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Slowing Down

Posted by on March 8, 2011

Well, sort of. Been a crazy and hecktic month running the Iron Dog trail and trying to get it set was fun but a lot of work. Put on over 600 miles on the Bearcat exploring options, riding the route, once one was plotted and then staking the trail. Then it snowed, don’t get me wrong, I love the snow and would normally be hopping with joy, but why 4 days before the Iron Doggers are due to arrive and after I’ve ran the trail putting in marking stakes does it have to snow 2 to 2 and half feet in a day..

So I went and broke the trail open again and was thinking things are good and checked my email to find out Paul has gotten his sled stuck big time on the Tanana, what else could I do but take a couple hours off of work and go help him get his sled back. Seems he’s been having power problems or maybe I should say “No” power problems. We’ll we got it out and to the dealership for him on Wednesday and then it’s back to trail stuff and working on the new check point.

So Dennis comes to town, he scratched from the iron Dog in Nome and came to Fairbanks to help out on the trail, great. I was finishing up the section that went through the Chena Flood Control Project area and he was going to run the section from the finish to the end of the Floodway. Well it didn’t work out so well. Plan was for him to break open the trail, meet me, get stakes and we’d stake it on the way back to town. About 15 miles out he goes through the ice and I mean in the water. A picture says a 1000 words, so these should say it all.

With the timeline the way it was I wasn’t able to help him until after the Iron Dog was finished Saturday, so the above pictures are from our excursion on Sunday with the help of Skip, Dean and Jake. We got it out of the water and on solid ice. He had some other folks come down the next day and drag it to town. A good ending if a cold at 30 below Sunday morning.

Next came building material for the cabin. I had it all set to start hauling lumber into the cabin site, and we did get a good load in, just not as much as I wanted to. Dean, Tyler and I drove down the Parks and made camp in the railroad yard Friday and starting hauling the lumber he (Dean) and I had loaded on our trailers along with sleds.

Jake was set to come down on Saturday with my 16 foot 7 ton flat bed and lots of plywood and 2 by’s. Jake got sick and couldn’t make it, so we hauled what we had, which was a fair amount as is. Took us 8 trips with the Bearcat and Siglin sled and I have to say that Siglin is one freight hauling sled, we were able to haul 12 – 8 foot 2×6’s and 9 – 16 foot 2×12 per trip. A heavy load but it worked well and the Bearcat had power to spare. Fact was, even with that load behind me I had to easy on the throttle so the load wouldn’t come undone and slid off the Siglin.

A few pictures o the cabin site and Tyler trying to get back on his sled after he stepped off and sunk in the snow So all the hauling was done by 1:00 PM Saturday and it was time to go play, the snow pack up on the ridges was wind blown and hard as concrete, so we headed down into the trees and found lots of powder to play, at least until the drive shift busted on the Cougar and we had to tow Tyler’s sled out. I’m sure glad we had the Bearcat along for towing and it did a great job, just like hauling out the lumber…

Tyler made the mistake of getting off his sled on the fresh snow side, Ooops, this is him trying to get back on

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