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I cleared snow off the boardwalks so there’s at least some way to move to school tomorrow, though the wind will probably blow more snow over it by tomorrow morning as it’s still falling. We’ve had well over a foot in the last 18 hours which is pretty cool, and there’s snowdrifts building up to a good 6 foot high now. Can see why the houses are raised a few feet off the ground to prevent the walls being damaged by the weight of snow that could pile up against them and letting the snow just blow underneath instead.

I only dug away the snow to get my snowmobile out yesterday and it’s now pretty well buried again now. Think I’ll just wait for the snow to stop falling before clearing it again. Not like I’ll be going anywhere in a hurry!

Riding the snowmobile to Bethel might be a damn sight cheaper than flying ($180 round-trip to fly compared to about $35 on gas for the snowmobile), but it sure as hell isn’t as comfy! I realised that when people in the village have said it’s an hour or so ride to Bethel, that’s ‘village’ time where a plane arriving in 10 minutes still hasn’t arrived the following Tuesday - it was around 2 hours riding to cover the 50 mile or so trail, but that was at a steady pace since Frank had his back sled hooked up the haul all the groceries back. This was a few miles out the village fixing up his tail flap to stop it flapping…

Was weird coming into Bethel across the river by the docks (I’d never even seen the docks!), and a few miles out of Bethel we started passing the markers for nets and black fish traps that have been laid, along with 4×4 trucks driving out to them! When we got to Bethel, the lady at Corina’s Case Lot said it was around -21F and can’t have been nice conditions to travel in. I smiled politely as I peeled a frozen ski-mask and neck warmer off my face But, we got a bunch of groceries and I got to Wells Fargo to open a checking account (with a really nice manager who waived the $15 on a box of checks as he’d never spoken to anyone from England and enjoyed it!), then we headed home.

My snowmobile worked perfectly, it just really doesn’t like moving until it’s nice + warm as pulling in Bethel is coughed out a couple of times. Other than that it ran like a champ and has given me a bunch more confidence in knowing how stable it is over long distances and under continued use. The thumb warmer was great too, though only seems to have two settings - burning hot and off! It wasn’t so bad, and I’d rather be sat like this with my thumb sore from it getting hot than it being numb from being frozen! Still, today was certainly an adventure - riding out on the tundra we saw nothing for miles and miles of continuous riding and whenever we stopped and turned off the engines, we had complete silence. I can imagine it being very lonely out there on your own and easy to get lost with everything looking the same, but the trail is so well marked it wasn’t a problem. And Kat was happy since I brought back a load of fresh fruit + vegetables along with strawberry ice cream

-17F outside, so a good day to ride into Bethel on the snowmobile Maybe not, but I was planning on flying in next week and Frank + Arthur called earlier to ask if I wanted to ride in with them. No way I’d want to ride long distance without a thumb warmer, but that’s sorted now, and if anyone, Frank is the best guy to ride with in case anything does go wrong with my snowmobile. Baring any breakdowns or frozen fingers, should be back later on this afternoon!

No, not with her sat on the back, though given the chance she’d probably try it!

Since it was pretty nice weather this afternoon (’only’ -8F), I thought I’d try the thumb warmer on the throttle before I needed it on a really cold day, and figured it was a good time to see if Mia would join me for a run. I know Rocky + Koda both run happily alongside snowmobiles and 4-wheelers, but they’re husky’s so should be quite at home running for long distances! Mia’s ’slightly’ larger though, but she can keep pace with Rocky over short distances now, and she ran quite happily with the snowmobile today just around the village. Seemed to think it was so cool to be able to run around without a leash on! Had to keep stopping every minute or so which was what I expected and is now crashed out on the sofa! Won’t take her out for 10 mile jaunts, but nice to know we can go play for 10 minutes or so.

Note my speedometer reading zero on the dial even though the engine is running at about 4,000rpm The thumb warmed worked great too - even though it wasn’t too cold by normal standards for out here, it still made such a big difference. Not bad for $15 off eBay, and should stop my thumb falling off (making riding very difficult!) when the temperature drops again!

