11/3-6/97 I went up to the property for 4 days: Monday through Thursday.

It started raining just when I arrived at 11:20 and it rained the rest of the day. I put on my trusty rain gear and started chiseling notches in the back wall to allow the RPSL to stand up straight. The log I had chosen had an extra large diameter, and while I was chiseling, I was wishing that I had chosen a more slender log. Oh well what's done is done. I finished 4 1/2 out of 8 of the notches before I quit for the day. Back down at the trailer, I installed two ball valves on the hose to make it easier to get water.

Tuesday was a beautiful sunny day. I finished all eight notches and when I tried the RPSL for fit, I was elated to find that it fit perfectly and the holes lined up perfectly just as before. I found myself laughing out loud again with delight.

Since I had notched the logs pretty deeply, I mixed up a batch of Tim-bor and treated all the notches. Then I encountered the second reason to regret choosing such a fat log for the RPSL: a bucket wouldn't fit over the end of the log. That meant that I had to find some other way to soak the end of the log in Penta.

After considering the few options that I had, I went to work and made a crude bucket out of wood and lined the inside of it with four thicknesses of 6 mill vis-queen. I attached this to the bottom of the RPSL and filled it with Penta.

On Wednesday morning, I gwizzed log #64. The log looked pretty bad and I was ambivalent about using it all the while I was gwizzing it. Since the quality was better toward the top of the log, I decided to use it since I could cut off about 6 feet from the butt end.

After lunch I went to check on the makeshift Penta bucket and was horrified to find that it had leaked and there was Penta floating in pool between the column base footings. There must have been some sand or something on the boards that I made the bucket out of, and the base of the log must have rubbed through the vis-queen. I really didn't know.

I contained the leak with another layer of vis-queen and then started skimming the Penta off the top of the pool. I guess I was lucky that the pool was full of rainwater. That way, the Penta was confined to that pool. It took a couple hours to get the mess cleaned up.

When I got back and cut log #64 to length, I found that even after cutting another 6 feet off the butt, the log was rotten in the center. I rejected the log and felt kind of down after the Penta leak and now this bad log. I went into the woods to look at a log that had fallen a year or so ago. I had limbed it and spudded it and it was suspended from the ends so it should be all right. I cut into it where it is 8 inches in diameter and found that it is perfectly sound. I was thinking that I would get the next PSL from this log, but when I measured it, I found that I can get a 42 foot purlin or even the ridgepole out of it. I decided to leave it for that purpose.

On Thursday morning, I decided to use log #41 for the next PSL. I had previously gwizzed and treated this log and planned to use it in the wall, but it was so gouged and discolored that I rejected it and left it on the roadway. The PSL will be in back of the building where it can't be easily seen so this is an ideal use for #41. I cut the end of it to fit into a CB88 and started lifting it up onto the wall. I got it up on top of the wall and decided to leave it there until next week.

It was noon and I plan to bring my mother and Gus up to visit on Friday, so I planned to spend the afternoon getting things ready for their visit. The main thing was to build some ramps so she could get around to see things and get into the privy. I also built a grab bar for the privy out of the sledge hammer handle that I had broken. I got things pretty well done and left for home at about 5:00.

11/7/97 I took my mother and Gus up to the property for the day. The weather was dry, calm, and very pleasant. I think both of them had a good time. The wheel chair worked well on the ramps so they both saw most of everything I have been doing. Gus and I hiked up to see the spring while mom waited with some peanuts to feed to the chipmunks. Mom had remarked about the frogs that we heard croaking, so I caught a little tan one up by the spring and brought it back to her. She thought it was so cute that she wanted to kiss it. She held it close to her lips, kissed it a couple of times, and then the frog jumped right into her mouth. We had a good laugh over that and I am sure the story will be told many times over. Before we left, I gave them a demonstration of how I lift a log with my winch and crane. I think they were quite impressed.

