Life at 40 Below part 3 video/Lunar eclipse

Short and sweet ending to the vid but that's how things go when it's 40 below outside. Up next a look at hauling wood at 40 below.

And here is one of the better pics I got of the Lunar eclipse on Monday night. Beautiful show but it was 35 below and I only made a few trips outside to check it's progress.

Life at 40 Below video Part 2

Here is part 2, don't forget to watch part 1 in the previous post. Click on the link at the bottom of the post an it will take you to the vid on YouTube. I think I have this problem sorted out, sorry about the delay. I'll wrap up with part 3 tomorrow. I should be able to keep all of the videos together from here on.

Life at 40 below video link

I am still having trouble uploading my vids so here is a link to the first of three parts to "Life at 40 Below."



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vk6Uwzn5Nc

40 Below on the Chatanika!

Ahh, it feels good to be back! That little squirrel sure did a number on the interior of the cabin, but thankfully that was the only issue. It took about 2 days to totally thaw out everything in the cabin and get everything inside up to a consistent temperature. The battery compartment did it's job and kept the batteries from freezing, but I made sure to warm up the battery box before I ran the battery charger.

Just as I got the cabin warmed up, the temp outside dropped to 40 below and has been that way for a couple days! I am having no problem keeping the cabin 65 to 75 degrees thanks to all that birch and poplar I cut this fall. I can also stock the stove up and take off for 4 to 6 hours, come back and it's still 70 degrees inside.

I've spent the last few days getting into a rhythm and working myself into a daily routine. Right now we only have a few hours of daylight to work with so you have to make the most of it. I am still doing a lot of work when it's dark but most of the work away from the cabin I wait for some daylight. The sun is so low in the sky we don't get any direct rays just twilight.

I have taken the extra time I have during this darkness to put together some longer videos. I am compressing the videos with some updated software which allows me to make an 8.5 minute video the same size as my older 4 minute vids!

I'll let the video do the talking but I do want to clarify a few things first. In the beginning of the video you'll notice it's very bright in the cabin. This is because even when we have some daylight, it's not enough to illuminate the inside of the cabin and I have to have a light on almost all of the time. To keep from running the batteries down to far, at night I still use a kerosene lamp and candles. Second, the frost under eve of the front door is not all from air leaking from the inside of the cabin. Every time I open the door I get a huge steam cloud and a a lot of that moisture gets caught under the roof. And finally I wanted to point out that I do keep my generator and the chainsaw in the cabin but as soon as either of those machines hits that cold air things don't work almost immediately. And the box I mention for the generator I use to put over the machine while it's running to keep it warm, with only a couple smalls holes for the exhaust power cord outlet.

The pics are self explanatory, one of the thermometer outside the cabin window and the other of myself after a couple hours working outside when it's 40 below.

Hope you enjoy. I have a video about hauling my firewood to the cabin with a sled up next.

Sorry but I am having problems uploading the video, again, so I will try to put the vid up on a different post.

Work done, back to the Chatanika!!

Finally wrapped up work in town and tomorrow morning I'm heading up to Murphy Dome to meet up with Doug to get a ride on the snowmachine back to the river. I would just hike in but after spending so much time in town I have some much stuff that I'd have to pull at least 2 sleds to get all of it to the river.

I forgot to take a picture of my tent at Billie's before I took I down, it looked more like an igloo than a tent, being set up in one place for so long. And with that freezing rain we had it took quite an effort to break it out of the ice. Luckily we didn't get the 40 to 50 below temps they predicted while I was staying at Billie's. I think the coldest it got to be was 30 to 35 below. With all of the snow I had piled on the tent to help insulate those temps were very tolerable.

Needless to say I am very excited to get back to the lake cabin. Right now it sounds like I'll spend the rest of December at the cabin. In early January Doug will leave for South East Asia and I will move up to his cabin on the hill to care take while he's gone. I believe he will be gone for about 2 months so I'm sure I'll have plenty of material for the blog!

Sleeping in a bed is going to feel pretty good and I am looking forward to having Sammy hog the whole bed! Sammy has very short hair so she doesn't do too well in the cold temps. That being the case, while I was in town I picked up a very expensive jacket for her so when I spend time outside she can be right there with me.

Before I had left the river I had cut and split a good amount of wood but with this colder weather I'm sure it will go fast. While staying at the lake cabin I'm sure I'll spend a fair amount of time cutting more wood and with that ice storm we had, gathering wood will require not only a chainsaw, but a sledge hammer as well.

