If there is anyone loonier than geologists, it has to be the people that live permanently in the North Country. They are hardy beyond belief. They can fix anything under ridiculous conditions, and they always seem to have the tools they need handy. I knew one guy whose pickup truck threw a rod when he was alone about 60 miles into bush from the nearest road. He rigged a tripod with a pulley and proceeded to pull the engine. He then removed the crankshaft. Try doing that at -30°F all alone.
He determined it needed to be re-ground before the rod could be replaced. He decided to save a trip and carry the crankshaft out when he went to get a new rod. The crankshaft is heavy, so he decided to travel light. (Trust me, going any distance on snow shoes is a lot of work. The most efficient way to move is trotting with a waddling gait so the tips of the shoes don’t sink too deeply into the snow.) Thus, he left his rifle behind to save weight. It would take three days to walk back to the highway to pick up a ride. About half a day into the trip a pack of wolves started to follow him. Did he go back for his rifle? Of course not! He assumed they were just curious. There was enough scrub wood to make a fire each night and he could see the firelight reflecting off their eyes, as they circled in the darkness around his camp site. They stuck with him for two days. I would have left the crankshaft and taken the rifle.
Field crews worked three weeks on and one week off. I spent the week off in the lounge of the Hay River Hotel. I hung out with a couple of bush helicopter pilots there. One was very proud that he had walked away from thirteen (13) helicopter crashes. One job they had while I was there was to pick up a ski plane whose ski had caught on the ice on a lake and had broken. They had a big Huey cargo chopper and went down to pick it up. They hooked a cable on the plane, picked it up, and started to fly home. There was a small problem. The plane was hanging below them from a cable and once it was in the air, it was a big airfoil that wanted to fly itself. So it was swinging around gracefully below them pulling the chopper hither and yon.
The most stable position for a helicopter is upside down. As a result, a chopper pilot must keep both hands and both feet on the controls at all times. Otherwise, very bad things can happen — and that’s when things are going well. Given that sort of meta stability, a prudent pilot might have put the plane back on the lake and flown in a repair crew to fix the ski. Not these guys; they flew it 100 miles back to Hay River. I suggested to them that doing such things might have had something to do with having thirteen crashes, but they saw no connection.