No bears yet, but...

I woke up the other morning, looked out the window and there staring back at me was a big fat porcupine! I'm glad I spotted it before I let Sammy out, I don't feel like pulling quills out of her again. Where the porcupine was in the yard was well out of reach from Sammy while she is chained up and I was able to get the chain on her before I let her out of the cabin. I think she remembered what those quills felt from the last time, because she didn't seem to want to have anything to do with it when she got outside.

I couldn't seem to do anything to scare it off until I split a little firewood around the back side of the cabin. And then it only went down the hill about 20 feet and hid under a spruce tree I cut down this spring. It spent the whole day and late into the evening just down the hill between the cabin and the lake.

When I finally went to bed it was still down by the lake milling around one of the beaver lodges. The next morning I did a quick survey around the yard before I let Sammy out and didn't see it anywhere around the cabin. I went up to Doug's cabin later in the day and made sure Sammy was right on my hip the whole time just in case it was still hanging around.

In other news it's been very hot and dry lately and wild fires are popping up everywhere. Right now airplanes are fighting one somewhere over the ridge to the east of Doug's. Fortunately the wind is working in our favor right now and blowing it away from us.

The first couple pics are of the porcupine in the front yard right next to my scrap lumber pile. And the other shows how hot it's been lately. It was taken about 12:30 pm a couple days ago while the thermometer was still in the shade.

Busy as a Beaver

Looks like I'm not the only one at the lake getting some work done. I spotted a beaver in the slough a while ago and was able to snap a pic of it. As of this morning it is still hanging around so I'd assume that it has taken up residence in one of the old beaver lodges on the lake.

After getting the cabin and yard cleaned up I started right in on putting in a garden. There was a spot at near the cabin where a garden once was but hasn't been used for well over a decade. The soil was mostly all compacted silt which unfortunately won't support much plan growth. So my plan was to trench out rows into the rock and silt and manufacture my own soil and replace it in the trenches.

To make plantable soil I had to dig up some tundra down to where the silt and rock layer began, about 6 inches deep, sift through the tundra, add some sand hauled from the river and throw in some old stove ashes. It would take about 2 to 3 days digging, hauling and sifting to make enough dirt for a 12 inch wide by 8 foot long row.

This has been an ongoing project for almost two weeks but I'm coming to the end for this season. According to Doug anything that I want to plant needs be be in by the end of this weekend to have a harvest in the fall.

The photos after the pic of the beaver are the progression of the garden. It's not much of a garden but I hope I can get some good veggies out of it.

Hiked out to the Lake cabin

To follow up on the last post, Ken and I did end up finding a little gold but it wasn't enough to get really excited about. Since then we have traveled farther and farther up the Steese highway, that parallels the Chatanika river, looking for un-claimed creek beds to dig into. A lot of the spots we wanted to go were not quite thawed out from winter yet or were already staked mining claims.

I had really been itching to get out to the Lake cabin on the Chatanika. Doing some gold prospecting with Ken was a great way to kill some time waiting for the trail and river to become passable. On Friday the 13th I decided to take a chance and hike out to the cabin. The hike in was actually quite nice and crossing the river was not too bad either. I didn't get in touch with Doug, to let him know I was coming out, so I had to wade across the river instead of using a canoe. I figured I was going to have to walk across the river so I brought an extra pair of shorts and shoes. The water was cold, really cold, but the crossing went without incident. When I approached Doug's place the geese started making quite a lot of noise so Doug came outside and was quite surprised to see me walking up the hill.

I was so happy to be re-connected with Sammy and I think the feeling was mutual. Since I have arrived back at the lake cabin I have been hard at work doing some spring cleaning and am also working on putting in a garden!

The weather has been nothing short of spectacular since I've been out here so lots of work is getting done. Unfortunately I will not be out here to long because I have to head back to town to start a summer job. My plan this summer is to still spend as much time out here as I can when I am not working. Since I have decided to start a garden I'm sure that will need a lot of attention.

I have a pic from one of the days Ken and I were 8o miles up the Steese highway, digging into the Chatanika river shortly down stream from where it begins. The weather turned sour on us all of a sudden and started dumping quarter sized snow flakes! Before we knew it there was a couple inches of fresh snow on the ground. You will have to look really hard to see Ken digging in the river in the center of the picture. I'm not sure if that material had any gold in it because right after we brought back what we had run through a sluice box I took off for Doug's and the lake cabin.

I have some pics of all the work it takes to put in a garden out here and also a few pics of a new lake resident! Those things coming up next.

Back in Fairbanks, a new adventure begins

Ahh, home again. After being back in Fairbanks just a few days I have met a new friend that drove all the way here from New Hampshire! His name is Ken and he is here not only for a job but is also hoping to make some money doing some gold prospecting.