11/11-13/97 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

The weather was clear and cold when I arrived at 10:30. I began by lowering log #41 from where it was resting on top of the wall, into position as PSL at grid D-1. In the process, I found the body of a poor little frog who had obviously gotten into the pool of contaminated water and then died trying to climb the rocks to get away from it. Dave had told me that Penta contains arsenic and that it is nasty stuff. When I saw the dead frog, I decided right then to stop using Penta and to clean up and cover the area as best as I could.

I made a plywood cover that fits tightly over the pool that the Penta leaked into. The cover is tight enough to keep frogs and squirrels out so it should help. Fortunately, the drain from that pool into the next one is below the water line so as long as I keep water in the pool, the Penta film will stay above the drain and won't be able to leak out.

The new PSL couldn't stand up correctly without chiseling notches in about 10 wall logs, so with the PSL standing up, I scribed the logs for the notches and started chiseling them out. I got one or two done before the end of the day.

That night it got down to 24 degrees outside and the furnace could only keep the temperature inside up to 48 degrees. I definitely have to do something about fixing the furnace.

On Wednesday morning, I called Evergreen RV and discussed my options. I decided I would take the furnace out and bring it home with me to have it fixed or replaced.

The first thing I did when I went out was to start draining the Penta from the makeshift bucket under the RPSL. I wanted to get as much Penta as possible back in the bucket that I got from Dal Hope, and then return it to him. While that was draining, I cut the rest of the notches in the wall logs. There were a lot of pretty deep notches so it took me nearly all day. By that time, the RPSL had dripped dry so I lowered it into the CB88 for the final time and then bolted it into place. Earl stopped by for a visit while I was chiseling the notches and we had a chat about how nice the weather was for November.

On Thursday morning I felt kind of headachy and sick. I don't know if it was because I was dehydrated, or because of the previous day's loud pounding on the chisel, or because of Penta fumes, or because of being cold at night. Anyway, I got up and felt better when I got outside to work.

I started by lifting the PSL at grid B-1 and started draining the Penta from it. I also mixed up a batch of Tim-bor using boiling water and started soaking the bottom of the D-1 PSL. The log needs to be above 40 degrees in order to absorb the Tim-bor solution and the temperature outside was about 25 degrees so I figured that the bucket of boiling solution would warm the log up enough. The bucket stayed warm to the touch for several hours, so I am sure that the log got warm enough.

While that was soaking, I cleaned up all the chips from the notches and built a fire with them. Then I burned any wood and Vis-queen that had any Penta on it. I had a roaring fire that produced almost no smoke, so I feel that I successfully got rid of the hazard from those things.

I got a message on my recorder that Gayle and her new husband Lynn along with Barb, Jocelyn, Hillary, and Samantha would be up to visit me in the afternoon. After lunch, I started wrapping things up to be ready to show them around. I lowered both PSLs into their CB88s and bolted them into place. The PSLs and the RPSL still need to be bolted to the wall but that will have to wait until next week. I poured the leftover Tim-bor solution into the sprayer and was in the process of spraying it onto some wall logs when Gayle and her family drove up.

Just as they were getting out of the car, Samantha got suddenly sick. Most of it made it outside, but quite a bit of it got on the car seat and made a mess. After that was cleaned up, we had a nice visit, took some pictures, went through the woods to see the spring, had a log lifting demonstration, and Hillary and I climbed up and walked the high scaffolds. When they left, I started dismantling the furnace. I got stuck and called Evergreen RV. I talked to Mark and he was very helpful in telling me how to go about getting it apart. With that done, I packed up and left for home.

11/18-21/97 I went up to the property for 4 days: Tuesday through Friday.

There was three inches of wet snow on the ground when I arrived at 10:30. I had to put the chains on the pickup in order to park up next to the trailer. Evergreen RV had fixed my furnace burner and control system so I spent the next 4 hours putting the furnace back together. It wasn't easy and I had to manufacture some parts in order to get the job done. Fortunately, I brought an electric space heater with me just in case, so even though the temperature in the trailer was 30 degrees when I got there, I was able to stay relatively comfortable while I was working on the furnace.

