The Lady Lund is one of the typical Forest Service craft that live at all of our freshwater cabins, and she was integral in our latest job of salvaging everything we could from Red Alders shelter. Located on Ella Lake, the shelter got on the wrong end of a landslide and now has a creek running through the middle of it. Our mission, based out of the Ella Narrows cabin 2 miles away at the other end of the lake, was to retrieve the Lady Lund and any firewood that was dry from the wood shed, and deposit it at our base of operations.The views from the float plane were amazing. From the air you can see the trails left by ancient glaciers, lakes hopscotching down wide valleys and islands trailing into the sea. The peaks are worn and rounded by weather and everything is covered with a thick fur of vegetation.
Ella Narrows is almost impossible to spot from the air, nestled back under the canopy. It was wonderfully cool on a week where the island was seeing temperatures in the 70s (that's ridiculously warm when you're working in canvas pants and Xtra Tuffs).
The two mile row to Red Alders took about an hour, down one branch of the lake and up the other. As you round the bend you're treated to this view of an amazing alpine bowl, and the rock massif that towers above the shelter itself. If it weren't for the creek this location would be perfect. Curt and I divided our powers between the two boats piled high with cedar rounds and took off on the return journey.
Curt is in inexperienced rower, to say the least, so I let him get ahead as he zig-zagged spasmodically on his way back. The heat was sitting low and heavy on the water, blurring the horizon to a point where it was impossible to tell where the water ended and the land began. Gulls cried, loons giggled, mergansers cackled, and the mountains called back to them as my oars bit into the smooth water. The wood released the warm smell of cedar into the still air with every stroke. In and out, forward and back, again and again. My back and shoulders remembered the motions well from last summer. There's a meditative quality to repeating the same motion over and over; I had to shake myself from my trance when the Lady Lund finally scraped up on the rocky beach, and it was time to haul wood rounds once more.
The two mile row to Red Alders took about an hour, down one branch of the lake and up the other. As you round the bend you're treated to this view of an amazing alpine bowl, and the rock massif that towers above the shelter itself. If it weren't for the creek this location would be perfect. Curt and I divided our powers between the two boats piled high with cedar rounds and took off on the return journey.
Curt is in inexperienced rower, to say the least, so I let him get ahead as he zig-zagged spasmodically on his way back. The heat was sitting low and heavy on the water, blurring the horizon to a point where it was impossible to tell where the water ended and the land began. Gulls cried, loons giggled, mergansers cackled, and the mountains called back to them as my oars bit into the smooth water. The wood released the warm smell of cedar into the still air with every stroke. In and out, forward and back, again and again. My back and shoulders remembered the motions well from last summer. There's a meditative quality to repeating the same motion over and over; I had to shake myself from my trance when the Lady Lund finally scraped up on the rocky beach, and it was time to haul wood rounds once more.It took two trips over two days to transport all the wood, and on the remaining day we fixed the wood stove at Ella Narrows. The stove pipe was held together by tin foil and disintegrated as soon as we removed it. Our replacement pipe happened to be the exact same size as the fittings (which means it didn't overlap like it should). Nothing a pair of tin snips and some muscles couldn't fix. Wood stacked, stove functional, boats stowed, we waited in the 84 degree heat for our ride out: mission accomplished.
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