I was hoping when I got back to Fairbanks that I would be able to catch a ride up to Murphy Dome and then hike down to the Chatanika. But it sounds like the river is still flooded and that there is still a good amount of snow on the north slope of the trail. I hiked out there last spring in these same conditions and a trip that should take 2 1/2 hours took 6 hours! I figured it would be a good idea just to wait and in the mean time I could work on getting a job in town for the summer.

As usual I am staying in a tent at Billie's hostel while in town to save as much money as possible. While hanging out in the common area of the hostel Ken and I struck up a conversation and eventually he needed some help getting his GPS to communicate with his computer. That turned out to be a great "ice breaker," and later that morning he asked if I wanted to go for a ride to scout out some potential gold prospecting spots.

We eventually ended up about 50 miles north east of Fairbanks on a minimum maintenance road that had a creek running across it. Ken thought that the creek would make a great spot for a sluice box and all we needed was some dirt to run through it. So we picked a hill side near by and started filling some buckets. After running a few buckets through the sluice we took what was left in the box and made our way back toward Fairbanks. We needed to find some calmer water to pan out what had been left in the sluice box.

All along the highway, we had taken out of Fairbanks, piles upon piles of old material that had been processed by miners years ago cover the landscape. About 15 miles outside of Fairbanks there is a spot to pull off the road into an area that is a old gold claim from 1902. There you are welcome to pan for gold all you like but can't camp over night. Ken had stopped at this spot the previous day and did find a few flakes of gold, panning out some material from an old tailing pile(tailing pile is what is left after being processed for gold).

This was a good spot to pan through our material left from sluicing up the road. Before we new it it was 9pm and we were both pretty tired. We didn't quite make it through all of the material but figured we could pan out the rest somewhere in town the next day.

Ken did find a tiny flake of gold, but for 3-5 gallon buckets that's not a very good ratio. So our plan for the next day was to head back to that old claim just out side of town and dig a little deeper into one of the tailing piles. I should mention that the 3 buckets I spoke of were run through the sluice box and what was left was only about an inch thick in the bottom of 1 bucket. Just that little bit still took the two of us several hours to pan through!

The old mining claim that they allow you to pan for gold doesn't want you to use any "mechanical assistance," like sluice boxes or dredges so we came up with a plan to work our way around that. While filling our buckets we used a classifier, which is just a fancy name for a screen, to filter out all of the big rocks leaving us with only quarter inch and smaller material. Any gold that is larger than that has probably already been cleaned out from the mine in the past.

When we had our buckets filled with nice fine material we loaded up Ken's truck and made our way up the road to a different location to run it through the sluice box. Ken has a pair of sluice boxes so we both took a bucket and spent several hours filtering down our potential gold bearing dirt. Setting up a sluice box is quite tedious and I think it took longer to get it set right than to run all of the dirt through it. Ken is a great teacher and has made this new learning experience a lot of fun.

After getting all of our material run through the sluice boxes it was approaching 9pm again and was time to head home. We are only getting a few hours of darkness right now and it is getting hard to tell what time it is later in the day.

The pics are of Ken and I in the Chatanika river, many many many miles up stream from the lake cabin, running our buckets of dirt through the sluice boxes.

Today we'll head to out to our little panning spot in town and take down the material from yesterday and hopefully score a little gold.

Putting new saw to use

Since moving back down to the lake cabin I have been putting that new chainsaw to good use. First off I have started to stock pile a good amount of firewood for next winter as you can see by the first photo. I cut the chunks of wood into chainsaw lengths, making some of the larger diameter ones as much as I can lift by myself. I will cut them down to stove length and split them at a later date.

Next, I also have been cutting some wood for the saw mill. The woods off the lake shore is not very accessible by four wheeler during the summer months so I have been trying to get as much wood from that area while I can. The next photo shows a pile of logs pulled to the mill by dragging them, chained to a sled, with the snowmachine. The logs are 9 to 12 foot lengths and hopefully with be a good start to a stock of lumber for construction at the lake cabin this summer.

The last photo was taken back in the woods off the lake, a place I liked to call my candy store because of all the trees that need to be cut down in that area. The trees that I'm talking about are very large and are leaning so bad that they will eventually pull themselves out of the ground. This is due to the melting perma-frost under the root system. By removing all of the leaning spruce trees Doug and I are hoping the birch tree populating will take off and draw beavers back to the lake. The pic shows the snowmachine and two trailers loaded full of wood to be taken back to the cabin.

Along with gathering firewood for the cabin and getting logs to the mill I also spend part of the day hauling firewood up to Doug's and splitting it for him. The plan is to get him enough wood to last the rest of spring so he won't have to stain himself with that type of work, allowing his back to heal from surgery he had while he was traveling.

All of that work makes for a pretty long and hard work day and I am looking forward to the 3 week vacation in Minnesota coming up in a few days. That being said this will most likely be the last post I put up until I return from my trip, at the end of this month.

