Don't know how many of you saw the bosses post on Trap Talk about doing unmanly things. Turns out he was here in Fairbanks/North Pole in early 1989 when we had a super bad cold spell. 60 below for a few days. I was here, driving a Chevy Luv truck. Here is the thread:
https://trapperman.com/forum/ubbthr...w-many-of-you-men-folk-do-unmanly-things

So that got me to thinking. What is the coldest you have ever gone out and set/checked traps? For me, it was early 1981. I was staying on the lower Nowitna in a small cabin. Had 8 dogs and a decent dog sled. This was my third year trapping in Alaska and my 2nd on my own. The Novi was covered in Marten those years. Probably was early Feb. Had about all my traps out and a few sets for larger animals. It was 50 below on the mercury thermometer I had but I was hoping for a wolf catch at this one spot. I had good winter gear, mukluks for foot wear. Good mittens, parka with a hood. Had been out in 40 below the previous 2 seasons. Hooked up all 8 dogs and headed out. I also had a decent leader. Ran downriver on the marten line and then got on the river, Nowitna, and headed for a spot where the river was going to cut thru some spring soon. Only about 20 yards between the 2 channels. I had a big Newhouse 4 and 1/2 trap set in a spot right next to my trail where wolves had previously walked. I was travelling on my trail on the river ice and came up the bank onto the ground. There where the trap had been set was a large wolverine. He wasn't too happy. Dispatched him and probably brought the whole outfit, wolverine, trap, maybe the drag, back to the cabin. Oh, like I said, I had a good lead dog and was able to secure the team before they could jump onto the wolverine.
So that's the coldest I was ever out. I spent 4 more seasons trapping the lower Nowitna/middle Yukon area. Don't remember ever seeing 50 below again. Plenty of 40s tho.
How about the rest of you?

-30F was my coldest check…I had to kick start the Estwing axe to get it going but as long as you kept moving, everything was OK.

Fell thru on a beaver pond one time at -20F a mile from the truck. I had to walk stiff legged most of the way out cuz my pants froze solid. I had a young dog along that didn’t want to load up when we got back to the truck.

-29 for me. At least that is what it said when I left the house, don't know what it was out there, I didnt have a thermometer with me. I know I've camped and hunted in that and colder, but I never had a thermometer with me those times, so all I can say is it was cold! Remember spending the night in the front seat of a Toyota pickup one time. I put a gallon of water in the seat beside me, planned to make coffee with it in the morning. When I woke up not only was it frozen solid, but my sleeping bag was frozen to the floorboards and it took 45 minutes of the truck sitting there idling to unthaw it enough to peel it up off the floorboards.

Down to -15 to -20 isn't too bad if there isn't any wind. Everything is frozen and you can't hardly get wet so it doesn't feel too bad. Colder than that or any wind and it is just cold, at least colder than my gear is good for.

Like MartenTrapper when he was on the Novi, I've run some line in -40 to -50 temps. BUT, only with a dog team. Once I switched over to using a snowmachine, my cutoff was more like -25.

And, truth be told, the older I get, the higher my cutoff temps are!

(Nowadays, I'd just as soon make a pole set against a palm tree!)

Pete

Hey Pete
Remember that day we went from Chena Hot Springs Road to 101 mile Steese marking the Yukon Quest Trail and it was so cold that the tracks on our sleds thumped from the cold. I don’t remember how cold but it was colder than the -40’s I had trapped in!

-52, guessing it was around 1999ish, I trap the Nelchina Basin. I remember driving up up that morning with the family, 2 daughters under 5 plus wife and leaving them at the lodge eating nachos, drinking hot coco and driving the lodge owner crazy playing with the pool balls on the pool table. Once there and getting the family settled, I couldn’t wait to go outside to where we park our machines at the lodge for the winter and fire up my Polaris Superwide 440 fan. I knew it was cold, but the cold never bothered me. Growing up mushing with my dad, we would often go out and run the rivers with the dogs to check beaver sets in the cold. So I flipped the choke, confirmed the throttle moves and pulled. Well, I tried to pull. The rope didn’t move and I about ripped my shoulder out. No worries, done this before, I braced my bunny boot at just the right corner of the foot rail and front tub and gripped the pull handle with two hands and slowly pulled the rope out. I felt each stiff compression stroke of the engine as I pulled the rope all the way out. After the rope recoiled back, I knew the old girl would start on the second pull. Well, 8-10 pulls later, she fired up, chugging and blowing smoke. Excitement! I was going to check traps! After a long warm up wait, standing up on the foot rails I gave her throttle and was off. Very quickly I realized that I needed to get behind the windshield to block the cold so I quickly sat down on the hardest, coldest seat I’ve ever sat on. It was like sitting on a solid block of ice. Still no worries, I was going trapping!

