughly halfway between Chibougamau and Mistassini, so why not take the opportunity for a bit of sightseeing? There was just one complication.
Despite the illusion of normality our fieldwork provided, the world was still very much living through the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. We had been clearly instructed that the nearby First Nations communities, including Mistissini and Oujé-Bougoumou, were off limits to outside visitors. And yet here we were. Driving toward Mistassini. Rebels.
A Forbidden Detour
We justified it to ourselves with a simple plan: drive to the lake, take a few photos, refuel, and head back. No interactions with locals. Besides, we were already running low on fuel. The Mistassini gas station was now closer than the one back in Chibougamau. Unfortunately, when we reached the turnoff toward town, we discovered a line of cars waiting at a checkpoint.
The community had set up actual road controls to monitor who was entering and leaving. This is when we started sweating. Turning around was not an option anymore, but Alexandre wasn’t interested in pushing our luck any further either. We would do exactly one thing: reach the gas station, fill up, and leave.
No sightseeing, no lake, No detours. I wasn’t going to push the issue. Alexandre had already had a stressful enough week. And so Lake Mistassini remained unseen. Another small opportunity lost to the rigid world of 2020.
The Beaver Dam
The following day we returned to exploring the Chibougamau area for Alexandre’s project. Another sunny day. Another road our truck was probably never meant to drive on.
Despite appearances, the road actually wasn’t too bad overall. The only questionable part was a small creek crossing in a swampy section. Otherwise, it was quite decent by our new standards. We collected some solid samples, the insects were tolerable, and the day progressed smoothly. But on the drive back something had changed.
The small creek crossing had widened. Part of the road had begun collapsing into the swamp. Still, we had crossed it once already without issue. Surely the second time would be fine. Alexandre eased the truck slowly forward into the muddy water. And then… The truck stopped. Stuck.
We stepped out to inspect the situation and quickly realized the problem. The road had been built over an old beaver dam, and that dam had begun collapsing. The more Alexandre tried to drive out, the deeper the front wheel dug itself into the mud. Water seeped into the growing crater around the tire while the truck slowly tilted sideways like a sinking ship. Eventually the car felt so tilted that I had to pull myself out through the drivers side whenever I wanted to get out.
We tried digging. We tried traction aid under the tires. Nothing worked. After more than an hour of struggling, we finally admitted defeat.
The Accidental Distress Signal
Alexandre pulled out the satellite phone and managed to reach Adrien after several attempts. Meanwhile, I grabbed the SPOT emergency GPS device we had been given for field safety. In case of trouble, we were supposed to send a notification through it so our supervisor Lucie, back in Chicoutimi, would know our situation.
There was just one small problem. During the original briefing, it hadn’t been made entirely clear which button should be used in which situation. The device had three buttons. One was strictly for life-threatening emergencies and would contact national rescue services. The other two were meant for lesser degrees of trouble.
Out of the two, I picked the one that sent a distress alert to Lucie and the entire research team back at the university. This naturally caused a brief panic on their end. Some people began discussing whether national rescue services might need to be contacted. Fortunately, Lucie knew us well enough not to immediately escalate the situation.
So no helicopters were dispatched to rescue two geologists with a truck stuck in the mud.
The Rescue Operation
Adrien and Nesrine were already on their way back to the barracks when Alexandre reached them by phone. They immediately turned around and headed toward our location. Meanwhile, we packed our essentials, locked the truck, and began walking down the road toward the main route.
Thankfully, we hadn’t gotten stuck too far from a larger road, so reaching us wasn’t too difficult. After the week Alexandre had endured, he was clearly bracing himself for another argument about field decisions. But none came. Adrien simply picked us up and tried to lighten the mood. No judgment. These things happen. He was a trooper.
He had also brought along a tow cable. None of us had ever actually attempted a recovery like this before, so a fair amount of improvisation followed. We hooked the two trucks together, stepped back to a safe distance, and Adrien floored it. His truck fishtailed wildly for a moment… Then suddenly our vehicle broke free from the mud with a loud, satisfying suction pop. Cheers erupted.
The crisis was over. And when we returned to base later that evening, we suddenly realized something unfortunate. Oh. Look at that. The passenger-side mirror was missing. What a shame. Clearly it must have fallen off while the truck was stuck in the mud and not at any other point in time… Those damn beavers and their dams.
A Turning Point
For all the misfortunes that plagued our first week—lost mirrors, missing GPS units, insect swarms, collapsing beaver dams—it would ultimately mark the lowest point of the entire campaign. From that moment on, things slowly began to improve.
The remaining weeks of our fieldwork would prove far smoother, far more productive, and far less chaotic. But those first few days in the northern wilderness had already given us stories we would be laughing about for years.
And the rest of the expedition still had plenty in store for us.
