Whew, what a winter! Shorty after my last post things started to go wrong. The first issue I had was with the generator. It started running really poorly and I tried to trouble shoot it but couldn't find the problem. No big deal I figured, I'll just fire up the back-up. I swapped out the generator, started it up, it ran good so I made my way back into the cabin. About an hour later I looked out the window and saw smoke pouring out of the generator building! After throwing on some clothes as fast as I could I ran out and into the building to see what the problem was. The generator was pouring out oil from somewhere on top of the engine where I couldn't see. This was a major disappointment being that we had that generator in town this summer to repair that exact issue. I was now down to my last option, the BIG generator. I got that one gassed up and started and it didn't seem to be running very good. Not only was it not running well but that generator is fairly large and uses a lot fuel, so I also was concerned about using up all my fuel. Eventually this lead me to dig further into the original generator because I figured running the big generator was not an option. After a couple days I did finally find the problem, a clogged fuel line, and got back to par as far as power goes.
During the troubles with the generators the snowmachine started to develop an issue as well. After days and days of working on the machine, sometimes taking up to 2 hours to get it started, the problem got so bad I couldn't use it at all. This meant I was left to hauling firewood to the cabin on my back! I spent a couple days snowshoeing around the cabin trying to find some standing dead and finally came across a good stand of timber I could burn. Unfortunately to get to it, would not be easy. It was located in the creek valley to the west of the cabin and the trail in and out of there was only about a foot wide. This was because it traversed the hill side and eventually switch backed down to the valley. Since the trail was so narrow, using a sled was not possible, so I had to hike down to the lake cabin and pick up the pack board I used to haul water buckets with during the summer. I would not recommend hauling wood this way, man it's tough and very hard on your back! It would take me a few hours of cutting and hauling just to get one days worth of firewood. By the end of the day I was exhausted and couldn't bring myself to put up a new post on the blog, this was the main reason for the lapse in the blog.
After almost two weeks of hauling wood this way and continuing to trouble shoot the snowmachine, I finally narrowed down the problem with the machine, something wrong on the inside of one of the carburetors. At this point I had been in contact with my friends Ralf and Bill in town and got a plan together to solve my snowmachine issue. I had to wait for some good weather and then I would hike out with the carburetor from the machine, get it to town and then borrow one of Bill's machines until it was repaired.
I had hiked in and out before but this trip was nothing short of epic! The hike out took about 5 hours, 2 hours longer than usual, because I was pulling a very large sled meant for a snowmachine. I figured since I was going to town I might as well pick up a few things. I eventually met up with Bill and we got the carburetor to a tech in town that had it fixed up that afternoon! After taking care of business in town I got back up to the Dome, with Bill's machine and prepared for the ride back out to Doug's. At this point it was already dark and I was very tired and just wanted to get home. Unfortunately the trail and the snowmachine had another idea. At two different places coming down the hill I slid off the packed trail just enough to fall into a snow abyss about 4 to 5 feet deep! Just what I needed more work! I did finally get myself out both times but I didn't arrive back at the cabin until 10 pm. That made for a 13 hour day and I was more than spent. As soon as I pulled into the yard and shut down the machine a blizzard hit, boy was I lucky.
Since then I've got Doug's machine back together, repairing some other problems as well and returned Bill's machine. Wow, February was a tough month and it took quite a fight get through it.
Unfortunately I didn't use my camera very much during those difficult times but that will change. I did snap a pic of a three and a half foot chunk of wood strapped to my back while the snowmachine was broke down. And coming up in the next post I have some video and photos of a moose that has been hanging around the cabin.
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