When I finished at 2:30, I turned the furnace on, moved my stuff into the trailer, and had lunch. Then I went out and shoveled snow off toolboxes and such. The snow had ripped my tarps down and made sort of a mess. It wasn't quite dark yet at 4:15 but I was tired and decided to quit for the day anyway.

On Wednesday morning it rained cats and dogs. I had a piece of plywood laying over the top of the winch to protect it and of course the plywood was covered with soggy wet snow. I decided that I better build a more permanent and workable cover for the winch, the battery charger, and the power outlets. I used the same piece of plywood for the roof and built a nice shed that will hold a snow load, protect the machines from rain and snow, and still let me operate it by reaching in under the roof.

When that was done, I spudded log #108 and started pulling it up the cliff. I got it up to the top of the cliff before lunch. During lunch, the rain turned to snow and the snow started accumulating on the ground pretty fast.

The log I was pulling was soaking wet, super slippery and so was the log chute. When the log was almost up on deck, it started slipping and shot right back down over the cliff. Fortunately the cable stayed attached, nothing was damaged, and the log stayed on the log chute. All it did was to set me back a little and give me a lesson on keeping the log chained up all the time. I pulled it back up again and had it laying on the deck before I quit for the day.

That night, the tanks ran out of propane and it got pretty cold in the trailer. Again, fortunately, I remembered the electric heater. I got it back out of the pickup, plugged it in, and it kept the trailer reasonably warm for the rest of the night.

On Thursday morning, I cooked my breakfast using my emergency MSR hiking stove. Then I drove to the Parkside Grocery store and bought more propane. I had to take the chains off to drive there, and put them back on again to park. When the tanks were reinstalled, I gwizzed log #108 in a heavy downpour. The cold rain together with the slushy snow make for my least favorite weather conditions for working up there. But, you take what you get.

Friday turned out to be a beautiful sunny day. The snow and slush was frozen hard which I find a little more pleasant than the slush and mud. I cleared the snow and ice off the scaffolds, and then made a PSL out of log #108. By that time, the sun had warmed up the log and I treated it with Tim-bor. Then, moving right along, I used the winch and crane to raise the PSL into place at grid D-3. It was a little after sundown when I finished so I secured everything, packed up, and left for home.

11/24-26/97 I went up to the property for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

I actually went up the night before since it was the Thanksgiving week and I would only get 3 days work in. I arrived at 5:30 PM Sunday and put the chains on in the dark in order to get the pickup up to the trailer. I was starting to get a cold and wasn't feeling very well.

On Monday morning, it was raining and I started pulling log #1. This was a log I harvested from the woods and it was lying near the privy. I rigged a cable to a block in a tree in order to pull the log. This made the crane have to pull almost horizontally. The log had only been pulled about 8 feet when the crane boom snapped in two. I had no choice but to replace the boom.

I went into the woods, selected a tall skinny douglas fir, felled it, spudded the bark off, skidded it to the building and started lifting it-all in the rain.

On Tuesday morning there was about an inch of new snow on the ground but it was nice and sunny. I was feeling a little sicker. By the end of the day, I had fixed the boom on the crane, and repaired the handrails that the boom had broken when it snapped. Before I quit for the day, I walked the hose trail and cleared all the branches that might pinch the hose off under a load of snow.

On Wednesday, I was still sick and the weather was sunny and nice again. I just got started rigging up to resume pulling log #1 when Larry Copenhaver and Ted Turner stopped to visit. They helped me pull the log by wiggling it with a peavey when it would get hung up saving me a walk from the winch to the log each time. We used one drum full of cable on the winch and had just re-rigged to start a second one when the winch failed. It acted like there were broken teeth on a gear inside. With that, I decided to quit and go home. Before I did, I looked closer at the winch and found that no teeth were broken but it looked like a bad bearing. I took the winch home with me in the hopes that I could fix it before next week.

11/28/97 I fixed the winch. The problem was a bushing that had worn badly enough so that a gear moved enough to disengage. I cleaned the winch up and replaced the bushing. I hope it works.

12/2-5/97 I went up to the property for 4 days: Tuesday through Friday.

