So we went down to Hurricane again this weekend for three days of rain, sweat and mud. Plan was to finish up cutting our new trail in to the cabin site, haul the twenty 8 foot 6”x8” railroad ties to be used for the posts and start digging holes for them.
Tyler and I headed in Friday afternoon after lunch and the day was just beautiful, the sun was out and Denali was highlighted by the clouds behind it. So off we go and it’s not bad, trail is still muddy but useable, Tyler and I tried to find two of the long/lat points that indicated where the new trail should be and I think we found them, but I will have to do a recheck next trip down. Then we went back to cutting brush and moving along until about 6:30 and decided it was time for dinner.
Saturday morning Dean shows up and brings the rain with him, an unfortunate end to our sunny weekend. After breakfast we all headed in to cut brush, I was thinking this should be a cakewalk at this point, man was I wrong. The new trail is following the platted route of a road that was never built. It was platted by the state back in 1980, just never constructed and seeing how it’s on higher ground, it should also be drier, or so goes the theory we had.
Ha, the first half is OK and were doing good following the line, then we start to run into wet ground, bummer. So at around noon we decide we needed more info (more long/lat points to go by) but this means back to town and that means we won’t do any more trail work until the next time we come down. I guess I’ll be making some trips to DNR to get the long/lat info we need.
So we finish off the day hauling the rest of the post in and what I was planning to use for footers. On the way back to camp we found some nice fresh Black Bear tracks in the trail, fresh as it rained the night before and these tracks are still well defined, but no bear.
So after hauling the rest of the ties into the site we start digging out the footer holes and get down 2 feet and oh s%#t, water is just a gushing in there, not good. OK, time to rethink (again) and go to plan B. Plan B requires a 2 man auger with 10” drill stem, you ever lift one of those thing, let’s just say their 2 man augers cause one guy can hardly lift it up let alone use it with the auger going. But of course we don’t have an auger with us, so another item on the list for next trip.
So we’ve done all we could with what we had, trail building on hold until we get more data, post placement on hold until we get auger, nothing left to haul in this trip and we still have Sunday to do something, heck, guess we’ll go exploring. So it’s dinner and good night’s sleep, wake up Sunday morning and were socked in, it’s raining to beat all you know what and you can’t see the mountains the clouds are so thick and low. So it’s time to pack up to head home.
It was a disappointment that we had to leave, Tyler was of course bummed because we didn’t get to go back and set up some targets for him to shoot at with his new 22, I promised him we would next trip out. So a nice easy drive home with all the tourist rubber necking along the highway.
We get about a half mile south of the entrance into Denali Nat’l Park and the hwy is blocked by a small car and 30 foot RV in front of me. I look to the right and yeah, OK, a brown spot walking down the road, probable just a moose, wait, that ain’t no moose, to short and moose don’t have that strut, dang it’s a Griz and he’s just wandering along the highway like he owns it. Of course no one is getting out of their vehicle to dispute that attitude with him I can assure you.
We’ll we pull over and this, in Tylers words, “Small Griz”, walks right pass us by 15 feet or so. I have to admit I keep thinking “please don’t smell anything you want to eat”, last thing I needed was to have some young Griz decide he liked the smell of those groceries in the RV and enter the motorhome to help himself to some, of course that would have made one heck of story……, sorry for the mess honey, you see this little O’l Grizzly decided he wanted your potato salad and………
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