At that time my trapline consisted of a large loop and about 10 miles in, I had to jump down and travel a heavy brushy creek. Once on the creek I traveled about 2 miles on what was like driving on a paved road and came across a beautiful cross fox jumping around in my trap. Thinking this was going to be a great day, I continued down about another mile down the creek, rounded a bend and my heart skipped. Nothing but bank to bank solid water steaming away as far as you could see. This creek was pinched down in a gorge and heavily brushy. No way I was going to be able to climb the bank and travel around the overflow. Ended up turning around and back tracking heading back to the lodge. About 6 miles from the lodge I was on a groomed trail, thinking I had a great day catching a nice fox, my now my body heat has thawed my nice soft seat and making the smart decision not to mess with the fresh overflow so I got a little cocky and decided to give the old girl some juice…a lot juice. Suddenly BANG! Motor quit, and I heard a lot of ruckus under the hood. I soon found out, that I blew her up. Guessing my oil was to thick and starved the engine. Had to leave her out on the middle of the frozen lake and caught a ride a few minutes later by a passer by. Still have that fox on my cabin wall..

Cool story, Steve! Typical Alaska!
Are you a grampa now?

I was trapping Kodiak back in 1983, or maybe it was '84. I had beaver and otter sets about 20 miles out the road, and beaver and fox sets past the end of the road, beyond Chiniak. Past Bells Flats it was all gravel. As I was going by the Coast Guard base, I had a good view of Woman's Bay, a large saltwater bay, a couple miles across and I would guess 3 or so miles long. The surface was solid ice. It blew me away that it could get cold enough around Kodiak to freeze the ocean.
I went ahead and checked traps, and boy, I wasn't prepared for that kind of chipping! I only had one of those 6" wide floor scrapers, and managed to not only chip out a coni, but took a nice gouge out of a beaver. Left the other beaver/otter sets for later. Fox sets were blocks of ice.
Felt even colder trapping my old Juneau line sometimes, though.
One time it was exactly 0 degrees at the ramp, and the cove I launched out of to reach my main line had about 1/2" of surface ice from shore to shore. As I eased the throttle forward the sheets of ice breaking and skittering along the surface ice was pretty cool, however the sound of that open skiff breaking through was nerve-wracking! I was waiting for the can-opener effect, but she held. Man, when I poked the boat out into the big, wide-open bay and hit that 25 mph north wind, it felt like my whole body instantly froze, and the 3'-4' waves were trying to come aboard.
The engine was not happy when I started it at the ramp, and I didn't dare shut it off throughout the checks.
When I got back to the ramp and got to the truck a few hours later, I could barely get my facemask off. The freezing spray from that open skiff had me caked in white ice, and it was all I could do to get that mask off.
Of course, the bow line used to pull the skiff up the trailer was a coiled block of ice frozen to the floorboard, so couldn't toss it into the water to thaw. Thankfully I had a couple tow straps in the truck, so was easy to get that iced up boat on the trailer, (though it now weighed several hundred pounds more than when we started!).
By the time I got home, about 40 miles later, you could hardly tell what I was towing.
That was cold enough for me.

Steve,
I seized up two Skidoo Tundras in a week that way. Ran them for years with the automatic oiler that everyone complains about, without a problem. We had a very unusual cold snap for here with temps around -20 for a week (we get -20 temps here every few years, but usually only for a night or two). Yeah, that oil gets a lot thicker then and stripped the plastic gears in my oiler on my newer Tundra. Thinking it was a fluke and a good thing I kept my old sled for a spare I grabbed it the next day. Couple of days later I did the same thing to it. The newer one I got out, but fried the stator and had to rebuild the whole engine. The second one stopped on me, but I figured out what the problem was and I unhooked the hose coming off the bottom of the oil reservoir and drained a bunch of oil into my spare gas can (talk about making a mess in the engine compartment) and dumped that in the gas tank and shook the machine around some. Let her cool off a little and the old girl fired up and ran fine.

After that I ran mixed gas in them, like everyone else.

This is what it was like in North Pole in January 1989. My cut off was -30 on a snow machine checking traps.

Yes sir. That was an interesting adventure! But we survived and got the job done.

Pete

Growing up in Southeast Alaska, I never had to contend with serious cold temps. 0 was very cold. Wind could be remarkable at times. Once while walking down the rocky beach, I thought I was seeing a mink. It was blowing 70mph and this critter was tumbling through the rocks. When I got closer, I realized it was a female bufflehead that had been blown on to the beach and couldn't take off or make it back into the water. The wind was blowing onshore. Several times my Chesapeake Retriever would be fully encased in ice, the ice on her joints cracked allowing her some movement. She looked like she was wearing a suit of armor. When older, I graduated to running a skiff. Things just don't work like they should below freezing. Around 5 degrees, water would freeze instantly inside the skiff while running crab or shrimp gear. When in doubt, just chicken out.