Yukon bush life

(Lou, Yukon) Our dog has a Hansel and Gretel complex. Homer thinks one day we will take him into the twisted, tangled woods and sneak away, leaving him to the wolves and witches, like the evil parents of the fairy tale. Frosted forest He stays very close when we are out working, getting firewood or cutting trail, so we can’t escape. He tried sitting in the trail at first. We couldn’t get away but he couldn’t get a nap without getting thumped on the head with a log every 30 seconds. He soon sussed that we always bring our equipment home with us so he stands beside that. When he’s harnessed to the dogsled he snoozes with one eyebrow raised and twitching, in case we cut the tug line and tip toe away with the sled. If we have the snowmachine, he sits right in front of it. Mightn’t we slip it into gear, push it silently across the snow and abandon him whilst he sleeps? Taking no chances One day we stopped the machine a few miles away on th

It is nothing short of a miracle but we have two snowmachines running. They are going forward and backwards and doing all the things you would expect of them. Another breakdown could be just around the corner so we are making the most of it. We got the missing adjustment pins for our Widetrak so have been driving at top speed and doing crazy circles in the deep snow to test it. The sun is shining, the trails are slick and we’ve been having a blast. We’ve been to town, we’ve visited friends we’ve wanted to get to all winter and I’ve been racing up and down the creek just for the hell of it. My Valentine's present. New ear defenders. He's so thoughtful The speedo is broken on our Polaris 340, Piccolo, but Neil clocked me shifting ass at 45mph on the way back from town. Anyone remember the kids TV show The Banana Splits, whizzing around in buggies to that insanely joyous theme tune? If you don't remember, click here ... That’s us! I just want to sing out

(Lou, Yukon) After a brief but glorious period of mobility we are stuck again. We had our second snowmachine, Piccolo, for almost two weeks before we broke it. We had just undertaken our longest journey of the winter so far on it, visiting friends who also live out in the bush. Big glacial mess We’d cut a new trail to circumvent the local glacier. The creek has not stopped overflowing and the glacier looks like a rather uninspiring ice sculpture plonked in a moat of slushy water. Our new trail forms a near vertical ramp down the bank then a rough ride over a pressure ridge and out onto the river. We weren’t sure we’d make it back up but the moat might have frozen in a couple of days, and if not we had ropes and a winch and could spend a tedious few hours pulling the whole damn lot up on our way back. Trying to get up the ramp on foot We decided Neil would ride down, then stop before the pressure ridge so we could knock out some of the worst ice chunks with an axe