The weather was clear and 30 degrees when I arrived at 11:15. Enough snow had gone so that I drove right up to the trailer without having to put on the chains. The winch worked great and I was very happy that I didn't have to find another solution. I used it to finish pulling log #1 on deck. I was happy that the new boom worked great as well. I gwizzed about 3/4 of log #1 before the end of the day.

On Wednesday, I finished gwizzing log #1, made an RPSL from it, treated it, and lifted it up on top of the wall. I left it resting up there overnight. It was clear and 30 degrees again all day. I still had my cold, but the weather made it pleasant to work anyway.

On Thursday, I erected log #1 as the RPSL at grid C-3. I felt elated looking at it. This represented visible progress since it defines the peak of that gable wall. It was also gratifying to find that the crane boom easily clears the top of the RPSL and still reaches out over the wall. That means that the RPSL and the PSLs sticking up there won't be as much of a hindrance to the crane as I feared they might be. I was in the process of bolting the RPSL to the wall when Earl Landin stopped by and gave me some books he no longer wanted.

On Friday, I bolted the PSL at grid D-3 to the wall and then built a snow shed in the south corner of the crawl space. I needed to get these last poles erected at C-3 and D-3 before I built the snow shelter, otherwise the shelter would be in the way of getting the poles in place.

I used the old broken crane boom as the central beam for the roof. Then I used 6 long 2x4s that had been wall braces at one time as the rafters. I used some garage sale joist hangers on the log wall, and ran the rafters from these over the boom beam and then over the main floor beam. I decked the roof with some plywood scraps that Charles Droge had given me. Then I spread the tarps over the top to keep it waterproof. It was just getting dark when I finished and I packed up and left for home. I felt good about getting this done. Now, let it snow!

12/8-11/97 I went up to the property for 4 days: Monday through Thursday.

There was about 2 inches of new snow on the ground when I arrived at 11:15 so I put the chains on to get parked up by the trailer. I rigged up to pull log #13 up the cliff and when I started to pull it, the winch failed. I had to wonder about the choice of log #13; I also reflected on all the misfortunes that occurred while I was trying to complete course number 13. Could there be something about that number?

I determined that the problem was electrical and after checking it with my meter, I found that the problem was in the motor itself. I removed the motor and took it into the trailer to diagnose, and hopefully fix it. I worked the rest of the day on it, rebuilt a part in the switching mechanism, modified some others, and got it running in one direction. I did a test to make sure that reversing polarity would reverse direction of the motor, and then cleaned up the mess in the trailer.

From the damaged parts in the motor, I knew that the winch was on its last legs and would need some new parts in order to be reliable again. On Tuesday morning, I called the manufacturer and found out that the winch was so old that parts were no longer available. The guy I talked to told me what model of winch I should get at Grainger's as a replacement. In the meantime, I would try to get through the week with the old one as best I could.

After a few times of reversing polarity to reverse direction, the winch began behaving normally. It didn't seem to have quite as much power as before, but I succeeded in pulling log #13 up on deck anyway.

When it was resting on top of the log chute, a clevis pin worked loose from the rigging and dropped to the ground along with the hook it was holding. Fortunately I saw them both fall so I was sure I could find them. The hook was plainly visible and I was sure the pin was near it. I painstakingly removed snow from the area and moved rocks and such trying to see the pin. While I was doing this, Earl drove up with some more books he was giving to me. He helped me look for the pin and after another 10 minutes or so, we found it lying in plain sight right where we had been looking. What a relief. After visiting in the trailer with Earl, and discussing most of the world's big problems, I went back up and wired that pin to the shackle so that it can't work loose again.

Before the end of the day, I got about a third of #13 gwizzed. Before I quit for the day, I installed a fluorescent shop light in the snow shelter I had built last week. It was pretty dark in there with the roof on, but the light makes it a nice work area.

On Wednesday morning, I finished gwizzing log #13. There was another two inches of snow over night so it made sweeping the chips up a little slow. I tried to get most of the snow out of the chips to keep them as dry as possible. Next time, I am going to shovel the snow off the deck before I gwiz a log to make the clean up a lot easier and faster.

