Arctic Adventures

 Powder Well we finally got a solid dumping of snow these past couple weeks. Seemed like it snowed about a foot every day last week. Last Saturday I went to cut wood with Stan. I buried my snowmachine about 20 times trying to navigate in the trees. I had a sore back when I woke up Sunday morning. After getting wood I went and fished at a new spot called Willie's. I caught only one and lost one in the hole. I was a good day to get outside.    Moose  Lynx Set  Old Lynx Deep Snow I went out this past weekend and got wood with Mike and Stan. We went about 10 miles up river. The temperature wasn't too bad but the wind was whistling. I stopped and fished again at Willie's, but since all the holes were buried from the wind I don't think I fished in the right spot. I caught one little one and that was it

It's always difficult to live away from home, but you settle into a routine and get comfortable--the days pass quickly.  Until that dreaded phone call.  As many of you know, Grandpa Markham passed away last week.  Dad had called me the night before and given me a little warning, but I still wasn't prepared (how can you ever be?).  My thoughts at first were quite selfish, "What do we do?  How can we get home?"  and quickly changed to, "I've got to get home to help Mom."  However, time and weather are always issues when traveling from Arctic Alaska, and Mom and Dad assured us that everything was taken care of--not to try to get back.  Dad had it arranged that we could call in to listen to the funeral, but those old selfish thoughts came back.  "How can we stay here alone at a time like this. I need to help." I was wallowing in self pity and hurting for our loss and our family when we had a knock on the door.  In came Aana (Grandma) Bernic...

Mike and I filled in our trapline a little more. We marked out our trail through an old sled dog trail. The old trail takes nearly ten miles off the round trip to the camp, but it is difficult to find coming off of the flats. It would also be easy for me to get lost if the trail was snowed over.  Google View After we  marked the trail we took a straight shot across the flats to a small creek drainage where we made some wolf sets. We followed the drainage up until it was too narrow to navigate further. Then we climbed through the treeline and up to wide open mountains. Then we were climbing over the pass and back down the other side. Our camp was on the creek at the bottom of this pass. Mike set a wolverine set right at the bottom. I crossed over the creek and made a set in a different small drainage. Then I headed back down to the camp and made another set. I checked my traps, and made another snare shortcut. My traps were empty. Mike's were empty too. We made it back t...