The bear hunt is on!

I hate to run out the door just as I got back but I'm off on the bear hunt with Travis! I'll have to finish up the Arctic Adventure when I return, in about a week. And of course I should have lots to tell about this adventure as well. Stay tuned....

Arctic Adventure part 1

Ah, the Arctic what an adventure indeed! This will of course have to be a multi-part post so please be patient as it will take me some time to get everything sorted out, especially since I have photos and videos not just from my camera but from Travis as well.

To start from the beginning we stuck pretty close to our plan and left Fairbanks, a little later than noon, 3:30pm and made our way up the Elliot Highway then onto the Dalton Highway. Not too much tell about the first few hours of the trip other that the Elliot Highway was a lot more hilly and winding than the Dalton Highway.

We arrived in Coldfoot, a mining town about 3/4 of the way to our final destination, around 10pm and had some dinner at the truck stop. Coldfoot is the last place to get fuel on the Dalton Highway until you get to Prudoe Bay at the end if the highway on the Arctic Ocean. The only problem with getting gas there is that it costs $4.50 a gallon! So what we did is hauled an additional 40 gallons of gas in cans on a hitch rack and a couple in the back of the van. Doing this also gave us added traction on the steeper parts of the highway, with the idea that we would replace the used fuel weight with caribou.

After our dinner at the truck stop we made our way outside and found Buster, Travis's dog had got loose. So we wandered around the truck stop for about 20 minutes, then Buster wandered out from behind one of the buildings. We got him back in the van, shut the doors and the blower motor for the heater stopped working. Hmm, we decided to keep moving and see what what happened. We found that if we kept moving the windshield would stay mostly defrosted with a little help from our "credit card window scrapers." A few miles north of Coldfoot Travis pulled off the road to camp for the night. We decided to re-evaluate the fan situation in the morning.

We decided to to just un-load our gear from the van and sleep in it for the night. And upon sorting through the gear outside the van we discovered Travis grabbed his .22 cal. rifle instead of his .30-30! Opps! Well, we decided to go for it anyway and us our hand guns instead. Quite a challenge of course but we're up to it.

The next day we loaded up the van and continued up the Dalton. The window continued to stay

clear enough to see through, with a little help from our scrapers. Up and over the Brooks range we went and drove back and forth on the Dalton on the North Slope until we found a suitable camping spot of the road.

The pics I have today are beginning on the Dalton, our mess of gear outside the van camping outside of Coldfoot, a view from the Dalton Highway north of Colfoot before the Brooks Range, looking down from Atigun Pass at the Pipeline and the stretch of highway we were just on, the Dahl sheep that greeted us as the top of Atigun pass and finally the North Slope just over the Brooks Range.

More to come....

Headed to the Arctic!!

About noon today Travis and I will begin our adventure to the north slope. Our plan for the day is to make it to about Coldfoot, stay the night, then weather permitting, drive up and over the Brooks range to our destination somewhere in the neighborhood of Toolik lake. It sounds like we will set up base camp off the Dalton highway, just past Toolik lake and day hike 5 miles off the road, where you are able to shoot and hopefully run into a caribou herd. I also picked up a small game license so if we run into any ptarmigan I will definitely try to bring a bunch of them back too.

I took a picture of my pile of gear that I'm taking up north. I have a large plastic sled that I outfitted with some rope and poles so that I can pull it as a Pulk sled. The Action Packer is filled with all my food and the duffel bag has all my other gear, clothing, cooking gear, GPS and so on. There is also my snowshoes and backpack. I'm not going to use the pack unless I have to, I tend to over-heat with a pack on in the cold weather.

I'm planning on taking lots of pics and video so check back in about a week for the "Arctic Adventure."

Work continues in town, but.....

As the title suggests I'm still plugging away at Pam's house trying to get the basement all wrapped up before the cold temps hit. Currently the weather has been very mild, not typical end of October weather. Usually the temperature should be dropping well below zero at night but it has been a very comfortable 10 to 20 degrees. As the pic shows I am still staying at Billie's in my mountaineering tent. I myself am glad it hasn't got really cold yet because I don't have my really cold weather clothing or gear here in town. All of that stuff is out at the Chatanika valley in the lake cabin. Which leads to my next segment.

