Fighting fires with a helicopter

Today I have a short video clip one of the fire fighting helicopters at work. The lake makes for a great fill station, but unfortunately the deepest part of the lake is where the beaver lodge is on the lake property. When the helicopter flies over and hovers at the lake to fill it's water bucket it can be quite noisy, and when I'm working in the yard I have to wear ear plugs. They seem to make trips from the lake up the ridge for several hours to tame down some hot spots, then the wind will pick up and it will start all over again after a couple hour break. Last night and most of today I could hear chainsaws way up on the ridge so the fire crews must be making some kind of fire break up there. Today I also hiked up 7 mile, over half way, to get a better view of what the fires are doing and what they have done. From the north slope I had a pretty good view of the south slope and ridges of the Chatanika valley. I could see a lot of different spots that have been burned out and how close the fires have been to Doug and I.

The Garden and other Work

Here's a look at the current state of the garden and some of the other work I have been doing around the lake property. Some of the veggies I have in the garden were started in Doug's atrium and green house a couple months ago. That has to be done with some plants due to the short growing season here in Alaska. All of those plants, and the ones I started from seed in the garden, seem to be doing very well.

One of the other things I have done is move the battery bank out side and closer to the solar panels. I am trying to absorb every milli-amp of power I can get from the sun and one way to do that was shorten the cables from the panels to the batteries. It was also time to make a small shelter for the generator. The purpose of the shelter I made was also to shield the noise while it's running.

The video is just short clip of some of the clean up I have been working on around the property. You can never have too much firewood saved up. The trees I had taken down helped expose my solar panels to several more hours of sun and in turn reducing the time I need to run the generator.

With just 25 watts of solar panels and the amount of direct sun we are getting right now I am able to watch a DVD every night before going to bed.

Wild fires everywhere!!

Yikes, fires are burning all around Doug and I. After several days of fire crews battling many different fires it seems most of them are under control. The fire that was burning closest to the lake cabin was up on the ridge to the north of the cabin. I met quite a few fire crew guys that were working on cleaning up around the other cabin on the lake. They were also setting up a water pump plumbed from the lake up to that cabin. They were a little more concerned about the other cabin off the lake because it is a little further up the hill side making it closer to the fire. They did ask if I wanted any work done around the property but we determined it looked pretty good and if the fire made it this far down the hill it wouldn't have a lot to burn.

As it turns out some cabins up river have not been so lucky. A cabin in between Ralf and Bill's cabin's burned to the ground. One of Ralf's cabins had some fire damage but nothing major. The fire crews were able to get it out before any of Ralf's burned down. The pics above are of the fire growing over the ridge coming from Ralf and Bill's headed toward Doug's cabin on the hill side. Since I took the photos they seemed to have that fire under control. Right now I think the only one they are fighting out here right now is many miles up stream somewhere past Ralf's place.