My new thumb warmer throttle lever arrived in the mail today which was pretty speedy delivery. It was fairly easy to install, though it had obviously been a good few years since the bolt on the voltage regulator panel was removed as it was locked on pretty solid. But, it seemed to warm up nicely just running the engine for a few minutes, so will probably head out tomorrow for a ride and make sure. Worse that can happen if it isn’t is that my thumb will drop off…

After getting my snowmobile home a couple of days ago and checking everything over, it’s now running fine again. Still not sure why it was originally losing power, but I’ve put IsoHeet into the gas tank to stop any water in there freezing and causing fuel blockages again. We’ve had a bunch of snow through yesterday and last night so there’s a good 6-8 inches of power snow down, and I was out for 30-40 minutes this afternoon without any problems. It was fun going onto the river as I got from the little dock by the school to where the river splits upstream in about 3 minutes - took over half an hour in the canoe! Yesterday I’d tracked down the speedometer problem to the key in the driveshaft having broken, but at 4+ hours work (and not having the foggiest how to even take the driven clutch off, let alone take it apart!) to fix it, I’ve decided I can live without it. It’s not a more serious problem of a bearing failure on the driveshaft, and I borrowed Frank’s grease gun to add low temperature grease on a bunch of areas.

Later this afternoon Kat + I took the dogs out for a walk on the river and they both seemed to enjoy it:

Mia was full of energy and kept running around, even if she did keep loosing her footing on the ice underneath the snow at the edges of the river! Kept coming back and having a lie down next to us to catch her breath before running off again:

Kat tried to make a snow angel in the fresh snow, but didn’t get very far with all the dogs clambering over her - I did eventually help her out by calling the dogs away so she could get up:

My snowmobile tracks are somewhere in here from earlier - was so much nicer riding in the powder snow across the tundra and then on the river rather than the compacted snow:

Coming back off the river by the airport was fun - even close up it looks like standing water:

It is all frozen solid, but the wind and snowmobiles have blown the snow away. Still pretty dodgy walking over it and looking down to see yourself seemingly walking on water!

But, when we got home, the power was still out, having gone off around noon. Frank + Mark were dragging out extension cords to our duplexes and moving around inside the heater rooms, as they were hooking the heating units up the school’s generator. Didn’t sound encouraging, and turns out the frequent power cuts in the village have been due to only one generator actually working which had then frozen today and broken. There’s meant to be a smaller generator they can hook up, but it would only give out enough juice for each house in the village to run their heater and a single light bulb. That said, it’s now 7.30p.m and no power at all to the houses. Thankfully we at least have the heater still going at home otherwise it would be seriously cold, but it’s meant to be at least a couple of days before the power will be fully restored, and that’s “village” 2 days, which is likely to mean a week. No power, no water (electric pump), and nothing to stop the pipes from freezing for whenever power does come back and the water comes back on. The school’s generators are running fine, but they eat fuel at the best of times so things are being conserved here too. Hopefully something will come back on soon otherwise there’s an awful lot of food in the freezers going to waste, and it’s not like we can cook any of it either! A lot of the houses in the village can use wood burning stoves since they can’t get their mains heater going, and thankfully it’s around 15F today, as at the beginning of the week it was -20F and then people would really have had problems staying warm.

But, eyed up some ice fishing spots today just around the village, so might head out tomorrow and freeze my butt off catching nothing but a cold like over the summer! Apparently some people have been catching white fish and pike using nets and pots, but not sure about just using a line. Not like there’s going to be anything to do at home anyways!

Kat and I decided to take the dogs out for a Christmas walk (that and I wanted to to try getting my snowmobile back to the village), so we headed out to the new airport:

When we got to the snowmobile, I turned the ignition turned on, choked it, and it started on the third pull. I think I’m actually flipping it off in this photo…

I rode it a few hundred yards and it was still having problems, but I tried heading back to the village anyways. Was fine at a constant 6,000rpm along the runway, but then cut out twice on the trail back to the village as the revs rose and fell across the bumps. Finally, it quit and that was it. After another half an hour battle we retreated home to check things out a bit more (more commonly called calling my dad ). Still, was a pretty walk back, and it broke down only a few hundred yards out the village:

