Yukon bush life

Both Neil and Homer, plus 2 of our 3 snow machines are injured. Neil’s wrist is slowly improving after our adventure last month but he is avoiding doing anything that might jar it. We've had lots of snow That includes chainsawing, limbing trees, splitting wood, driving a snowmachine, getting water, hauling logs, skiing and leaves not a lot.  The sun returns The dog is under “house arrest” in the hope his hip will heal. He is miserable as sin. All we could do for a while was go snowshoeing, but without our bounding husky it felt a bit pointless. The scenery’s pretty and all that but, whatever... Then I broke my snowshoe. That wasn’t a good day. We are running out of winter to get the logs we need to finish our new cabin. We can’t get them in the summer as we have no vehicle to pull them out of the bush. So with Neil’s wrist still not better, we’ve had to crack on but with me doing most of the work. Waist deep snow We had to find 5 ...

What’s the difference between an adventure and emergency? I’d say, if no one gets hurt you’ve had an adventure and if no equipment gets damaged either, then you’ve had a damned good one. With only a very slightly dented ski arm and a sprained wrist, I’d say we’ve just had a pretty, damned good adventure. And a reminder about complacency. Our broken down machine. Still there We have a broken down snow machine at our pals’ place about 50 miles away. “We’ll head down Wednesday, throw it on the sled, and tow it home,” we told them by email. “Won’t need any help. We’ll just say hi and be on our way,” we wrote, with the stupendous confidence of total idiots.   Already dipped our toes in the creek that week The trail’s good, what could go wrong, we thought? Again (see my last blog). Didn’t bother packing much of our emergency gear as we wanted an empty sled, left the dog on his chain with no extra food and set off with a flask of coffee an...