Yukon bush life

Filling with ice Winter came all of a sudden this year. We saw a few wee chunks of ice in the river on November 1st, nothing bigger than you would put in a G & T. By the 5 th it had choked with ice and stopped completely. Stopped A few days later it was -30˚C and a few days after that, we had a huge dump of snow. I was still wandering round the yard in flip flops and jeans wondering what had happened. 30 below. Sun dog over the river We were out walking when it stopped. It dammed downstream and backed up, flooding over our feet. I managed to capture it all on the GoPro, take a look if you didn’t see it on our Facebook page- It’s all too exciting and we’ve found ourselves rushing around doing things we thought were a month away.  Punching ice out of the water hole We've already been across river and gone 6 miles up towards Dawson, and 7 miles down towards Alaska. For the past two years, we hadn’t even crossed the river here for...

Everything happens in the autumn, or “fall” as they call it here. Building projects must be completed before it gets too cold to work outside, anything that involves digging has to be done before the ground freezes and trails need to be cut before there is a foot of snow on them and we can’t get to the base of shrub stems. We have to get all our winter supplies as we’ll be cut off from the world during freeze up. We won't be able to get out until the river is frozen and safe for the snowmachine (maybe a couple of months, maybe more?). On top of all that, this is moose hunting season, the salmon run is beginning and the berries are ripe for the picking. We won’t be fishing, but the rest of it applies. Hunting preparations I have my hunting licence, a moose tag and my rifle sighted in so I’m all set to get our winter’s meat. ( Here's how we sighted in our rifle .) Neil hasn’t been resident for the required time so he can’t hunt yet but he can help with dressing the carc...