After a bunch of suggestions, I left it a couple of hours to settle itself down hoping it would start up again and at least get me home, but nothing. Don’t think it’s what was causing the problem originally, but it won’t start now due to some kind of fuel flow failure. Ended up with all the fuel lines disconnected and joints cleaned, but the fuel pump doesn’t seem to be drawing any fuel in after it’s expended what was already in the lines and the filter. There’s definately gas in the tank and the lines and valves all appear clear, and I’ve tracked down problems online with snowmobiles having sat for prolonged periods of time then having fuel pump and / or filter issues. Either that or there’s a blockage somewhere possibly due to freezing somewhere I can’t see, so all I can do is hope it clears tomorrow enough to get me home. Can then look at whether it’s worth replacing the fuel lines, filter and pump (fairly cheap and not too complicated) and whether that’s been part of the bigger problem.

I went out on the snowmobile this afternoon and came back to an e-mail from Mike with a little Christmas poem:

“The night before Xmas
nothin was moving…
Not even the speedo
on Fouldsy’s snow bike…”

How apt it is - I may have gone out on the snowmobile, but I didn’t come back on the snowmobile Broke down again about 5 miles out the village with exactly the same problem as last time. Got it going again after 5-10 minutes so pointed myself back towards the village but didn’t get more than a mile or so before it stopped again, only this time it didn’t fire up after 45 minutes trying various things. A long walk back in -20C plus windchill has given me a nice bit of frostbite on my face, and it’s too dark to get back out there now with someone else to either try to get it going or tow it back, though Mark didn’t really have any ideas on top of what I’d already tried. Ho bloody ho

It’s about -4F (-20C) this afternoon, so I pulled on the snowpants, jacket and big mittens and took the snowmobile out for a ride. There hasn’t been that much more snow, so it was still pretty bumpy, but not as bad as last week. I was also a bit more confident in the snowmobile itself, and once the engine warmed up it ran nicely. I’m still waiting on the new spark plugs which is a bit annoying as at low revs it still has problems and cut out at the start of the ride a couple of miles out of the village which would have left me with a none too pleasant walk back, but after checking things over, there was air in the choke. A local out chopping wood had stopped to help too, so is nice to know that at least if something does happen, so long as you’re on one of the main trails you shouldn’t be alone too long.

This was up by the new airport - there’s still a ton of machinery up there, and some weird metal grill contraption running about half the length of the runway. Not quite sure what it is, but don’t think there’s too much more work to be done next summer to get it operational. There were also snowmobile tracks on the river at the end of the runway, but I decided not to try it and swung back across the to of the village instead! It’s still going to be a hairy landing depending on the wind as you’re going to be coming in low right over the river like you do know, but at least the runway is slightly longer - at the moment you’ve got the river waiting at the other of the runway too! When I’d dropped Kat + Pam off a couple of weeks ago when they flew to Bethel, I was speaking with Lincoln up there who was telling me the original runway from the 1950’s was built by the locals with shovels and pickaxes, and had a bend in the middle as it followed the river bank! He said there were one or two ‘incidents’ were the pilots didn’t quite get the bend right coming in to land

But, schools breaks up on Friday and Kat’s looking forward to a bit of a rest! They have a Christmas program tomorrow at school with each class doing a short piece, but other than that they’re just trying to keep the kids from getting too hyper!

Today is Mia’s first birthday and whilst Kat was in Bethel last week she picked up a squeaky hedgehog toy for her as a present. Don’t think Mia has a clue as to why she’s got a present, but she seems to be enjoying it! We got her the exact same toy from Anchorage over the summer and it lasted really well.

Kat put up our Christmas tree a week or so ago and decided we should have a family Christmas photo! It’s also a chance to show off her new quaspec she bought from the craft fair in Bethel over Thanksgiving:

Although there hasn’t been much snow the past few days, it has been staying around 20F (-7C) so the lakes are pretty much frozen over solid again. It’s actually down to 5F (-15C) today and looks like it’s been snowing as it’s so thick with frost and it’s lunchtime! I took the snowmobile yesterday out for a ride around the tundra to the north of the village for a few miles to see how it ran out in the open, but it was very bumpy without much snow down on the frozen ground, and the small streams and ponds were mainly just covered in ice making it pretty slippery! It was all good fun and it’s certainly got a ton of power under acceleration