2/21-23/06 Andrew and I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

We arrived at 1:00. There was no new snow but it was pretty cold so the old snow was frozen hard. Our plan for the week was to dig a snow cave and possibly sleep in it. I have never slept in a snow cave in my life so I figured that if I am ever going to do it, I had better do it pretty soon. We decided to dig the cave in the huge snowbank on the roadway under the roof. The snow was piled up 8 feet or so there.

We started digging right away and neither of us put on our rain gear. So in about an hour, we were both soaking wet. We decided at that point to go in, have some lunch, and dry off. During lunch we played a few games of chess and dried our clothes. Then we put our rain gear on and went back out and did some more digging. It was pretty hard work because of the cramped working conditions. We used a WWII entrenching tool to dig with on the inside. The guy on the outside hauled out sledfuls of snow and dumped them and tried to keep the doorway clear of snow.

By nightfall, we had a fair sized cavity dug, but nowhere near enough room for even one of us to sleep in. We went into the cozy warm trailer, had dinner, played some more chess and went to bed.

On Wednesday we started out by sanding all the logs in the loft that were due for another coat of varnish. I ran the sander while Andrew kept the vacuum right with me. We sanded the end of the ridgepole and the top seven logs in the gable wall.

When that was done, we went back to digging the snow cave. We enlarged the room quite a bit but it was hard to tell exactly where we were in the snowbank and how close to the surface we were. We took a thin stick about 3 feet long and poked it up into the ceiling of the cave to see where it came out. It didn't come out at all. Yet, we could see light coming through the ceiling. I couldn't quite figure that out.

At lunchtime, we dried off and played some more chess. Andrew beat me once fair and square. After lunch we went back to digging our cave.

We got the room almost big enough for one person to sleep, although it wasn't very level or comfortable. We debated whether one of us or neither of us should try to spend the night there. We decided that neither of us wanted to in the condition the cave was in.

At one point during the day, Andrew spotted what I think was a packrat on the porch, but the thing quickly ran off and hid.

That night, it rained cats and dogs all night long.

On Thursday morning, it was still raining cats and dogs. I got up while Andrew was still sleeping and started varnishing the logs in the loft. He came up to the cabin before I finished. After I cleaned out my brush, we went back down and had breakfast.

The rainwater was pouring off the cabin roof and going right into the snowbank where we had dug our cave. It finally dawned on me why I could see light through the ceiling of the cave. The water from the roof had melted vertical channels through the snowbank all the way to the ground. That was how the light was getting through. If either of us had spent the night in there, there would have been a continual flood of water pouring down on us. I guess if we ever try that again, we will have to do it during the dead of winter when there will be no chance of rain during the night. It was fun digging the cave anyway.

Late in the morning, in the pouring rain, the flock of gray jays showed up and Andrew said he fed about 15 of them handfuls of peanuts. I think his estimate might be a little high, but I was glad he was able to see them and feed them.

We packed up and left for home at 12:15. It was raining when we left, but in about 2 miles, the rain turned to heavy snow and there was about 2 inches on the road. We saw a car that had slid in the ditch so we stopped to see if we could help. It turned out to be Larry's daughter Marsha. She told us she already had help on the way so we took off again. We had to follow a snowplow for several miles going up to the pass, and just a mile or so after we got past the plow, and just about a mile from the summit, all traffic was stopped because of an avalanche on the other side. We were the third vehicle in line. The highway department guy predicted we would be stuck there until 4:00, and later they revised it to 4:30. But as it turned out, they had cleared it so that we were back on our way at 2:23, just an hour and 8 minutes after we were stopped. The rest of the trip home was uneventful except that there was a lot of snow on the road.