1/23-25/07 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I spent the early part of the day at Andrew's school trying to help him improve his study habits and classroom behavior. I arrived at the property at 4:45. There was just enough light left in the day for me to get moved in. It was 32 degrees out and I measured the snow depth to be 38 inches. There was about 3 inches of new snow, but the rest of it had shrunk down since last week.

I had my dinner, listened to the State of the Union, talked with Ellen, and then went up and slept in the loft again. This time I used two modern sleeping bags rather than the WWII bag and slept a lot better. It was also not as cold out as the previous week so it really wasn't a fair test.

On Wednesday morning, I called Mike and he agreed to come over and scoop out my driveway enough to accommodate a bus and four cars. I went up to the cabin and rearranged the temporary wiring so that each room could be individually controlled with a power strip.

Mike showed up and cleared out the driveway. He made three or four huge piles of snow that were much bigger than last year's. The scouts seem eager to dig snow caves so there will be more and better opportunities this year than last. When he finished, Mike came up and I gave him a tour of the building. He hadn't seen it for quite a while so there had been a lot of changes.

After he left, I walked the trails with a chainsaw and cleared trees that had fallen over the trails. Just past the small creek I saw a dangerous looking widowmaker. A big alder, maybe 50 feet tall with a 10 inch diameter trunk, had broken about 5 feet off the ground and the trunk had landed right on top of a 15 foot snag and stayed there. So here was this huge log fifteen feet in the air hanging horizontally over the trail.

It had not broken all the way off so it was still attached to its splintered stump. I decided it would be safe for me to cut through the break and hopefully the thing would then fall to the ground. As soon as I cut through, the butt of the big log just rose up three or four feet and then the tree just balanced on top of that snag. Now it looked even more dangerous.

I tied a big rope around the butt of the tree, stood way back, and pulled on the rope with the intention of getting the tree to fall off that snag. All it did was rock and sway back and forth like a big mobile, but it wouldn't fall.

So I decided to fall the snag that was holding it up. The snag was leaning toward the trail so I went around to the other side to be clear of it when it fell. I gingerly made a small cut on the dangerous side and then got back on the safe side and made a major cut. When the cut got deep enough, the kerf started opening up and the snag started moving so I got myself out of there and out of the way. I stood and watched as it did nothing more. It just stood there.

Rather than go back and cut some more, I went back around to where I could grab my rope and I pulled on it again. This time I was able to pull the whole thing down.

The big log fell with its butt across the creek just below the rickety snow bridge, and the snag fell on top of the big log. I looked at those logs and at the rickety bridge and I decided that I should build a nice new bridge with these new, and now handy, logs.

The snag log was just the right length for a bridge and I could easily get two more logs that long out of the butt of the big one. But if I were to cut the big log, both pieces would fall down into the creek bed and be hard to get out. So I got a come-along and two chains and hooked them between the snag stump and the big log near where I wanted to cut it. I cranked on the come-along to pull the log up away from the creek bed as far as I could before I started cutting. Then as I cut through the log, I would keep cranking on the come-along occasionally so that by the time I cut all the way through, both parts of the log were safely on the bank of the creek. Then I went down to make the second cut to free the second log I needed.

Using the come-along and a cant hook, I pulled all three logs across the creek above the old rickety bridge so that they were all lined up next to each other. I put some poles in the big cracks between the logs so that I could pack snow on top of the center log to make a bridge deck. I had placed the logs so that the center log was lower than the outer ones, so when I was done I had a nice snow bridge with big log sides. As a finishing touch, I sprinkled sawdust on the snow deck to provide good traction. I took pictures of the whole activity as I went, but it's hard to see from the pictures what it was really like.

I was happy with the bridge, though, and happy about the huge amount of fun I had in building it. It also might be appreciated by any scouts that wanted to walk that trail.

I went in for the night pretty tired and sore. I am not used to doing that much log work in the snow anymore. I am older and more out of shape than I was the last time I did it.

