Brian, is the counter top on that island recessed?
Welcome back.

Good eye AV. I had a couple pieces left over from a fireplace salvage and these were actually part of a hearth and mantle. They hadn't been used. I'm going to fill in the recess with hardwood blocks to make a butcher block section. It'll be handy for cooking. I broke a corner off on the way in. We'll see how the repair goes. heading back out tomorrow. I'm also going to get the trail cams out so hopefully get some spring action.

Ran into this wolverine pelt at my taxidermist. Pretty unusual white with orange tones

It's that crazy time of year again in the mountains. The snow melted off then came back with a vengeance



There's a lot of birds passing through. Some cool ones like purple finches and red polls








packing clean water to camp before it gets muddy with spring run off.

The wife and I hauled a tractor out to the lodge. Lots of snow at the top of the pass.




but got a little skinny on the bottom end.



I Ended up dragging it across the open creek and rocks with a quad. Is there anything tougher than those Alaskan sleds?

Grizzly crossed our trail heading upriver. It came off the top of a mountain.

My back yard is 1500' lower in elevation than the lodge and spring season is much more advanced.

I'm going through withdrawals. High water conditions have prevented lodge access and it's been almost 30 days. Drove out one day and creek was flowing just even with top of the banks and going hard. Grizzly snapped off top of tree on my trail was about the only excitement. Things have settled down so heading out soon for an extended stay.






Same bear that crossed the road in May I suspect

Great shots, bushman .

I especially like the birds....Cassin's finches and Redpolls ( in winter ) are here also . Lovely birds with lovely song.

That ivory/orange wolverine is amazing. Sure would be nice to see what he did with it.

Your lucky you have high water we have tho opposite ice moved out at late June levels now we have September water levels cant get into the channels to the Beufort Sea. I want to haul material out for a camp I plan to build and had to turn around a couple times now due to lack of water.

We've got a lot of water still 411 but it's dropping.

Got a few days in out at the lodge, major work bee. Had quite a few bears on my trail cams. These are only a few hundred yards from one of my cabins.


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I thought this guy was dead but he looks pretty lively to me




This is the young black grizzly showed up last year




Not sure who this is




A black bear sow with two cubs

That black grizz is something!

Thanks for the update Bushman are water levels are even lower. Probably October after freeze up levels. Found a new way to go to the coast near Mackenzie Bay. Hauled out most of my building supplies and put the floor in this weekend.

It's been a wet year around here and it's still raining. My cable car washed out on one side, waiting for the flood to subside before I fix it. The road got washed out where a small creek became a major wash out

It's been a while since my last post. Mostly because the rain kept falling and my access road washed out in several areas and it was closed. They just opened it up again so I headed down for five days. It's been a month and a half since I could get in. Serious bush withdrawals.

Water is still high so we had to use a canoe for access.

You can see from the pic that not only was it raining is started to hail. We had to stand under a piece of plywood for 10 minutes until the hail quit. Then started hauling gear down




My goal is to get my cable car back in.

My son and his buddy came out and helped me get it started. We dug down to the water line to give the uprights some support and then backfilled with gravel and rock

After we had uprights in place we crossed the creek and salvaged my cables. I got lucky, what happened was a large log that I was using for an anchor for my deadhead cables floated away in the flood and drifted downstream and luckily a root snagged on a spruce tree, holding the deadhead in place. The cable was exposed where we could access it from shore, it just as easily could have been under five feet of water.



You can see how far the log drifted in this pic. We used a cold chisel and cut the cable fairly easily. I tied a rope to the cables first so we could use the quad on the other side to drag the cables once they were cut. it went pretty smoothly.

The boys left and I spent the next couple days hauling and stacking logs for my new deadhead and tightening the cables. I left yesterday with things looking pretty good.

To cap off my trip I caught a hummingbird in my hat and trained it to sit by using honey.