12/12-14/06 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

There was snow on the road going over the pass, but it was a clear beautiful day. I stopped in at the Lake Wenatchee State Park and talked to a ranger about a possible scout winter camp. I arrived at the property at 12:30.

The driveway was not plowed so I had to shovel through the berm and then barge the pickup in over about 4 or 5 inches of new snow. I made a few runs at it and got the pickup halfway to the trailer. I measured 17 inches of snow on the ground. I didn't need snowshoes to make the trails.

After moving in and having lunch, I used the chainsaw and Rasputin to true up the notches so that the new tread fit properly.

On Wednesday it had snowed about 6 inches overnight but by morning it had turned to rain. I wasn't sure if it was going to snow more so I backed the pickup back down to the entrance of the driveway so I wouldn't get snowed in. It ended up raining all day long.

The new snow falling off the roof had fallen all over the staircase, so I started out by shoveling the snow off the work, just like the old days of building the log walls in the wintertime. It was fun and brought back a lot of memories.

I made some careful measurements and finalized the fit of the new tread. Then I counterbored, drilled, and lag screwed the new third tread into place. It felt really good walking up those three steps. I was happy with the process I had developed because it seems that I now have a method that will work for all the rest of the steps. It's just a matter of going through the steps, (so to speak).

The next step was to move the jigs up one notch on the stringers. This went smoothly except that one of the screws had broken off in the right stringer. I had to get the vise grips and a chisel and extract the broken part of the screw. I didn't want to run into it later with the chainsaw. That added a little time to the process.

The next step was to get another slab from above the trailer in the snowshed. I got the same tackle I used before and got the slab down the same way, except this time I was more careful about choking the slab at the center of gravity so I didn't smash the skylight again. The slab came down very nicely this time and I dragged it up the hill.

This slab had a half dozen stubby limbs sticking out of it so I got the chainsaw out and cut them all off. Then I scraped the bottom of the slab where the scribing was going to be in the hopes that I could see a pencil mark. Even after the scraping you couldn't see a pencil mark on it very well. I tried drawing a line for trimming the nose of the tread but I couldn't see it well enough. So instead of a line, I laid two 1x2s on top of the tread with the outside one lined up where I wanted to make the cut. Then I ran the Skilsaw on top of the 1x2s with the blade up against the outer 1x2. I should have clamped or screwed the 1x2 in place because it moved as I was sawing and so I ended up cutting more off than I wanted. I wasn't too happy about that but I decided to use it as it was anyway. The nose of the tread will just look a little thicker on one end.

Next, I suspended the tread from the jigs and aligned it. I measured its position carefully, just like before, and then rebuilt the scribe. But this time, instead of using two pencils, I used one pencil for the bottom and one Marks-a-lot for the top. That made scribing a lot quicker and easier and made a nice visible mark. I also had the presence of mind to mark one of the rectangle corners on both the stringer and the tread for each set of notches. I made the notch about the same depth as the last one on the left stringer, but I decided to make the right one considerably shallower than the previous one.

On Thursday morning, it was snowing lightly and I heard thunder periodically all morning. There was a forecast of a huge storm for the entire state that was due in the afternoon. I figured that I needed to leave early.

I went to work and measured and marked the logs for the rectangles, which was a lot easier with the reference marks I had made. Then I got the chainsaw out and cut all four notches. On the previous tread, I noticed that most of the rasping I did was to cut away the complete red scribe marks. This time I cut the marks away completely with the chainsaw on the first cutting. I was very pleased that when I flipped the tread over for the first time and tried out the notches, they fit very nicely. They won't need much more work to finalize them. I was a little dismayed that I had not made the right side notch a little deeper into the stringer. The tread notch was a little deeper than I would have liked, although it still will be plenty strong. I'll know better with the next tread.

I took some pictures of the first four treads in place and left for home at 11:00 AM. It was very snowy all the way over the pass but I made it without chains even though the roads hadn't been plowed or sanded yet when I went over. I beat the storm by a few hours.