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Campfires, fireworks and all other open fires have been banned across the Yukon, due to the high risk of forest fires in much of the territory.
The fire ban, which was signed on Thursday by Yukon forest supervisor Dan Boyd, takes effect immediately. It prohibits all open fires, including campfires, the use of fireworks, and burning in landfills.
Campfires are allowed in metal fire pits in designated campgrounds. As well, barbecues with lids and small cook stoves are permitted, but Yukoners are being urged to use those products with extreme caution.
The Yukon-wide fire ban comes as the territorial government’s Wildland Fire Management Branch raised the fire danger rating to extreme in much of the Yukon, including in Whitehorse, where a citywide open fire ban has been in effect for almost a week.
Extreme fire ratings are also in effect Thursday in the Beaver Creek, Carmacks, Mayo and Ross River areas.
High fire danger ratings are in the Dawson City, Haines Junction and Teslin areas, while Old Crow and Watson Lake have moderate ratings.
As of Thursday afternoon, 11 wildfires have been reported in the Yukon so far this season, burning a total of about 116 hectares of forest.
Yukon crews help with Alaska wildfire
Meanwhile, Yukon wildland fire crews were sent late Wednesday to an area near Tok, Alaska, where a large forest fire has shut down part of the Alaska Highway in that state.
A 40-kilometre stretch of the Alaska Highway between Tok and Cathedral Bluffs, just on the other side of the Alaska-Yukon border, has been closed since the fire was reported 18 kilometres west of Tok on Wednesday evening.
The Alaskan village of Tanacross, as well as the Eagle subdivision, have been evacuated as a safety precaution, according to state officials.
Yukon wildfire information officer George Maratos said what began as a two-hectare fire quickly grew into a 688-hectare blaze that evening.
“To say it was a serious fire would be an understatement,” Maratos told CBC News earlier on Thursday.
The Wildland Fire Management Branch decided to send two of its air tankers to Alaska, even though three new forest fires were reported in the Yukon on Wednesday.
But Maratos said the three fires — all caused by lightning — were burning in wilderness areas and did not pose any risk to properties or other values.
“So we were able to accommodate the request for support, and we sent both of our air tanker groups to Alaska and they worked the fire until 1 a.m.,” he said, adding that the air tankers have since returned to the territory.
So I guess its a good thing I’m flying and not driving out this week. Be a bummer to get stuck in Tok.
Trish and I were going to go RVing, just her, I and the pups, but then she felt sorry for Tyler as it was his birthday Sunday and he really wanted to go ATVing with me. So she stayed home and Tyler and I headed out. Now this wasn’t just a fun and play weekend, this was a working weekend, which might of helped Trish decide to stay home , any way, the weekend was set to brush out the property lines for the 20 acres were splitting with Tiff, Deans Daughter, off the Steese Hwy.
It’s beautiful high mountain country. The property sits at around the 3250 foot elevation mark, with lots of deep valleys and wild rivers, close to the Steese Conservation area. Lots of Caribou in the area late in the fall and some good Moose country. Best of all its excellent gold country if you’re into trying your hand at a little gold panning. Humm, might have to consider buying a small recreational dredge one of these days, maybe I can find enough nuggets to offset our retirement Of course panning for gold also means stepping into icy cold river water up to your waist for hours, but heck, as long as it pans out its worth it, yeah right, and I’ll bet every other gold digging fool thought the same thing. But one never knows, maybe by time I can afford the dredge my old bones won’t notice or won’t care about the cold.
So we arrived Friday evening and set up camp in a nice spot overlooking the valleys and hills. The rainbow in the pictures stayed until after midnight, or so Tyler reported to me in the morning as I was asleep by 9:00. Dean and Tiff showed up at 12:30 and of course that woke me up for a short hi, hello, see ya in few hours and back to sleep.
