Too Much Rain!

Due to an excessive amount of rain early this summer a lot of the the trail leading out of the Chatanika valley has washed out. As a temporary fix a couple short diversion trails have been cut, but the long term solution is to cut about a mile of new trail from the river up the hill.

Doug had started a new section of trail from the river a couple years ago but it needs to be connected to the main road about a mile up the hill side. We have started a new trail from the road a ways up the hill that we intend on connecting to the old trail Doug cut a couple years ago.

Right now the trail is Doug's main focus so he can start hauling freight to the river to stock up for freeze up and the beginning of winter. Of course freeze up is still a few months away, but cutting trail is a very slow and labor intensive process. A good day of cutting trail may mean only making 50 to 100 yards a day!

I have helped with some of the trail work but I have also fired up the saw mill, finally, to get some lumber cut for both Doug and I. We got a late start on the saw mill due to all the rain this summer and I have spent some time in town looking for work as well.

The photos above show the major damage to the trails from water this summer. In a couple pics you should be able to make out the ruts left by the 4 wheeler tires showing how much trail washed away.

New additions to the family

Another thing that happened while I was in town was the geese and the swans both had babies. Doug's geese started out with three new born chicks but the local raven population dropped that down to two. The older geese are ever vigilant now, and always keep one eye on the sky.

I thought for sure the trumpeter swans, that nest on the lake, wouldn't have any babies due to all of the traffic during the fires, but I was wrong. I'am happy to report there are five "little," swan babies floating around on the lake feeding with their parents. Don't have a good picture of them yet but I'll keep trying.

Garden update

Here's a look at the garden after spending a few weeks in town and letting mother nature run it's course. To my surprise the local wildlife didn't touch any of the plants while I was gone. A couple days after I left the river it began raining and continued to rain almost everyday, for a few hours a day. The rain lasted for a few weeks and made my time in town a little miserable but on the up side the garden got watered everyday! As you can see even with out any fertilizer things did pretty good.

The radish plants were definitely ready to come out, and doing so opened up more room for the carrots. Iceberg and romaine lettuce plants are doing fantastic but the cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower didn't seem to take off. Doug pointed out that they require a lot of nutrients to keep them going so I probably won't be getting any of those out of the garden this year.

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.

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.