I'm also looking forward to having some visitors at the river this winter. Talking to some people here in town I know they are pretty excited to get out to the river and see the work Doug and I did this summer. I think Ralf will be out on the Chatanika as well in January to go moose hunting. Even though I'll be taking care of Doug's place by myself it doesn't sound like I'll be alone very often.

Look for more posts from the river soon...

Bear hunt! Part 3

As I said at the end of the last Bear hunt entry, heading back to the cabin on One Fish lake ended up being just as difficult as the trip out.

Our troubles began almost immediately. Our first obstacle was the river bank that was on the other side of the Sushana river. Coming down the bank wasn't a problem but going back up was another story. The river bank leading up to the trail was very narrow so getting a run at it with the snomachine was pretty much impossible. We piled as much snow on the bank as we could, similar to the snow bridge on one of the creeks on the way out, but it wasn't enough. When Travis made an attempt at the hill he literally ran into the hill side and broke one of the skis on the snowmachine. The ski didn't break in half but it got seriously bent and will require a replacement. We determined driving up the slope wasn't going to happen so we pulled out the rope-a-long, same thing as a cable come-a-long and winched the machine and sled up the hill. In winching the machine up the slope we ended up bending the wrecked ski back a little so the snowmachine actually went down the trail alright.

Not to far down the trail, somewhere in "Pinball Alley," we clipped a tree just at the right angle and broke part of the steering mechanism that connects the handle bars to the skis. Travis said, "Yep, that's the weak link to these machines and nope I don't have a spare." The part that broke only controlled one ski , which happened to be the already really bent one. What we ended up doing was lashing the two skis together with a stick. The machine really steered like a pig after that so the already hard task of keeping the machine on the trail just got more difficult.

Most of the trail after that that point on was more of the same, bouncing off and cutting trees, and getting tossed off the machine. Until we came to one creek crossing. It didn't look to bad on our approach but when we were going up the other side we hit a stump, hidden in the snow, which completely flipped the machine! In the process both Travis and I were able to kick ourselves free of the rolling machine which ended up on it's seat. After we surveyed the situation, both of us un-injured, we looked at each other and thought how do we flip a 700 pound machine? We eventually worked out a lever system with a big log, stuck it through the suspension and were able to turn the machine upright.

To our surprise the ski repair didn't break when the machine was flipped! But we did end up hitting a few more trees after that point and had to replace the stick that held the skis together one or two times.

Overall the trip back to One Fish Lake still took us about 6 hours. And our plan to go back to the Toklat springs area didn't look to good.

Before we left the Toklat springs area Travis had set a couple traps, hoping to get a wolf. Since we had planned on going back this was not really an issue, but now...

Travis decided that he would just walk back to the Springs, pulling a sled with minimum gear to spring the traps and stash them to be picked up later this winter. It would still be an overnight trip and luckily he had cut a pile of firewood expecting that we were going back with the snowmachine.

We set a time when Travis should be back by and if he didn't get back I'd go looking for him. While he was gone I spent the time doing some work on the cabin and cutting a bunch of wood, so when someone else came to the cabin it would be a good shape for them. That and a good book kept me plenty occupied until Travis returned. He returned well before our "worry time," and said the trip went without difficulty.

With the snowmachine in quite a state of disrepair we determined that heading back to Travis' property was the best choice. After a good night sleep we packed up our gear and began our limp back to civilization.

Each leg of the trip came with it's own difficulty and the return journey was no different. Now it wasn't the trail but the snowmachine itself that was the issue. Something in one of the two caurberators was stuck open causing the machine to foul out the spark plugs and also emptying the gas tank really fast. We could get the machine to start, go for 50 feet, then it would die. The only thing we could do was take the plugs out, dry them out, cycle the engine to pump out the excess gas, reinsert the plugs, start the engine and go another 50 feet. This went on for a couple hours until all of a sudden whatever was stuck fixed itself and the machine ran great all the way back.

I can't say this trip went all that well but at least Travis, Buster and I came away without an major injuries. I know Travis and I learned a lot from this trip and I can for surely say if I were to do this hunt in the future I would go about it in a different way. Most importantly taking a MINIMUM of two snowmachines, with no passengers.

To wrap up this trip I have a couple pics, during sunset, of Denali and Mt. Foraker from One Fish Lake. And the video is a look at the inside of the cabin at One Fish lake when Travis was on his way to/from the Toklat Springs area.