Doug has returned

About 10 days ago Doug returned to Fairbanks after traveling to southeast Asia and visiting his mother and friends in the lower 48. I continued to stay at his cabin for about a week to help him get back in the groove of the bush life. As of now I have moved back down to the lake cabin and will stay there for couple weeks. On April 5th I will be catching a flight back to Minnesota to visit for a few weeks and return in time to catch the beginning of summer.

While I stay at the lake I will be spending a lot of time cutting trees around the cabin and on the perimeter of the lake. Most of the trees I will be taking down are about to fall into the lake or are leaning very badly. There are also handful of trees that need to come down to allow more sunshine to hit my solar panels throughout the day.

When I return from Minnesota I am planning on getting a job in town or in the surrounding area and am hoping to spend the weekends out on the Chatanika. I do plan on purchasing the lake cabin from Doug and there is a lot of work I plan on doing to the cabin and property.

With the intention of doing a lot of building and tree cutting I decided I should get my own chainsaw. In the picture above I am holding my new pride and joy, a Stihl MS 362. It's a pro grade saw and is the same saw the forest service and fire crews use. The 362 is a step up from the Husqvarna saws I had been using the past year. I wanted a little more power and low end torque, but that came at a price. The saw is a little bigger and heavier than Doug's saws and cost me over $700! I am hoping that it will be a one time purchase and will last the rest of my life.

Well, I'm off to tear down my generator, since the pull start destroyed itself last night, and hope to get something rigged so I don't have to rely 100% on my little solar setup.

Work with a little play

I have decided not to post the Aurora pics due to their poor quality and instead move on to some of the other things I have been doing lately.

Since the weather has been warmer I decided to take a break from wood cutting, something I'd been doing about every other day and put the snowmachine to use hauling something else. That being a trail groomer. My friend Bill, that helped me out when the snowmachine broke down, has had a groomer that he made stored over at Ralf's cabin that was begging for some use.

The trail up to Murphy Dome had not been in the best shape after extreme winds and snow fall came just after my return from getting the snowmachine carburetor repaired. After being up and down the hill earlier this winter on a "smooth as glass" trail I knew something had to be done.

Several times in the last two weeks I have taken the snowmachine over to Ralf's cabin, picked up the trail groomer and hit the trail. My route took me from Ralf's cabin, up the Blueberry trail to where it intersects with 7 mile and then up to the Dome. After reaching the trail head at Murphy Dome I would head back down the trail, taking 7 mile instead of the Blueberry trail where they meet, get to the river, then pull the groomer upstream the few miles and store the groomer back at Ralf's.

The trail is MUCH better than it was but it still needs a lot of work. Unfortunately Bill wanted the groomer back, to smooth out some trails closer to town, so I had to give my new favorite toy back, for now...

The first pic was taken going up the Blueberry trail pulling the groomer during a rest stop. The rest was not for me but for the machine. With the warmer temps, above zero, pulling the groomer up hill puts a lot of strain on the machine and doing all I can to keep it cool, it still will over heat.

One of the other projects I tackled this week was cleaning out the stove pipe for the big wood stove(the main cabin heat). I did not have too much fun doing this job but it really needed to be done.

The stove had not been burning the way it should for a while and I could see some creosote residue running down the outside of the stove pipe coming out of the cabin. This lead me to believe that there was some build up inside of the pipe limiting the draw from the wood stove.

Since the stove pipe extends so far from the the top of the roof I had remove the pipe from the wood stove and work my way up. Whew, what a messy job! I got most of the build up out using a couple sticks screwed together with a small coffee can at the end, plunging it up and down freeing up the creosote so it fell down into a bucket I had placed under the pipe. That worked for most of the pipe but then the coffee can got stuck way up in the pipe and I had to get on the roof and remove some sections of pipe to get it free. I wanted to avoid taking the top sections of pipe off because it involved leaning a 6 foot ladder against the pipe, standing on top of the ladder and somehow pulling the pipe apart without falling off the roof. But I ended up having to do that anyway. Luckily my plunging with the coffee can loosened up the top part of the pipe a bit and I was able to yank it out, drop it down to the snow covered roof without damage and get off the roof in one piece. I say drop it down because the 5 feet of pipe I pulled out must have weighed 40 lbs! The 6 inch diameter pipe was now narrowed down to about an inch and a half with all of the build up inside!

I'm glad I cleaned out to stove pipe when I did and also am very fortunate that I didn't have a fire in the pipe itself.

The other two pics are of the aftermath of the pipe cleaning. The pic of the stove is after I swept up a little. The bucket on top of the stove is almost full of what came down the pipe during cleaning. The other pic was taken in the front yard where I cleaned out the top two sections of pipe.

In total I think I scrubbed about 7 gallons of creosote out of the stove pipe and I will be consulting with Doug when he gets back on how to avoid this in the future.