Some days the medicine does work

Now I know where some of the redpolls are. Remember that famous photo
of the angry bluebird?

The first trip to the East Pole in winter always presents extraordinary difficulty. The cabin stands on a fairly steep hill and I seldom get up it on the first try with the snowmachine. The way it works most often is I blast through the snow until the machine gets stuck, Then I put on snowshoes, grab what I can carry and hike the rest of the way. Once I've rested a little bit and maybe started a fire, I grab a sled at the cabin and go back down the hill and put all the perishables and what else I can haul into the sled and trudge up the hill again. Often the machine gets stuck more than once.

That's the way it worked this trip. I had to hike up the hill in deep snow on snowshoes carrying what I could, and me in about the worst shape I've ever been in my life. The tale is told on my SPOT.  In tracking mode, the unit sends a signal every 10 minutes. On that first climb the locations are so close together it's difficult to figure out how many times the signal went up to the satellite. Best I can count is five, which means it took me at least 50 minutes to move less than 200 yards.

Even on snowshoes the going was tough. I would break through the crust into deeper, softer snow, then take a step and the tip of the back shoe would catch under the crust and trip me up. I lost my balance and fell a couple of times and try this sometime: fall into snow wearing snowshoes, you can get no leverage anywhere with your arms, your feet are uphill from your head so you are trying to stand up uphill using only your legs. All you have to do is get your legs and feet under you. Good luck.

I had to twist and squirm until my feet were downhill from the rest of my body and in time weasel around into a kneeling or hunkering position before I could stand up. That beat up my leg muscles to the point where I had to stop and rest after only ten or so steps. Thighs began to ache, calves ached, even felt weak at times wondering how many steps I had left in me. And that doesn't even begin to address how often I had to stop because I was breathing too hard and had to get that under control.

At one point I felt a real fear. I might be over-dramatizing, but I fell and for a moment laid their resting before yet another attempt to stand in the deep snow. Prone in the snow that had conformed to my body, I relaxed, my  eyes closed and the temptation arose to take a nap. I mean my whole body relaxed into the comfort of the snow, I could feel my mind slip toward sleep and for a second almost succumbed. Immediately Jack London's To Build a Fire came to mind. That guy died when he fell asleep in the cold. I forced myself awake and into action, and squirmed to my feet determined not to fall again. And I didn't.

According to the SPOT, that went on for at least 50 minutes and I was just about crawling by the time I made it up onto the deck. I opened the door and lit a fire (I always leave a one-match fire laid in the stove) and slumped into a chair and just sat there for a while letting my body recover as much as it could.

On the second trip, with the sled, I had to sort through the cargo for everything I absolutely needed and also what I didn't want to freeze and then head up the trail again. But this time there was a heavy load to drag just when breath starts getting shorter and muscles begin rebelling. To do it I attached a long lead rope to the sled so I could hike up the steep parts and then set my feet and pull the sled to me. It took four such relays before I made the house.

It being cold, right around zero, I could already feel the snow on the trail I was making setting up and I knew by the next morning the trail would be a concrete sidewalk, making it easy to bring up the snowmachine and the rest of the gear.

Concrete was the word all right. In fact the next morning I could walk down the trail without the snowshoes. But, when I reached the snowmachine it was frozen in solid, the rear end of the track embedded where it had dug down when I first got stuck.  It was not going to budge. I tried digging out with my hands, and then chopped around with an axe attempting to free it but nothing moved. I was just about committed to hiking back up the trail to grab a shovel. I sat on the seat for a moment before starting the trek, thinking the snowmachine could stay there another night and I could make the hike the next day with the shovel. Then it crossed my mind to start it, thinking maybe if I could spin the track a little it would free things up so I could lift the rear end and move it onto more solid snow. Not a bad idea to start it anyway just to run it a little bit given the cold weather.

Well, it started right up. Once it had warmed a little I juked the throttle just a quick nudge, but instead of the track spinning, it dug in and moved the machine just slightly forward.

What do you do then? Hit the throttle for all it's worth, and guess what. I drove right up out of there. Got on solid trail then hooked the cargo sled to it and off we went right up to the cabin.

Like the title says, some days the medicine does work.

A comment from facebook: OMG, I was feeling that - the shortness of breath, the fatigue, the burning of thigh muscles. I don't know if it's bad shape or age or both. I have a hard time accepting my age....everyone is old but me....who am I kidding?

Trials and tribulations at the East Pole

Why the East Pole