I made a PSL out of log #13 but since it was so cold out, I didn't treat it. I can do that later after it is up, and anyway, the log will be totally inside the building, so treatment isn't so critical.

I lifted the log up onto the building and started placing it at grid B-3. The poor winch barely had enough power to lift it, especially after the drum got pretty full of cable. It took a long time, but I finally got the log dangling over the hole between the wall and the scaffolding that it had to snake down through. I quit for the day, leaving it dangling like that.

On Thursday morning, when I tried to get the winch to lower the log, it refused to work at all. I tried and tried, but the winch wouldn't work at all in either direction. I had no choice but to use come-alongs and lower the log into place by hand. All my upper body muscles got a good workout before I finished this job. When the log was in place, I lag screwed it to the wall at the top with a 5/8 by 16 inch lag screw (which Earl had suggested instead of through-bolts) and I bolted the bottom to the CB88.

The log ended up perfectly plumb and in line with the two others and I felt really good looking at it. You can now see the outline of the roof of the building. Before I left for home, I added a bunch more boards to the snow roof and covered them with tarps. This will keep a much bigger area nice and dry and snow free.

12/16-19/97 I went up to the property for 4 days: Tuesday through Friday.

I wasn't working with a full head of steam this week due to a fairly stressful problem at home. As I have mentioned before, raising teenagers is by far the most difficult and stressful activity I have ever encountered.

It rained all the way to Stevens Pass, but there the rain changed to snow and it snowed heavily all the way to the property. On the way, I stopped to deliver some Christmas jam to Earl Landin, and while I was there he measured 18 inches of new snow on the ground. He said that the last 4 inches came down in just a few hours. From there I went to Copenhaver's for a jam delivery and ended up having lunch with them. Next I put on the chains and delivered jam to Tutino's.

It took me an hour to shovel out a parking place. This is the first time this year I haven't been able to drive the pickup up to the trailer. By 2:00 I was making trails with snowshoes and moving into the trailer. I shoveled the snow off the new shelter roof, the winch house roof, the mixer cover, and the scaffolds. Then I went into the trailer and attached a remote control device onto a new winch that I bought the day before.

On Wednesday morning I discovered some interesting tracks in the snow. A big animal made them and they looked like cat tracks to me because there weren't very many with any claw marks. I called the rangers and then the Fish and Game department who confirmed that they were cougar tracks. I spent the morning following them from the house across the road, right through my building site, and on up the side of Dirtyface to where it was too steep for me to continue. Kind of exciting.

I spent the rest of the day fabricating a winch bracket from a big piece of angle iron.

On Thursday morning, I installed a support post for the snow shelter. I figured the spans were a little too long for a heavy snow load and now I feel it is safer. When that was done, I installed the winch and carried some planks for the front windows up from the pickup. Then, I pulled log #87 part the way up the hill.

On Friday, I improved the winch mount and finished pulling #87 up on deck. In the process, the GFI breaker blew. I reset it and everything worked OK but it left me wondering why it blew. It started snowing about noon and about 2 inches accumulated by the time I left at 4:00.

12/29-31/97 I went up to the property for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

I arrived at 10:45. It was 46 degrees out and I shoveled 2 or 3 inches of slushy snow out of my parking place. I moved into the trailer and installed the new microwave Ellen gave me for Christmas, and the new 900 Mhz. cordless phone that Dave and Janet gave us. They both work great and will make my life simpler and safer working up there.

Since this was turning out to be a relatively light snow year, I decided that I will keep the upper roadway clear of snow to make it easier to gwiz, sweep up chips, and find logs. So, I shoveled off the upper roadway, and then proceeded to gwiz about half of log #87 before it got dark.

On Tuesday morning, I finished gwizzing #87. About 10 feet of the butt end was rotten which made the log too short for what I needed next, so I started pulling log #54 up the cliff. In the process, Paul Gray stopped and chatted with me for a while. I got #54 up to the edge of the cliff before I quit for the day.

On Friday, I got log #54 up on deck and gwizzed about half of it before I quit for the year, packed up and left for home.

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