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So we made it to Hurricane and what a trip it was. The drive down was pretty good although it was delayed by a day due to the blizzard that hit South Central and the west coast of Alaska. The only real hazard was on the last 14 miles of road, lots of slush and ice on the road, made for some slow driving, but not as bad as I thought it was going to be.
We arrived Friday around dinner time and I saw what Dean was talking about as far as all the snow went, the first picture in the album below is Marquese’s sled from one night’s snow fall, wow. As I reminded my partner, this is why we brought land here, right, lots of snow to play in.
4.10.11.Hurricane
Decided it was time to play, so we went to the Hurricane Area for a few days of play and relaxation. Also wanted to see how Dean and Marquese were doing after a week of being snowed in.
Here I am thinking about getting out of town for one last trip of the season and hoping to have some decent snow for riding. Guess some one likes up there as I’m heading out tomorrow for Hurricane and the predictions are good for some fresh snow…..
… WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM TO 6 PM AKDT THURSDAY… Read more »
So 2 weeks ago Cisco decides to release a new version of their ASA (Adapted Security Appliance) Firmware, the ASA is more commonly known as a Firewall. I use a couple ASA’s at work to help keep control of the network and of course to provide some protection from hacker and other such bad guys.
The new firmware is a major change and instead of being named an upgrade to ver 8.x, they should of just gone with a new version level, say 9.0, because it has major changes and all the rules we’ve been using to set up ACL’s no longer work. Since this upgrade has so many changes, you also have to upgrade your hardware to 2 gig of RAM, humm, wondering if they got this idea from M.S. Read more »
Fairbanks is Alaska’s second largest city and residents commonly refer to it as the “Golden Heart of Alaska.” Due to its central location Fairbanks has become the transportation, trade and service center for the vast Interior region encompassing some 200,000 square miles. The community was founded a century ago on the banks of the winding Chena River, which drains into the Tanana River immediately south of town. The Chatinika, Chena, and Salcha River drainages define the area surrounded by rolling hills to the north, east and west of the urban centers. The Tanana Valley surrounds Fairbanks at an elevation of 436 feet above sea level and rises east to about 2,000 feet at the Canadian border.
Fairbanks has stunning views of the Alaska Range to the south, including Denali, and the White Mountains to the north. The Fairbanks North Star Borough (FNSB), a local government unit similar to a county, covers 7,361 square miles and has 97,484 residents. Within the Borough are two cities, Fairbanks and North Pole. There are two military installations, Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base as well as several unincorporated communities.
By air, Fairbanks is approximately three and a half hours north of Seattle and fifty minutes from Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city. The Borough is also the northern terminus of the Alaska Railroad with access to the ports of Seward, Whittier and Anchorage. Other than the Glenn and Sterling Highways, all major Alaskan highways meet at or near Fairbanks.
Fairbanks is the also the closest large city south of the north slope. FSNB’s location in Alaska, along the transpolar air routes (64º50′ latitude, about the same as Oslo, Norway) makes it logistically attractive to air cargo airlines and the military; by air Fairbanks is less than nine hours from both Europe and Asia.
Since we got the materials into the 1st cabin site at Chulitna, we figured we might as well start hauling the foundation material into the Mt Ryan site so Dean could start work on his foundation there. This should be a cake walk, heck it was too easy getting the lumber into Chulitna, the trail was easy and the Siglin hauled like it was being pulled by a semi on a paved four lane hwy. We spent more time loading and unloading then on the trail. So the run into the Mt Ryan site should be easy, just a bit longer, 6.5 miles instead of 3.2 miles. Ha, that’s what we get for thinking.
3.26.11.Mt.Ryan
Hauling the RR ties and 16 foot beams into My Ryan for Deans cabin foundation
We loaded up 8 Railroad ties for our first load, around 1000 to 1500 pounds, and the trail was OK for the first 3.5 miles, from the Hwy it was pretty windblown and some bare ground those first few miles along the top of the ridges, then it got better, or so we thought. More snow, better riding, yeah right, we rode on hard pack windblown to the consistency of concrete, and then you’d drop off 3 feet on the leeward side into sugar snow, a little gas and up again onto the next hard pack drift. Now as long as you could power up and get on the hard pack it was ok, but then every once in a while, like 8 times, the hard pack on the next drift would bust under the track, drop the sled into that sugar snow and there you were.
Every time the track broke through, the running boards would settle down on the hard pack. So you ended up sitting on top of the hard with your track spitting out all that sugar snow and getting no traction. Pull, yank, swear, nothing worked except to dig the hard pack out from around the sled and as soon as it settled back down she’d take off again. Had plenty of power, just had to get the running boards and tunnel off the hard pack and on the same level as the track. Never thought I’d have to worry about getting high centered on a sled, or maybe I should running board centered.
