11.17.22 Thursday

Measurable snow YTD:  23.00"

Mouse Trapline Tally YTD:  9

No additional snow since the weekend!  It's been partly to mostly sunny and crisp!  The snow has melted a bit and refrozen several times.  I forgot to mention in the last post that we made our virgin snow machine trip into town last week.  The trail was pretty smooth and we only dumped the machine once! 😀

Since then we've gone in a couple more times.  Because of the constant re-freezing, the trail is pretty rough right now.  The last time we pulled in double sleds and were able to get twice the freight out of storage.  Kevin has decided that the snow machine we purchased with the property is a freight BEAST!

We got a call yesterday morning from a neighbor who lives three miles further north up the tracks.  There is no direct trail to their place, they can only get there by train.  Then they have to ride a snow machine or four-wheeler another mile back to their place.  Their names are Sarah and Rob.  Sarah called to say that Rob had left her there to go out of town for a few days and she started to have trouble with the solar system not charging so he was coming back early.  The problem was that he'd made it back to Talkeetna but the train wasn't running until the weekend and could we possibly go into town to pick him up?  

Well, it was only 8 degrees....then Kevin remembered that we still had one of the older snow machines at the trailhead that needed to come out one way or the other.  Rob agreed to try to get it started and drive it to our place, then he would walk the additional three miles up the tracks to their place.

Kevin took a sled and headed that way, just in case Rob couldn't get the machine started.  As it turned out, it wouldn't start so they loaded the older machine onto the sled and proceeded to head back together.

It was quite the sight when they pulled in!  It took them an hour because they dumped the sled twice!  Anyhow, Rob stayed long enough to warm up with a cup of coffee and then was on his way.  He texted us a couple of hours later and said he wasn't home yet, that he'd had some "moose trouble"...not sure what that looked like and can't wait to hear the story!

You'll notice how dark the picture is....it was taken shortly before noon.  We are losing 5-6 minutes of daylight per day and are down to just six hours and 50 minutes of light each day.  We'll continue to lose it until the middle of December when winter solstice hits.  Then it starts to come back just as quickly!

Stay tuned....