Cargo Sled Built

I've screwed, hammered and bolted some old industrial metal roofing together in an attempt to have a cargo sled for the snowmobile. The 1/3 section of a plastic barrel is screwed to the front in hopes of deflecting snow and mounting bumps on the trail.


I need to move fuelwood and logs mostly out of the forest. This challenge has plagued my mind for months now. I've been quite depressed about the whole matter with the dread of failure. As soon as the weather goes minus again for a few days I'll try it out behind the skidoo and see how far it goes.

More Trail Bridging

Had some time on my hands yesterday - waiting for the big SunBurn solstice bonfire today - so decided to work on opening up some more of the trails for winter passage.

That means crossing more semi-frozen streams. So, I set out on snowshoes through the powder to the many streams.

Here's a smaller melt stream - four feet wide
- that's partially frozen on top with fairly steep
banks on either side. I started by tossing lots of snow on
top of the passageway.


Here I do my Jesus-walk-on-water routine.
I pack the snow down into the stream, mixing
in the cold water to make slush.


Here's the wide shot of the stream again with the
snow packed down on top. I came by an hour later
and water had soaked up to form icy slush across the passage.


As the light was fading, I walked across a 15 foot wide,
1 1/2 foot deep stream. At the bank edge my
snowshoe went through the ice sheet and I
got a muddy soaker.

Winter Stream Bridge

Solved the problem of fording a melt stream along the Deerwood trails yesterday.

It was fine to cross this ditch stream with the snow shoes, but the snowmobile wouldn't like it much with the sharp up/down on the skis. So, I grabbed some cut off 2x4 and 2x6 then set to work.




Tried to figure out how to secure the lumber in place, then it dawned on me to cement them in place using the materials at hand. I took off my gloves and started making slush out of the cold melt water and the snow. Wow, cold!! Then I pressed the slush along the wood ends on either side of the stream, and piled more snow over all of it.

I left the seasonal bridge over night to freeze and the next day it was frozen solid with water running well underneath. Awesome!

O, Snowmobile

Just bought a snowmobile from Hardcore. Spider dropped it off with a trailer and after a bit of fun, we managed to get it onto snow.

The big news is that I've been able to run it on my snowshoe trails. Though if it drifts slightly off to one side it tends to get stuck. Got stuck about eight times yesterday. Here's a couple photos for me to remember the good times of digging it out.

My virgin bogdown.

This is right at the entrance of the driveway. Going the

180 direction, the turn was too tight and I had to
grab some air and jump onto the driveway and do
a quick turn or otherwise get stuck. Kinda hairy.

This one was pretty deep. Not fun. But not the worst.
I better get used to this routine.

My second to last bogdown. You can see how it's getting
dark. Worst case scenario with getting stuck? Walk away
start digging in the morning.

The last 'stuck' in a small depression (not shown) on the trail had me leave it over night as the light was fading. Only took about an hour and a half to get it going again in the morning.

The next test will be to see if it will tow a sled of fuelwood back to the wood shed. Then the really big question is if it will skid logs back to the mill site. These are the reasons why I've got this snowmobile - not for the fun of it - as a utility vehicle. The fact that the speedometer on it goes up to 160 km/hr and there's a warning on it that only highly skilled drivers should operate it is a bit sobering.

Snow Gooin'

Another big snow drop today meant another day trying to maintain some of the Deerwood forest trails with snowshoes. Snowshoes, I hate you, I love you.

I may be getting a snowmobile in the near future, so I've tried my darnest to lay down a semi-solid strip of snowpad for the sled track to grip for forward motion. I have no clue if I'll even be able to run a sled through this back country, but I'm willing to try.

Let's get into trouble, babies.

Some shots from this afternoon...

See the woodpile in front of the FMO? I cleared the snow
off of it less than 24 hours ago.

Makin' snowshoe tracks...again.

Can you see the snowshoe trail I made down this path yesterday?
[Apologies for the bad colour correction.]