I mention all this as we figured it’d be a short and easy day. Left with the first load in at 11:00 AM, figuring we’d be heading home by 1:00, maybe 2:00 PM, NOT. We didn’t get back to the rig to get the 2nd load until 4:30 PM and at which point we were already pretty tired and just wanting to get the load in.
So we loaded up 8 Railroad Ties and two 8×8 16 foot beams, say between 1500 and 2000 pounds of material. No problem for the Bearcat to haul with that Siglin sled since we got the trail busted open, it pulled great. The problem started on the one steep downhill grade we had to traverse. We got to the top and Dean suggested we drop half the load and make two trips, me I just wanted to get it in and be done.
So off I go down this steep grade thinking it’ll be an easy downhill pull and it was until the Siglin decided to jack knife on me. Next thing I knew I’ve fallen off the Bearcat, which then rolls over me and keeps pulling the Siglin with rolls over me as well. Guess it wasn’t to bad considering. I was able to get up on my own power, albeit a bit sore and feeling like I was rode hard and put up wet, Dean said he was thinking it’d be a Medi-Vac call after he saw my head get buried by the Siglin. All I can say is thank the lord for helmets. I now have a 7 inch groove on my face shield right about where my right forehead, eye and cheek would have been. The skags from the Siglin just scratch right across it. Had I not had my helmet on I’m not too sure I’d still have a right eye and know I’d be sporting a nice long scare along my cheek and forehead.
Anyway, at this point I had to agree with Dean and we spilt the load up and hauled 4 RR ties and one beam at a time. So after two short trips we got all the material in for his foundation. We did decide that hauling materials into the Mt Ryan site was definitely a summer project and best done on ATV’s and figure we’ll get stingers and plywood in come May or June, after the snow melts.
I was pretty sore all day today (Sunday) and the bruising isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be and that gouge in my face shield will be a good reminder to always wear a helmet, even on warm days. I just hope the new windshield, hitch and mirror don’t cost to much.
So we spent a few days down in the Hurricane area and hauled the last loads of lumber into the cabin site. It was a pretty good weekend actually. We hauled everything Dean and I had loaded on our trailers by dinner time Friday night and then spent a lazy Saturday morning waiting for Jake to arrive with the last trailer load.
He got to our camp around 9:30 AM and we off loaded the trailer so he could head back to town and then spent the rest of the day hauling more loads in. Have to say I’m pretty impressed with the size of the loads we could get on the Siglin sled and with the Bearcat for hauling them, made it much easier to do. All though I didn’t get a picture of it, the largest load we hauled had 18 – 2x6x8’ and 11 – 2x12x16’ boards, that’s a lot of lumber to haul in one load behind a sled.
We hauled all but the last load in Saturday and decided to go for a ride and enjoy some of the day playing instead of working. The videos are of the trail into the cabin site and then our ride from there to Chulitna. It was a great day for riding, sunny and warm, a good spring day. Meet another neighbor on the trail to Otter Lake, nice man and helpful. Seems most all our neighbors are good folks seeing how we meet more of them on this trip then all the others put together. It was good to know most everyone is friendly and willing to be good neighbor, I was kind of worried about that after talking to a few last year. The Vids below of the freight trail to the cabin are broken down into two and half minute sections to easy up on the viewing time. The trail to Chulitna is broken into two nine minutes segments.
Sunday AM Dean and got the last load into the cabin site and then went and did some exploring. We both kept thinking that the west side of the RR Tracks looks pretty inviting and un-explored, so we explored them and glad we did. At first all you see are trees and snow, then after swirving through the trees a for a 100 yards or so it opens up into a hugh field of untouched powder. And not just one field but a dozen or more, we just kept riding and riding, through the trees and another field, ride that for a couple mile, more trees and more fields, it was endless or so it seemed.
Had to head back to camp by 1:30 to load up for the drive back to town, but next time we go down there I plan to explore those fields some more. I didn’t bring along the head cam, but here are some stills I took hauling lumber into the cabin site and of the fields we discovered in the trees west of the RR tracks.
Per the rec use agreement between the military and Iron Dog, I had to go back through the Tanana Flats section of the race route and pull all the trail markers we set. So it is more as a “just because” then anything else. Not real exciting, just some trail riding and the trail is a lot wider than it was when I ran it, looks like some folks rode it in a track rig. Widen it up and chewed it up as well, pretty rough in spots.
This is set in two vids do to the limits of YouTube.
