The Curse of the Cabins

According to Curt, a person always gets wretchedly sick on their first cabin trip. I think he says that because it happened to him (apparently the Helm Bay trip last week wasn't "real" enough). On my first full-on, 40-hour, float-plane-flight-away cabin trip, I did indeed get sick. But I did it with some class - none of this snuffling, sneezing, coughing business, no sir. I went for the total misery of a sore throat, complete with white gunk on the tonsils and glands swollen hard as marbles. It started on Sunday. It's still here as I write (I'm disinfecting this keyboard after I use it, I swear). In the long run all it does is make me appear more hard core, because not only did I schlep gear, haul wood rounds, scrub moss-covered walkways and walls, and repair wood stove gaskets, I did it all when I was sick. Take that, Chuck Norris.

Patching Lake Cabin appears so happy and harmless in the sun...which actually came out of hiding all Wednesday afternoon.

All geared up to head out. What you can't see is every square inch of space behind me crammed full of boxes, bags, pulaskis, pumps and hoses. Kevin, our pilot, must be a Tetris genius.

Coming in to land on Heckman Lake, where we had a brief stopover to repair an aggressive dock. Did you know a plane float costs about $80,000 to replace?

The view swinging around Higgins Point to the Tongass Narrows and Ketchikan itself. You can see the airport on Gravina Island to the right, and a massive cruise ship in the middle of the channel. We got to buzz it on the way down.

A Beaver like our own trusty steed. Float planes are a pretty phenomenal mode of transportation. I'm adding "float pilot" to my list of things I want to be when I grow up.

Illness aside, the trip went incredibly well. It only rained when we were done with work, the bugs didn't bite, and you can't help but love having a 12' by 12' cabin as home for five days. You can check out all the cabins on the Tongass National Forest website by clicking here. There's a map as well entries on all the indiviual spots. It'll give you some sense of scale when I talk about a 10 minute float-plane ride or an hour boat trip.