Life and Times of a Cabins Maintainer

It's been yet another productive week with the Forest Circus up here. Curt and I loaded up the landing craft bright and early Tuesday morning and headed north in the company of Clark, Tyson, and Doyle. The boys dropped us at Blind Pass cabin so we could give it a good spit shine while they did some beach logging. In three hours we had the place ship shape and ready to go, just in time to hop back on the landing craft for the 30 minute ride east to Anchor Pass. As we started hauling gear up the beach, watching the boat disappear down the channel, it occurred to us that although we had a propane tank neither of us had actually loaded a stove. Huh. Good thing us cabin folk are the wily, problem solving type. It's amazing what you can cook over a fire (pork chops, curry, and calzones, to name a few), although it's nice to have hot tea again.

The junk show continued this morning as we checked in with dispatch on the radio and discovered that the boat wouldn't be coming back for us today due to the gale warning in effect. Huh. You wouldn't know it from the glassy water and high clouds that we could see, but we were also about 50 miles north of Ketchikan. The dispatcher informed us she'd contact the sea plane company and see if she could get someone out there. We kept our fingers crossed, and sure enough, a Beaver took off at 9:15 to come fetch us. The incoming tide aided the loading process and we were off by 10:15. On the way back we buzzed a pair of grizzlies on the edge of the woods, one of them poised on a log and watching us overhead. The weather got worse the farther south we flew, and by the time we neared Ketchikan the wind was a steady 30 knots and the sea below us frothy and white. As we were unloading our gear back at the warehouse the rain began, thick heavy drops driving in horizontally. It feels wonderful to be back safe and warm in civilization.

So what exactly do we do out in the woods all week? That's a very good question. Here's Anchor Pass cabin, which gives you a good idea of what most of them look like. They're about 12' by 12', with two bunk beds, a table, kitchen cabinet and counter, and a wood or oil stove. The skylights and long days insure plenty of light inside. Some even have a large covered deck.
The first order of business is usually filling the wood shed. The boys had left us a couple logs on the beach and we were able to get quite a number of rounds from them. Curt sawed and split, and I hauled the great, ocean-saturated chunks up from the beach and stacked them in the shed. Most of what you see below I schlepped by hand, one piece at a time, including the hidden row in the back. Hope ya'll have your tickets to the gun show...

The next day we armed ourselves with bleach water and scrub brushes in the never-ending battle against moss, fungi, and all things green in this temperate rainforest. This outhouse was conisderably greener before we got to it. We also scrubbed down the entire boardwalk after removing the shingles that provide traction, because that stuff gets slippery when it's wet (trust me on this one). The clean boards were then covered with stuff called geogrid and tacked down with a staple hammer, one of my new favorite tools.

Those were the main projects at this cabin. Most of the time we get to putter around and fix any little thing that catches our fancy, whether it be cleaning the windows, recaulking seals, or replacing the gasket on the wood stove. Due to the ridiculously long days there's also plenty of time to soak in the scenery and take artsy pictures, which is fortunate because this site was particularly stunning. I don't recommend sticking your nose in the chocolate lily below - it's pollinated by flies, although you can eat the starchy root with no ill effects.

There were also stands of wild iris, and the indian paintbrush was just starting to make an appearance.

Life's pretty rough when I get to spend my time in places like this. That's actually Revillagigedo Island across the channel with the snow-covered peaks, as the cabin is situated across Behm Narrows on the mainland. This is an amazing place, with so many nooks and crannies to explore. This job gets me out to a bunch of them, but I'm constantly blown away by the vast scale of the Tongass.