Saturday, May 1, 2010

Rain

It's been raining for the last three days straight, so work on the trail has come to a temporary halt. A few times, it's tapered off to a mild drizzle only to start pouring again a few minutes later. Besides the risk of hypothermia getting soaked when it's only around 45F, everything is squishy and slippery back in the woods... not safe working conditions when you're handling a chainsaw (which I've already proven once this week, thanks!). 

Since the ground is mostly still frozen, all this rain has nowhere to go and is just resting in the top few inches. Notice that I said "in" not "on" -- the weird mossy thicket stuff that passes for groundcover here is really spongey and soaks up a lot of water, so it doesn't look that wet outside until you step down on it and sink 6 inches. We have a few puddles of standing surface water, but most of it is that spongey crap. Pour Ripley has found a few places that she sinks up to her belly. Of course, she's loving it, since the only thing cooler than bounding through snowbanks for a dog is digging mudholes :-D

3 comments:

Harryinreno said...

PC;
Are you aware of the good sat image for kentuk creek area on the "Alaska Fire Site"

http://fire.ak.blm.gov/

see "Historical fire info" or "maps - statewide fires"; zoom to kentuk-area close-up and change background layer to "GINA best images"

I believe these are probably best sat image available for this area--I don't know why google earth doesn't show these yet;
These images have been on this site for over a year;

Harry in Reno

Plickety Cat said...

Thanks for the link Harry, we checked the historical section out before buying the property to find out when the fire came through here ('68)... which explains all the deadites on the property.

We keep close tabs on the all the Fire Watch sites, especially during fire season in late summer. Don't want to get caught unawares!

harryinreno said...

PC;
Just a further comment;--the alaska fire site has some very high res sat shots of kentuky creek II and south; one can see your sentinal tree, -- the secret garden spot??--the cabins quite easily north in woggly sub; etc------I thought people might find your progress plot a little more interesting if they could see the overhead; These hi-res sat images do not seem to be available anywhere else;

One needs to modify the background layer to hi-res GINA image after connecting to the fire site--these hi-res sat images really have nothing to do with the historic fire info--many people might not be aware of this;

I hope you don't mind my commenting further here;

Harry in Reno