6/24-26/08 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:30. When I went up to the cabin, I spotted a large toad or frog sunning himself on the rock steps. I went back to the trailer and got the camera and took a few pictures of him. He was four or five inches long. I didn't know such big frogs lived up there.

When I went into the cabin I noticed that the peanut was gone. Bad news. Both traps upstairs and the one in the crawlspace were still set and still had their bait so I wasn't completely sure a mouse had gotten in. I tried to think about how I might have moved the peanut before I left last week but I couldn't imagine how. I looked around for any other mouse evidence and didn't find any.

With the mouse question still pending, I went to work on the staircase vault. I had bought two new chisels and a drill bit for the roto-hammer and I tried the chisels out on the rock. I was amazed at how fast they cut through it. I spent an hour or two on the rock and cut a channel for the staircase stringer about six or eight inches deep. I decided to leave the inner part of the rock intact until I figure out exactly where the steps will go. It might be that the hump will be right under a step, in which case it won't have to be chiseled any more at all. Now that I know how well these chisels work, I can cut the rock later however I need to.

With the channel cut in the rock, I could string a tight string where the stair stringer will go and make an accurate determination as to exactly where the landings will go. Before I quit for the day, I got a good start on building the upper landing form. The gray jay family of four and a chipmunk were there for peanuts during the work.

On Wednesday, my hands were stiff and sore from the roto-hammer and probably also from the shovel. I would get cramps that would pull my thumb over tight against the base of my index finger so that I would have to use the other hand to pry the thumb open. My fingers were also swollen so that I couldn't quite close my fists all the way.

When I went up to the cabin, the new peanut was there undisturbed, but I had caught a mouse in the crawlspace trap. After a search of how the mouse had gotten in, I found that the screen over the end of a pipe through which an extension cord ran had been dislodged. I had been using that extension cord for power at the vault stair site and I had piled a bunch of lumber where the pipe goes through the foundation. The jostling had evidently moved the screen. The screen had only come off a half-inch, but that's all a mouse needs. I put the screen back on and jammed a short board against it to hold it in place. I was happy to have discovered the mouse hole without too much trouble. Let's hope that's the last one.

I finished building the upper landing form and then went down and started excavating for the lower landing. I hit a huge root that went across where the stairway would go. I had no choice but to cut it out. If I left it, it would certainly grow and break the staircase. I used an axe to cut it out. The root branched so that I cut out a piece in the shape of the letter 'Y'. On one side it had a diameter of about 12 inches and the other side had diameters of about 6 and 8 inches. I suspect that the root belongs to a big Ponderosa Pine tree standing 15 or 20 feet away. The tree doesn't look all that healthy to start with so this will probably kill it eventually. I felt bad about that, but I didn't have a lot of choice.

In the wildlife department, I was visited by a chipmunk and the gray jay parents but not the juveniles. I also saw what was either a small snake or a lizard. He was moving so fast that I couldn't see whether he had legs or not. My guess is that it was a lizard.

I got most of the lower landing site excavated to bedrock and I got a good start on building the forms before I quit for the day. My body is not used to such hard work so I was moving pretty slowly before I quit. Before I went in, I moved a plug so that the baseboard receptacles in the cabin were fed by the permanent power through the new service panel rather than the temporary power pole. That should give me higher voltage up there and it will start registering on the new meter instead of the old one. The shower sure felt good when I finally went in.

On Thursday morning, I went back to work on the lower landing forms. I finished the sides that are parallel to the upper staircase and I got a start on laying out the lower staircase. The whole family of four gray jays forced me to take occasional breaks to give them their peanut treats. Both juveniles now know how to land on my hand, take at least one peanut, and fly away with it. I don't know what they do after that. I had a late lunch and was pretty well exhausted when I finally quit. I left for home at 3:20.