A terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day that ended all right

The outhouse roof was clear when I left 2 weeks ago.

Early in the last century a woman named Annie Edson Taylor went over Niagara Falls in a barrel.That used to be a thing. Despite the destruction of a couple of test barrels, Annie decided she'd give it a try anyway. When they freed her from the barrel battered, bruised and bloody, but alive, Annie had these words of wisdom for the ages: "Nobody ought ever do that again." That's how I felt yesterday.

Returning to the East Pole after a couple of weeks taking care of business, I'd been warned by a couple of people there'd been a heavy snowfall in my absence. I've dealt with that before, even told a friend on facebook "I can only go and deal with what is." It's never been a problem before. It only meant going in I would have to leave my snowmachine and cargo sled out near the main trail and snowshoe in with what I could pull in a small sled. That happens all the time until I can get a trail up to the cabin put in.

What I encountered almost did me in. To begin with I had to snowshoe over a berm to get my outfit off the main trail which was only wide enough for one machine at a time. After beating down the berm on snowshoes I fired up the snowmachine and tried to blast my way as far as I could go. That turned out to be less than 100 yards. Then I had to hike back and pull the sled off the trail. With the machine stuck and the sled off the trail, I strapped on the snowshoes again and headed up the trail with my computer bag and a small backpack I carry everywhere I go. I didn't even get another hundred yards before discouragement. With every step when I lifted a snowshoe with a couple of feet of snow on it. I slogged along that way but didn't get far before I got the definite feeling I wouldn't make it. So, back to the snowmachine. At that point I was ready to give up. The first time I have ever considered on it doing this. My thought was I don't have to do this. Turn the machine around and go back. Come back in a week when everything is packed down better. There was only one problem. I couldn't get the machine turned around.

Breaking trail I had built up my own personal berms that required a lot of shoveling to make room to turn it. After several attempts with gains measured in inches I tried something else. I started it and put it in reverse thinking maybe I could back out. I got about 3 feet and stuck again. I did that two more times, in all gaining about 10 feet in the wrong direction. It began to dawn on me that I might be in trouble and every thing I had done so far was draining energy. I am an old guy, remember, be 78 this year with mild COPD. So I did something I learned from Iditarod musher Donna Massay years ago.

She had told me about losing her way on the Seward Peninsula. Realizing she needed to gather her thoughts, as she told me, she down and wrote it out in the snow, with a little help from a dog named Pup Pup. I have carried that phrase with me: "write it out in the snow." And that's what I did there, sitting on my stuck snowmachine looking at my useless snowshoes and a quarter mile uphill to the cabin. As I was "writing it out in the snow" another phrase came to mind that I had used in the past: "I am close enough I can crawl from here." And none of the choices were great, but the cabin despite the snow and climb was the closest haven.  If this was going to turn out all right, I had to make it to the cabin..

I set out on the missing trail  with only a bottle of Vita-Water in my pocket, slogging along in snow always over my knees and if I stepped off the old hard-packed trail from my previous time here, up to my hips. One step at a time, pushing snow with my knees I slogged up that trail. I never felt reduced to crawling but it went painfully slowly with lots of stops and at least two hits on my rescue inhaler. How long did it take? I have no idea. I had left the trailhead with the snowmachine a little after 1 p.m. When I finally made it into the cabin it was almost 6 p.m. I know the trip in takes about 40 minutes to an hour. That leaves about four hours spent on the trail from the main one to the cabin.

I always lay a fire in the woodstove before I leave the cabin. One match and I had a fire going. I sat here for a while, waiting to feel the heat. The indoor thermometer at the time read 14. At least it was on the plus side of zero. But slowly the temperature rose and by 8 it had reached 65. At that point I thawed a can of Dinty Moore beef stew, gradually started living here and went to sleep at my usual time around midnight.

First of all I slept soundly almost 8 hours which is a record for me these days. Over the morning as I watched the temperature rise outside, I had an Ensure and then a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Around noon it went to the mid double digits and I prepared to go back down and try to free the snowmachine and bring some vitals up. Among them a charger for my cell phone. (A separate one to leave at the cabin is on the next shopping list.) I strapped on another pair of snowshoes and headed down the hill pulling a sled holding a bigger shovel and a come-along. Much easier walking and I was able to stomp snow down and widen the trail as well. But the rope I'd brought wasn't long enough to reach the nearest usable tree, so I decided  to work on freeing the the machine the next day and focused on loading what I needed into the sled with a critical eye to keeping the load as light as possible. Then I headed back up the hill. I won't go into detail like the day before, but I had left the cabin around 12:30 and by the time I got back with my treasures the clock showed a few minutes after 4. It was easier, but not that much easier and after I fell pulling that sled up the last steep part of the trail, I crawled to the porch on my hands and knees. So there was some of that after all.

But tonight I can have one of those little round filet steaks with mashed potatoes and gravy, and best of all, I can now begin watching the fourth season of Game of Thrones. It's all about priorities. And there's this: Nobody ought ever do that again.
A note from a friend's experience: If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

A NOTE FROM  DONNA MASSAY AFTER READING THIS: We’re never too old to add to the “survived adventure” list! But smaller challenges make very big adventures as we mature. Thanks for letting me know that “writing it in the snow” helped