While staying at Billie's I ran into Travis who asked how long I will be working in town. I told him I wasn't sure and asked him what his plan was for the winter. So he presented a couple of ideas one of them being a trip to the arctic to hunt caribou and the other going bear hunting in the Boreal Forest, where wolves are very frequently seen as well. Then he asked if I wanted to go! I of course jumped at the idea and said I'd see what I can work out with Pam. Pam was very open to me taking off for a little while and I said I would get to a point where someone could come in and install the heating system in the basement before I left. So the plan now is to get some things wrapped up at Pam's this week then on the weekend go out to the Chatanika, pick up my arctic gear and on Monday Travis and I will head up the Dalton highway to the arctic. It will be about a one week trip and upon my return I might continue at Pam's or possibly go on the bear hunt.

Around every corner there is an adventure to be had, all you have to do is reach out and grab it. That is why I love Alaska so much and I know I belong here.

Working in town.

I figured it was about time I put up a post from town. Work has been going about as good as a remodel/retrofit can go. A lot of work had already been done to Pam's basement this summer so I am there to do the finishing touches and get it sealed up for winter. Some of the work I have been doing includes repairing and replacing parts of walls, rotten from water damage, also repairing some walls that were not built properly in the first place. All of this work will eventually lead to hanging drywall, which will be the tail end of my involvement in the remodel.

Most of the work I have been doing is all located in the basement of a log cabin house, which was constructed of cinder block into a hill side. I took a picture from the driveway to give you an idea what it looks like. Originally the basement walls were just the concrete block but now on the inside it has two separate 2X4 walls filled with foam and fiberglass insulation. Once I have the electrical work done and the vapor barrier applied, the walls will be covered with Sheetrock to finish it off.

Pam's house is located out of Fairbanks several miles up on a hill side. From the kitchen on the main level and the laundry in the basement (on a good day) you can clearly see Denali and the Alaska range! I took a picture from the deck, on the mail level, of the Tanana Valley and way off in the distance the Alaska range.

I have taken some photos of the work that I have been doing but I don't think they will translate very well. I am having a hard time myself determining up and down in some of the pics.

Perma-chink done!

Yesterday thanks to the warmer weather I was able to finish up the chinking! And today I did some work on the front door to make it seal up nice and tight. I took a couple pics of the finished product, may not be the prettiest chinking job but it should to the trick.

Now that I feel comfortable that cabin is sealed up as tight as it can get, I'm going to head into town and see if I can make a little more money before care-taking for Doug this winter. I'm not quite sure how long I will be in town but I'm hoping not more that one to two weeks. One concern I have is that if I hang out in town for too long I won't be able to get back to the Chatanika valley. I believe I mentioned some time ago that there is certain time in the spring and fall when the seasons are in transition and a neither a snowmachine or 4 wheeler can get you up and down the hill. Also if the river freezes over again a canoe won't be much help and the ice will be to thin to take a machine across. I guess I'll just have to see what happens.

I'll try to get some posts up when I'm in town to show you what kind of work I'll be doing. I'm also looking forward to meeting up with some of my friends at Billie's, I haven't seen them for a while and I'd like to re-connect with them, especially Ralf. I haven't had the chance to meet up with him the last couple times I've gone to town. I have heard from Doug that he plans on making it out to the Chatanika, maybe in October, and I'd like to meet up with him before that.

Wood, wood and more wood

So far this week my work schedule hasn't changed much. Cut, collect, transport, split and stack wood for a few hours in the morning and when the temperature gets above freezing get some chinking done. As of this afternoon I have 95% of the chinking done, thanks to a little warm up in the weather. The only thing left is to fill in around the outside of the window casing with fiberglass insulation and cover it with perma-chink, about a half hour of work. I pretty happy that job is almost done, it was not much fun. But the cabin looks much more complete and I'm sure sealing it up will make a HUGE difference when it dips to 20 bellow and colder. As far as wood collection goes that will be a full time job now that the chinking is done. I want to be more than prepared when winter hits full bore.

We were have some pretty cool nights, around zero degrees, but the last few days have warmed up to about 45 to 50 degrees. The river, at our crossing point, was nearly frozen over all the way across a few days ago but the last couple days has caused a mini break-up. And now the river is open all the way across. I have a couple pics at the river crossing from yesterday showing some of the river frozen over and about a 1/3 of it open in the middle. The other pic is the raft strung up by a cable attached to a winch to keep it from getting swept downstream if the river floods in the spring.