On Thursday it was 31 degrees so the snow was very stiff and frozen. I rigged up a bunch of lights over the porch so the cooks will be able to see better than last year. In the process, Karen Arnold came up for a visit and to see what I had done. She, too, hadn't seen it for quite a while so it looked a lot different to her. She told me that Harry Metzger had just died a couple weeks ago. She also told me that there had been a 50 hour power outage a few days before the shorter one that I experienced a couple weeks ago. She said that it had caused a lot of people to rethink their heating systems and consider having a wood-fired backup system that didn't require electricity. She said I was smart to be planning on installing a wood stove in our cabin.

After she left, I set up the kitchen on the porch the same as I had for the other two scout visits. That arrangement works very well so I had no reason to change it. I left for home at 12:05.

1/27-28/07 Fourteen scouts, nine dads and a grandpa (me) camped at the property.

It was about 30 degrees when we got there at about 10:30. After opening up the cabin and starting the heater in the trailer, I cut steps in the steep part of the upper roadway before the rest of them got there. The steps were almost solid ice, so they lasted pretty well for the entire two days without being worn down.

When the boys got there, they set up their tents and started digging snow caves. They were happy to see such big piles of snow. When the cooks started setting up their kitchen we discovered that the hose on the porch was frozen. I worked for a long time to thaw it with water and a blowtorch. Finally I gave up and got a different hose and hooked it up so they had water up there.

I set one of the boys to work tying a bunch of dowels together with clove hitches to make a mitten drying rack while I made two hangers from steel strap. I hung the rack from the ceiling joists in the bedroom using the straps and then fired up the propane heater below it.

One dad set his tent up on the snow up by the spring, another set his up just past the woodshed, and a third set his up in the drainfield area along with those of some of the boys. One boy set a tent up on the driveway between the cars and the bus. Several of the older boys dug snow caves in the big piles of snow down at the driveway and slept in them.

Before the sun went down, I dug out the firewood, which was covered with a tarp and three feet of snow, and built a fire just opposite the privy. The boys kept the fire blazing until they went to bed.

Nobody slept in the loft. Two of the dads slept on the porch on cots and the rest of them slept in the cabin. I slept in my trailer.

When I went in for the night, the temperature was about 20 degrees. I found that the hose by the trailer had almost completely frozen up. The valve had been closed part way in order to provide pressure for the hose up on the porch. But it had been closed too much so the small amount of water still flowing through couldn't keep it from freezing. The valve was frozen so that I couldn't turn either valve handle and I couldn't open either hose fitting. I heated some water and after pouring hot water on the valve, I was able to open the fittings and remove the valve altogether. It was filled solid with ice so I took it into the trailer to thaw it out.

Fortunately, the supply hose still had a trickle of flow coming out of it. I used that to collect more water which I heated and then poured on the hoses and into the hose going to the creek. The hose to the creek was still open so I poured quite a bit of warm water into it to keep it open. I walked up to the cabin three times to make sure that water was still running out of the hose up there.

While I waited for the trickle to melt the ice in the supply hose, I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. Then I went back out to work on the hose. By 11:00 the trickle started to increase, and pretty soon some chunks of ice came out and the flow increased to its full volume. I put the valve back on and adjusted it so that there was a larger flow into the creek. Then I went up to the cabin for a final time to make sure that there was still enough flow up there to keep it from freezing. There was. I went back down and went to bed feeling very fortunate that I was able to get it flowing again. If it had gone just a little longer, it would have frozen solid and I wouldn't be able to thaw it out again until spring. That would have been bad.

In the morning, we had a great breakfast of French toast and sausage. I cut steps up to the high rock so Mark could go up there and see the rock formation. He is a geologist and I wanted to learn as much as I could from him about the rocks. He told me a lot of interesting facts about those rocks and about geology in general.

We packed up and left for home about 1:00. I think everyone had a great time.