We finally finished our mining season and got back on the road, our first destination being Vancouver where niether of us have ever been. We took the desolate yet scenic Stewart-Cassier hwy and first made a slight detour to the tiny Alaskan town of Hyder, which is on a peninsula, completely un-attached to the rest of the state. This area is known for its snowfall, and          according to one local, its common to get up to 40 feet in one winter. We visited the Salmon glacier which is massive – ice as far as you can see – and then got back on the road south.

Burnt in the fire

Just a few pictures of Mathias and I taken the last week or so that we spent in the mine.

We have spent the last few days relaxing in Whitehorse and now we are pumped to head down into the B.C. mountains!

Geoff’s northern reception was held late last night after a hard day of work. We chose Justin Hines ‘While you were out there’ because we figure……we are out there. I wore a beautiful sleek black pair of bib coveralls by Carhartt and Mathias was also stylish in his tan full coveralls by Carhartt. The party was a blast!

Background Info: For those confused by this post a very good friend of ours just got married and we could not attend the wedding. Therefore, we had our own party of sorts here in the mine….it was very swanky.

driving back to camp mathias on the four wheeler

stopping to eat some raspberries

if life gives you lemons….roast marshmellows!!!

The summer had barely started when a thick blanket of smoke rolled in from distant forest fires. We worked in it every day and became quite used to it, but it was about to get much worse.

One day while sluicing about 10 km from camp, a small  fire that had been burning about 12 miles away suddenly flared up and a huge black pillar of smoke erupted in the sky, and within a few hours, our valley was an inferno.

We just kept on working not knowing that the fire had become so huge and dangerous. Micheala braved the fire to come and get us from the work site. We drove back and made it just before the fire took over the road and entire valley. Driving back was the really crazy. It was hot and the smoke made it so dark it was like night and the sun turned a deep red.

 We spent the next few days just trying to protect camp and machinery. Although it was a pretty harrowing experience, to make a long story short we came out of it unscathed.

A few days ago we went up one of the mountains around the mine for a sausage roast and beer and a good look around. It was good fun and a nice evening off from working. The view was spectacular, the Yukon really is huge and untaimed! Being up there makes you feel SO small!

Enjoy the pictures!

My first attempt at gardening north of 60 has gone very well. We have been eating spinach and radishes already! The sun has been HOT here and I have to keep the greenhouse door open so as not to ‘burn’ the plants. During the day it can get well over 30 degrees in the greenhouse. Everything is getting very green here in general outside. I think we will have rhubarb within a week and the raspberry plants seem to be coming along too. The late start to the growing season here is compensated for by the extreme amount of sunlight the plants get. There is no rest for those plants up here the sun is telling them to grow all day and all night long!

dig into the greenhouse

The greenhouse before

water

markers for my seed beds

Gardening north of 60 definatly involves a green house and a heater at this time of year. When we arrived their was LOTS of snow but the sun was so hot everyday. Even though I would have to shovel myself a path to the green house I was sure that it was hot enough in there to grow some salad. yum Salad….fresh vegetable….so not existent in my life right now. We have some apples but that’s about it right now. When I finally got myself into the greenhouse I was right. With the help of a heater at night it was warm enough for greens. I prepared the soil first but realized that water was going to be a problem. Because we had none to speak of…..just lots of snow. So I used a shoved to put snow up on the soil to create my own winter runoff. It worked great! The next day I was ready to plant. I planted lettuce, spinach, snow peas, radishes and green onions to start. The next day I planted tomatoes, watermelon, cilantro, thyme, dill and some flowers. For the first few days I had to melt snow on the wood stove to get enough water to water the plants with. But now we have running water in the camp because it is not as cold and the pipes aren’t frozen anymore….or not usually anyway. I was shocked but I had sprouts in less than a week. I think it is probably because we have at least 17 hours of sun light here right now. That’s lots of growing time for those little guys! Every time I go down into the greenhouse my mouth waters with the thoughts of my little sprouts becoming salad. This post is actually about three weeks old so salad is coming soon!!! I’ll post some new pics of the little viggies!