Woke up Saturday to a beautiful day, the sun was out with a few clouds overhead, but all in all just beautiful. We ate and hit the trail around 10:00 AM heading for the property some 6 miles or so away. Dean’s new pup, Sally, a knuckle headed Golden Retirever was running along his rig when she stopped about ½ mile down the trail, did a little smelling and an immediate about face and took off back to camp. Hum, now just what did she smell, yup, good Ol’Alaskan Grizzy Bear poop. Guess she didn’t care for that smell too much. Dean ended up putting her in the back of his rig and she got to ride. And yeah, there were nice fresh Griz tracks in the trail and seeing how it rained last night, they were pretty fresh, probable a couple hours or less ahead of us. No biggie, just another day on the trails in Alaska.
So we get to the property and take a break then start doing what we came to do, re-brush and re-flag the property lines. One of the requirements of the Land Lottery is that you must brush the property lines once a year during the three year survey and appraisal process the state goes through, so this was our day for 2010. The land we staked sits about ½ above the valley bottom and of course seeing if we could get to the creek was also on the agenda. So after we flagged 3 sides of the acreage, we decided to head down hill. Pretty easy to, for Tiff, Tyler and I anyway, were riding regular sized ATV’s, Dean on the other hand is riding what Tyler called a small Jeep :<) it’s actually a Prowler ATV, nice rig but its 24 inches wider than a regular ATV and so he needs a wider trail. OK, its Alaska, we can build a trail on state land, which were on, by hand. I.E. no tractor, D9’s or anything more mechanical than a chainsaw. So off he goes cutting trail while we continue through the bush to the river bottom.
To make a long story short, Austin, Tiff’s 4 year, got tired so he, Tiff and Papa Dean headed back up the hill. Tyler and I continued on down and made it to the valley bottom, a nice ride and an easy going one at that. There was a fair amount of snow pack in the bottom, it’s that big pile of white stuff in the photos. I did a little walking on the snow pack, hoping it wouldn’t give way and drop me into the creek, while Tyler waited by the ATV’s for me. I did find a small Caribou Rack I gave to Tyler for his wall, his first wall mount rack, well half a rack anyway. Then we headed back up to join the others.
So our two priority items are done, line re-brushed and flagged and we made it to the bottom of the valley. Nothing else had to get done except Tyler needed some shooting time with his new 22 pump action rifle (papa’s present to him) and the rest of the day became an exploratory trip, so off we went south along the Historical Fairbanks-Circle Trail. It was still just a beautiful day and great weather, until we got about 11 miles back in and then the rains came. Good thing I made Tyler pack along his Grandma’s rain gear, it didn’t last long but we did decide to head back. Of course we also had to check out this other trail that I was sure took us back to the main trail, wrong…
A couple miles later and after a bit of discussion, Dean’s theory prevailed, the one saying we were now going down a different valley then we wanted and we turned around. Dang it, he was right, so it was a good call. Of course future trips will have to include further research down this particular trail, hey one never knows just where it’ll take you. We got back to camp by 9:30 PM and I have to say I was tired, but happy.
Sunday morning and were all moving a bit slower than yesterday, stayed up late for dinner and Tyler’s birthday cake. Tiff got the cake and I forgot the candles, so she came up with a great idea, she used wooden stick matches for candles, of course we had to sing happy birthday first so Tyler could blow them out before they burned down to the cake
It was noon by time we got going and it was a slow easy ride. The plan was to get to this trail we could see from camp but didn’t know where it branched off the main trail from. After a false start down a dead end we came to another ridge trail, nope this one didn’t get us there either, but who cares. The view about 2 miles in was spectacular, OK, I want to switch locations now, move the cabin spots about 4 miles north…
The pictures just don’t do this location any justice at all, a big deep valley with a creek running down it, high mountain tops across the valley and spruce forest all around us. We found two perfect gravel benches on the ridge line that would be just right for a couple cabins, oh well, maybe a trespass cabin for hunting season.
And so ends a great couple of days of exploring and ATVing and we had to return home so Melissa (Tylers Mom) could do her thing for her son’s birthday. When I got back I had planned to tell her about his new rifle, but Trish beat me to it. She wasn’t thrilled about, but I did tell her 2 years previous, during Tyler’s 10th birthday that I brought him a rifle, she said flat no then, OK, he gets it at 12 I think she forgot, but Tyler’s happy.
