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| A winter visitor munches on a cherry tree |
Back to an Alaska in the throes of winter, 2 degrees and a foot of snow and barely enough light for digging out the car in the long term lot with no boots and only a light fleece jacket unlike Alaska-savvy Dan who left his winter coat and boots in the car when we left for Florida back on a warm sunny fall-like day in late October.
Delighted a few hours later to find our driveway plowed of snow by a friendly neighbor, we first check for moose tracks in the orchard and are grateful to see only snowshoe hare and weasel. The moose tracks are all outside the orchard among the cherries and the pears which Dan is happy to offer as sacrificial lambs to keep the moose away from the apples.
Settled into our cozy familiar places we’re soaking up that so-good-to-be-home feeling only to have it all disappear when we turn on the evening news and hear a pineapple express is on its way up from Hawaii. Not the movie, the nasty weather system that brings warm moist air and moisture and causes complete havoc. Our looks at each other are full of uh-ohs. We both are thinking about the bridge.
Up at the cabin the bridge has been accumulating a load of snow along with the snow machine shed. More wet snow on top of what is already there could collapse the shed and crack the bridge spans under the weight, two wilderness experiences we’ve already had our fair share of, two we would prefer not to have again. We’re getting passed our prime for the pioneering adventure and romance of felling trees and hauling logs to build cabins and sheds and bridges and stuff.
Clearly we need to get up to the cabin and shovel the bridge and the shed, but, since we’ve been away and trails are not broken and snow machines are still in moth balls, that’s easier said than done. We’ll have to snowshoe and we’ll have to do it before the pineapple express arrives because there are few things worse in the woods than breaking trail by snowshoe in heavy wet snow.
Unless its deep soft powdery snow that hasn’t set up yet. Off the train at our trail head the snowshoeing conditions seem not so bad, only sinking a few inches, until we get up the trail a few hundred feet and realize we’re sinking deeper and deeper. Each step descends about a foot which means it has to get lifted back up about a foot always with lots of collapsed snow lifting with it. Dan’s snowshoes aren’t cooperating and keep coming loose until I discover a twist in one of the bindings but we’ve spent almost an hour going about 1/4 of a mile which at the current rate makes 4 hours to go which will put us at the cabin well after dark and we don’t have headlamps and the cloudy sky means no moon to navigate by.
And then Jason appears on the trail behind us seemingly out of nowhere. Jason is a young trapper who lives up the creek from us. Dan brightens noticeably and offers to pay Jason to take his 50 pound pack a deal Jason turns down opting to carry the pack for some snow machine gas instead. Off he goes, oozing with youth, and we call after him not to bother waiting since we won’t be getting there for a while.
With the pack gone Dan’s more optimistic about our chances so we strike off again and only then we realize Jason isn’t wearing snowshoes. Why, we can’t imagine. We still will need to break trail. We take turns going first which allows the second person to take a break tromping along in the leaders trough until the trail breaker needs a rest. An hour later we reach the top of the hill and our first rest stop, clear the snow from the bench, brush away a trough to make room for our legs and to put our snowshoes in so thankful for a moment to settle down to catch our breath. Only then do we realize our trail bars and gatorade are in the pack making its way to the cabin without us.
Decision time. If we’re going back to town we need to head back now in order to catch the train. But we’re at the top of the hill. The worst of the work is done, we hate to waste all that effort, and then there’s that bridge. Only then do we realize we could have asked Jason to shovel it and saved ourselves the hike. For that matter we could have sent a text to his cell phone and skipped the trip altogether. None of that occurred to us. HMMMM
Off we go again and after another hour, almost there, we come around a bend and find our way completely blocked by a stand of birch lying across the trail. The trees had grown atop a huge rocky outcropping which didn’t allow the depth of soil needed for good holding roots and had toppled over in a good wind. To get around one side meant
climbing another steep hill and going completely
out of our way and the last of the light was upon us. We chose the short cut as shown by Jason’s tracks who just went up the trail before us. The short cut traversed a log straddling two huge rocky outcroppings with a deep crevise between them. Half way across my acrophobia kicks in and I freeze which Dan has no patience for, just reaches out from his solid rock perch, grabs my arm and pulls me along.
We stand quietly taking in the job before us.
At least eight birch to be cut up for firewood .
Tomorrow will be a busy day.
For the uninitiated the best way to get a feel for breaking trail by snowshoe would be to go to a gym and try out the stair stepper machine but first put weights on your ankles to represent the snow load. I don’t know how you could replicate the awkwardness of maneuvering on snowshoes themselves other than doing the stair stepper in snowshoes. Now do it for 4 hours but take a break every hour or so. Even then you really don’t get a full sense of it because a gym can’t give you the upside, the things that keep bringing you back to the challenge, the crisp air that keeps you cool, the delicious clean taste of it, the endorphin producing beauty of the wilderness that surrounds you, the cabin waiting when you get done, cozy lantern light, hot chocolate to sip, smug sense of triumph, 70+ and still doing it.