One of the first orders of business after we arrived was to open ourselves up to the outside world and to the rest of our camp. This is accomplished by plowing the snow. We plowed the snow from the roads connecting our camp to the airstrip and the airstrip itself. The airstrip was particularly important because although we can get around in here in the deep snow, a plane can not land and take off in deep snow. Mathias learned to use the grader, which is different from other machines because the blade is between the front and back wheels essentially under the cab. It also has fourteen million leavers all of which slightly adjust the wheels and blade and everything to create whatever kind of grade you would like. I’m happy that it is Mathias driving it and not me, it sounds like an exercise in anger management control to me. I would be frustrated beyond belief. Mathias on the other hand finds it extremely interesting to learn how to run a different machine. After we got the snow off, the sun dried up the airstrip so we are now open. The airstrip is kind of like our driveway. If we get groceries, mail or visitors they all come via the airstrip. We don’t use it quite a often as most people use their driveways but you get the idea.

look for our little friend in this picture

After spending a few minutes gawking at the scenery Mathias smoked a 24 pack of toilet paper off my shoulder. His way of saying time to get to work. We trudged up the hill in snow past our knees, that is rough going! You sure get tired fast. We started surveying the camp. A squirrel had made a nest in the couch on the porch but other than that it looked pretty good. Then while standing on the porch we heard a couple of small noises from inside the kitchen. Damn! Considering we were the first into camp any noise that wasn’t coming from one of us was to be worried about. We unlocked the door and were greeted by A MESS and the perpetrator (a martin) caught red-pawed.  It jumped out of the box of sugar it was enjoying and scurried across the back counter still holding the box of sugar in it’s mouth. It escaped out of the hole from whence it had come and back out into the wilds. However he wasn’t gone long, half an hour later he was back at the hole.  Mathias chased it away and told me that the little guy shouldn’t be bothering me any longer.

We began the long disgusting job of cleaning up after him. It took three hours and all three of us to get the job done but finally it was clean. And that was that I thought. A couple of days ago I had the wood stove going and it was getting a little warm in the middle of the day. I propped open the door to let some sunshine and fresh air in and sat to read some e-mail. Suddenly I heard a clanging noise in the kitchen and,  jumping up,  I ran to see what the problem was. There it was sitting on the counter again, he escaped to under the stove where he poked his head out and growled at me barring teeth. I felt silly but even though it was small those teeth still didn’t look all that fun to deal with. Taking a deep breath I ran out of the kitchen past the growling creature and into the day  and kept on running until I found Mathias. My hero ran back with me and scared the martin from under the stove right out the door. I was unimpressed but the guys seemed to find the whole thing kinda funny. And like Zdenik said,  ”If that’s the biggest thing that growls at you this summer, Jenny,  you’ll be o.k.”

 

Neither of us had ridden in a helicopter before…we were stoked…after all this is one of the perks of our strange job choice.  The downside was that we could only take 900 lbs in total…this included our own weight. After adding our three weights together and subtracting it from the total this meant we could only bring about 400lbs. We needed food,clothing and anything else we could think of that might keep us sane….like this laptop lol. We shopped for food in whitehorse but when we set the three boxes of food by the helicopter the pilot only laughed and asked us what was priority. Slightly taken aback Mathias and I grabbed first our staple foods, steak and chocolate respectively. We took some fruit to stave off the scurvy, some lunch meats and soup. We returned the boxes to the truck to awhite the next delivery but not before stuffing food into every pocket we could. I had noodles under my jacket and mathias had maple syrup tucked in his pants. After a short safety feature lesson from our pilot we stuffed ourselves, and I mean really stuffed ourselves, into the chopper. Taking off in a chopper is one of the strangest feelings. You hear  the propeller spinning faster and faster above you and can feel its power as it the whole machine rocks slightly back and forth. Then all of a sudden lift off, and its straight up into the sky! It is also fabulous because you can fly much closer to the ground and thus the scenery is even more beautiful! Too bad it cost $20/minute (not a typo)! The cost is exactly why we usually go by plane instead, but with over two feet of snow on the runway in the mine we have no choice in the spring. The chopper landed in the snow no problem, we litterly threw ourselves and our stuff on the ground and ran away, at $20/minute you don’t waist time. We waved as the chopper took off and for the second time in my life I turned a circle gazing arround me in almost disbelief at the remote, spectacular, beatuful, serene and unforgiving wilderness of the Yukon. My home for the next five months.