Sunday, March 25, 2012

Snowing... Again... Really

We have gotten some serious snow this year. We have snow up to the doorstep... which is over 2' off the ground and we even shoveled that area!! All our paths look like canyons carved through the snow just wide enough to get the sled through. I must have shoveled at least 10 tons of snow between clearing paths, excavating our stored supplies, and digging the truck out of drifts. There are drifts up to my chest in the woods around us, and most places are at least up to my hips when I punch through the hard pack. CRAZY.

And wouldn't you know, after clearing a whole bunch more while it was sunny and melty last week... it's decided to snow AGAIN. So far, we've gotten at least another 8-9 inches this weekend and it's still coming down hard.  I swear shoveling and snow must be like washing your car and rain.

Other than the return of the sun and temps mostly above zero, you sure wouldn't guess that it's nearly April. Other folks down in the L48 are already harvesting their early garden crops and we can't even see the tops of most saplings much less any soil. I'm betting that we're going to have a long squelchy mucky boggy break up again this year. The truck is already parked at the top of the driveway because of the snow, maybe it's time we took her up to the road before everything turns to mud.

Coming Soon to a Homestead Near You... Lake Wardle v3.0 -- JOY!!

Monday, March 12, 2012

Status Update March 12 2012

OK so this one's going out specifically for Diana (yes you know who you are...).

I know we've been a little quiet for a while, we've taken some time off, and of course received a couple of good dosings of winter crud from the local village. So we've been in a state of mostly hibernation for the past month. However we are alive and well, and are recovering or have recovered from the crud (at times it seems like the gift that just keeps on giving).

So what have we been up to, not much I guess, we miscalculated on the firewood for the heating season, so I've been doing daily patrols to reclaim a bunch of the dead standing we still have from the 1969 fire that came through here. We've also gotten on with a couple of inside tasks while we've been mostly locked out of outside work due to temps (except the firewood of course).

However on the positive front this has given me the ability to reclaim much of my complete lack of video-gaming time from the previous couple of years. Ahhhh. how's that living in the Alaskan bush and playing video games, now I know you guys all are 100% positive I'm crazy, and only 99% positive Plickety is crazy.

We're still looking for our card reader on the photo front, I suspect it's still in the tent, which had a slight discombobulation over the winter, with us not being in it, and getting significantly more snow that we've received in previous years. I'm not sure if we were in it, whether the main ridge support would have given out, or not, maybe we made the right decision to live in the cabin after all. It does make it difficult to recover stuff that was left there however, since the center of the tent is currently about 2' from the floor. Fortunately other than the conduit everything else looks fine. So with some more lengths of Conduit it will be returning to service as soon as we can either figure out how to remove the snow "in" the former roof, or it melts whichever comes sooner.

Other challenges we're having involve the trail from our cabin to the easement, since it's rarely traveled, and with the snow we've had (and drifting) the clearing for the tent we made isn't worth the risk of getting stuck, and because it's a clearing if we do then we can't just winch ourselves out. So the big red truck that can, is currently parked just on our property at the trailhead. The easement is mostly OK, except for where our neighbors dig it up using their vehicles, this is a problem right now, since temps are not as low as they have been so the hardpack tends to fracture under pressure, and surprisingly our truck is light footed in comparison to SUV's and so on. Oh well, these things are sent to try us, in  4-6 weeks we'll be parked out by the Highway anyway.

Anyway that's what's up, and proof positive we make just as many mistakes as anyone else. For instance leaving stuff in an unoccupied wall tent over the winter, and being a little lackadaisical on the trail maintenance.