So how did I get myself in this fine mix of spending money and having to build a cabin. For the past few years my buddy Dean and I have talked about how one of us needed to get a cabin down in the Cantwell area so we’d have a place to stay when we went riding down there. Seeing how Cantwell is one of the best areas in the state to go sledding, it was an undisputed discussion. Of course the land in Cantwell is limited and thus extremely expensive as far as land goes.
So one day my darling bride looks at me and says “sweetie, did you this small ad for 5 acres off the Parks hwy”, nope I hadn’t. So read it I do and call the Realtor, yes it’s still for sale, no road access, the best description she can give me is it’s approximately one and half miles off the hwy at mile marker 169 Parks Hwy., hum, sounds good. OK, so I ask her to contact the state and get me the Longitude and Latitudes for it, she does, so Dean and I take a trip to 169 Mile Parks Hwy, ain’t nothing there but a pull out and lots of snow and I mean lots of snow….
GPS batteries are charged and were headed for the first way point. We didn’t get very far, turns out I had the Long and Lat but in the wrong datum, dang nabbit. But we get to what we think is the approximate area. Stop, look around, scenery is beautiful, snow is way deeper that Cantwell and the mountains are right there in front of us. OK, decision time, buy it or not. Heck, even if were 1/2 mile off of the property the place is so gorgeous we have to get it, so we do. Basically, sight unseen as it were.
So that was back in 2009 and now here it is summer 2010 and its time to build a cabin. Of course we first have to brush out a trail from the hwy to the property line so we can then brush out the building site to get a platform up to build the cabins on. Platform will have to be 6 feet off the ground so we don’t get buried in snow in the winter and considering we can’t get any equipment in, at least not at this time, it’ll all be done by hand. Lot of working coming up.
The first trip is set for June 11th – 13th. I plan to take lots of pictures of before and after. More to come on this after we return.
Batch files are user-written "mini-programs" in which each line is a DOS command. Such files are processed line-by-line, executing commands that have been batched together. Most of the time batch files are created to avoid having to type in a series of commonly-used commands. A simple example might be the following:
You can use the function keys on your keyboard for re-entering DOS commands without retyping them. Use F3 to re-display the previous commands all at once, or use F1 to re-display the command one character at a time. To execute the re-displayed command, hit <Enter>.
To delete text from a previous command, press F1 until you reach the text you want to delete. Next, press the <Del> key to remove unwanted text one character at a time. Then press F3 or F1 to display the rest of the command. Press <Enter> to execute the modified command.
To add text to a previous command, press F1 until you reach the place where you want to add text. Next, press the <Ins> key and enter the new text. Then press F3 or F1 to display the rest of the command. Press <Enter> to execute the modified command.
Today, the DOS OS is basically null and void as a stand alone OS. However, when you click on the “Run” option in Windows or type “CMD” in the windows search box on Windows 7, your basically going into a DOS Prompt command interface. From this you can do lots of things with your system, so here’s some limited information to help you along. I’ll have 3 sections to this, just like I did with the Unix info, of course Unix/Linux is still growing and developing, whereas DOS is pretty much stagnant these days.
It should be noted that this is just a quick reference guide to some of the more common utilities. This list is by no means all encompassing, nor inclusive. Descriptions of the utilities are brief. For detailed usage and information, use the man utility.
In this section we will be looking at a host of items concerning Unix. The first section will deal some more with command line sytax and usage, and quoting characters. The second section will deal with setting file permissions on files and directories and a little bit of relative paths and links. The third section will deal with more utilities that you can use in your daily workings with Unix. Be sure to review the first basic lessons of file management and basic command line syntax. Now, let’s get started.
So here I’ve been spending lots of time setting up my new web presence with a WordPress site. Lots of configuration options with widges and plugins, I think I’m spending more time trying to figure out all the dang nabbit widges then I am coding the site. Man I miss the days of simple HTML files with some simple JS or CGI scripts.
Anyway, I need to learn this for the Iron Dog site. It was built a bit to cumbersome (in my humble opinion) for the need the Iron Dog has. A nice site, the Iron Dog but a maintenance nightmare, especially for non or limited tech folks at the office.
