It was a good, if short, summer in Alaska
May 20, 2014 2:14:32 GMT -5
Fossilman and rockjunquie like this
Post by Geoff on May 20, 2014 2:14:32 GMT -5
Went out on Squaw Creek with a buddy and two of his kids yesterday for some mining. Let me start by saying we broke the daily record high on Saturday. 73 degrees. Beautiful all day, had to try not to get sunburn! We met up in Palmer at 830 in the morning and headed East towards Sheep Mountain. We got to the trailhead around 1030 and were riding by 11.
We saw a lot of tracks on the way out. Bear, moose, wolf, snow mobile... That is important later.
This was the theme of the trip. I took this picture after we got his kids out of the mud over on the right,
The weather was gray and drizzly so I didn't take many pictures. We rode for a few hours as far as we could go. Our goal was Caribou Creek, but we were cut off about 3/4 of a mile East. Squaw Creek was too deep and fast for his kids to go across safely so we set up camp near Inoceramus Creek. After getting the tents up we got to work. I fed my high banker for a half hour and panned it out to see what we were looking like. It was pretty encouraging!
After a couple hours the kids went down for a nap. We were standing in the clearing and I noticed some movement on the hill side 200 yards away. I swear it was so big it looked like a bear cub. A damn porcupine.
Around 830, after finding a great spot to dig we called it a night. Got a nice fire going and cooked some moose hot dogs on sticks. We were all sharing stories and having a good time looking forward to sleeping, then getting up the next day to really start mining. That's when the snow started. It was just a few flurries at first, mixed in with the off and on sprinkles that had plagued us all day. We talked about how cold it would be. Then the mountains disappeared and the snow really picked up. We made the decision to get out fast. This is the only picture I have from our camp site.
We weren't worried about the cold or the snow piling up. We were worried about the mud. The ride out was over 3 hours, much of which was winching each other through mud pits and swamps. With the snow coming down like it was, we were worried about the mud getting worse. Turns out, that wasn't the problem.
That is the last picture I took. It was 11 pm. Twelve hours after we began and a day after it was too hot to be in the house. After that the snow really started coming down. The biggest problem ended up not being able to see the side trails. In some areas the mud was so deep or impassable that new trails were winding through the alpine tundra. After an inch of snow piled up, all those trails were gone. We had a hard time judging mud pits as well. I got a good chuckle out of the fact that someone had ridden their snow mobile out there a day or two before us, and now it was looking to be the better vehicle choice. To keep the kid's spirits up I sang christmas songs. We made it out at midnight. My buddy got his machines loaded on his trailer and got his kids in the warm truck. I was ten miles away from Ray, the girls and our truck. They had dropped me off at the trailhead and went back to Sheep Mountain Lodge for the weekend. With no room for me, I zipped up my wind breaker, pulled my buff head wrap down over my ears and put my goggles on. It was going to be a brutal ten miles on a mountain highway in a driving snow storm. I was wearing wet boots, wet pants, a wind breaker, wet gloves and a head wrap meant to keep my hair under control. I had to alternate putting my hands behind me next to the engine for the first couple miles as I roared down the highway at 50mph. Eventually my gloves froze and I started to not feel from my forearms down so I steered with my knee and had both my arms behind me. I got to the lodge around 1230. I had no clue which lodge Ray was in and there is no cell reception out there. I wandered around incoherently for a while trying to figure out how to find out where they were without getting shot. It was at this point I realized I was walking around with my goggles on, a flash light in one hand and a big ass pistol in the other. I went back to my machine, took off my goggles and left the gun. At this point it was becoming a survival situation so I went to go break into the main lodge. It was then that I found the self registration cards and the keys to two cabins. I spent an eternity trying to stop shaking and get my fingers to work so I could fill out the card. I took the key, grabbed my gun and kit bag off the atv and made my way to the guest house.
This is the face that greeted me inside.
We saw a lot of tracks on the way out. Bear, moose, wolf, snow mobile... That is important later.
This was the theme of the trip. I took this picture after we got his kids out of the mud over on the right,
The weather was gray and drizzly so I didn't take many pictures. We rode for a few hours as far as we could go. Our goal was Caribou Creek, but we were cut off about 3/4 of a mile East. Squaw Creek was too deep and fast for his kids to go across safely so we set up camp near Inoceramus Creek. After getting the tents up we got to work. I fed my high banker for a half hour and panned it out to see what we were looking like. It was pretty encouraging!
After a couple hours the kids went down for a nap. We were standing in the clearing and I noticed some movement on the hill side 200 yards away. I swear it was so big it looked like a bear cub. A damn porcupine.
Around 830, after finding a great spot to dig we called it a night. Got a nice fire going and cooked some moose hot dogs on sticks. We were all sharing stories and having a good time looking forward to sleeping, then getting up the next day to really start mining. That's when the snow started. It was just a few flurries at first, mixed in with the off and on sprinkles that had plagued us all day. We talked about how cold it would be. Then the mountains disappeared and the snow really picked up. We made the decision to get out fast. This is the only picture I have from our camp site.
We weren't worried about the cold or the snow piling up. We were worried about the mud. The ride out was over 3 hours, much of which was winching each other through mud pits and swamps. With the snow coming down like it was, we were worried about the mud getting worse. Turns out, that wasn't the problem.
That is the last picture I took. It was 11 pm. Twelve hours after we began and a day after it was too hot to be in the house. After that the snow really started coming down. The biggest problem ended up not being able to see the side trails. In some areas the mud was so deep or impassable that new trails were winding through the alpine tundra. After an inch of snow piled up, all those trails were gone. We had a hard time judging mud pits as well. I got a good chuckle out of the fact that someone had ridden their snow mobile out there a day or two before us, and now it was looking to be the better vehicle choice. To keep the kid's spirits up I sang christmas songs. We made it out at midnight. My buddy got his machines loaded on his trailer and got his kids in the warm truck. I was ten miles away from Ray, the girls and our truck. They had dropped me off at the trailhead and went back to Sheep Mountain Lodge for the weekend. With no room for me, I zipped up my wind breaker, pulled my buff head wrap down over my ears and put my goggles on. It was going to be a brutal ten miles on a mountain highway in a driving snow storm. I was wearing wet boots, wet pants, a wind breaker, wet gloves and a head wrap meant to keep my hair under control. I had to alternate putting my hands behind me next to the engine for the first couple miles as I roared down the highway at 50mph. Eventually my gloves froze and I started to not feel from my forearms down so I steered with my knee and had both my arms behind me. I got to the lodge around 1230. I had no clue which lodge Ray was in and there is no cell reception out there. I wandered around incoherently for a while trying to figure out how to find out where they were without getting shot. It was at this point I realized I was walking around with my goggles on, a flash light in one hand and a big ass pistol in the other. I went back to my machine, took off my goggles and left the gun. At this point it was becoming a survival situation so I went to go break into the main lodge. It was then that I found the self registration cards and the keys to two cabins. I spent an eternity trying to stop shaking and get my fingers to work so I could fill out the card. I took the key, grabbed my gun and kit bag off the atv and made my way to the guest house.
This is the face that greeted me inside.
