Fox General Store is 8 miles from the house. It is also where the Elliott Highway begins so mile post markers are the distance from Fox - not Fairbanks. Shortly after mile post 27 (actually mp 27.7 according to The Milepost) we pulled off the road into the Wickersham Dome parking lot. There were a couple of cars there but no ATV trailers.
We offloaded the RZR and headed up the trail. It was a little chilly - a slight breeze blowing and we could see that although there were only a few leaves turning where we were - up the mountain a ways there was a small group of birch trees that had all turned yellow.
We knew there were several cabins along this trail but other than that were not sure what we would see. The trail started out pretty much like all of them have - a nice trail - this one did have a few more rocks than the others had. but they were small.
About 7 miles out the trail we came to a fork in the road. To the left was the LeFevre-Borealis Cabin and to the right was Lee's Cabin then on to Moose Creek Cabin. We had already decided we were going to Lee's Cabin so turned right. It wasn't far to Lee's Cabin. I had to have a picture so we stopped:
As I wrote before, these cabins are open for anyone to stay in for a nominal fee as long as you have reserved through the BLM. We weren't going to stay and were a bit concerned someone else was staying there because of the little Tot Spot chair on the front porch but decided to take a peek in.
Yeah, no one was staying there so we decided to go in and check it out.
Notice the campstove and lantern left in the cabin for anyone to use. There is also a wood stove to keep the cabin warm. This particular cabin sleeps 6 - 4 on the bunks and 2 up in the loft - but to me, it looks like you could put more people up in the loft.
The next thing we knew, we were sunk in the bog.
JW got out and put his rubber boots on. He soon found that if he tried to walk directly in front of the RZR, he sunk down below the tops of his boots. I put my rubber boots on and jumped out to get some pictures and watch JW get us out of the bog. Thank heavens he had invested in a winch. He had to dig down a bit through the "mud" to find the hook but fortunately it didn't take much effort. I use the term "mud" loosely because whenever you see trees like in the above picture, you know you are in permafrost area. The ground is more like stringy sawdust than any type of dirt you've ever seen. And any moisture stays close to the surface because it cannot penetrate through the saturated ground.
I got in the driver's seat and held the out button down so JW could get enough cable to tie around a tree. When it was hooked up, I started to get out so JW could drive but to my surprise he told me to winch it out. Yeah fun - I had no idea what I was doing that is for sure. "Straighten out the wheels, give it a little gas and press the in button on the winch." Slowly but surely the winch pulled us out. Woo Hoo - a winch always pays for itself the first time you have to use it. The RZR was plenty dirty but we could continue on our way.
The hills as far as we could see were covered with this same type of tree - they are the only kind that will grow in this terrain so we knew we were going to have to keep an eye out for more bogs and muskeg. We hadn't even gone a half mile before we ended up stuck again.
And no, I wasn't driving, I was just in the driver'seat to winch it out again. We were getting pretty experienced at this winching thing and were sure glad there were lots of trees to hook to. We tried stopping and walking a ways to determine the best way to go. But that didn't work so well either as we quickly got stuck twice more. While I was out walking, I came across what I thought at first was a part of an apple - but nope it was a red fungi.
We got stuck one more time - 5th time since leaving Lee's Cabin - this was getting just a little old. Also it was after 12:00 so we stopped for a bit to chow down on some jerky, string cheese and fritos. Then we headed on to Moose Creek Cabin - we figured it was still another 6 miles. JW changed strategy a bit and decided to put the RZR in 4 wheel drive and hit anything that looked soft a little more aggresively. We also knew that if it was black black water we needed to find a way around it.
We made it to the cabin with no further problems.
No one here so we went in and spent a little time reading the latest journal from the cabin. There are a lot of people who sled or dog sled back in here in the winter. I'm thinking you would need to make sure you had some way to cut wood if you showed up here in January.
JW liked this page.
When we left the cabin, we decided to try a different trail back - it didn't look as well traveled but we thought that might be good as there was more grass for traction. We came to an area that looked nice and green and JW hit the gas to plow through it. The front end of the RZR was sunk almost to the top of the front tires in water. The rear tires were still on solid ground but the the floor was filling up with water. Now what to do. You can only winch forward (unless you have a rear winch which we do not. And it was a long ways to the opposite bank.
JW decided to hook up the winch on the opposite shore and we'd winch on across. Then he would drive around the end of this little "pond" and we'd go back to Moose Creek Cabin and on to Lee's Cabin the way we had come. With the winch hooked up, we were ready for me to give it a little gas and reel in the winch. "But what if the water gets deeper?" "How are you going to get around through all those trees?" "Are you sure we can't pull this out of the water ourselves?" Okay - here goes nothing but as soon as I stepped on the gas and pushed the in button on the winch control, it started moving forward and the front end came up a bit. Slowly but surely we kept moving toward the opposite bank.
Once I reached that side, I turned driving over to JW and I got out to take a picture of where I had just been.
When JW hit this area, it looked like solid green - no trail through at all but looked like something we could drive through.
I walked back around and got in the RZR with JW and we headed back to the truck. A ways down the trail JW got out to look at the best way to go and I ended up in the driver's seat. We had learned a lot today about the terrain, what to look for and places to avoid. Between Moose Creek Cabin and Lee's Cabin, we only had to use the winch once and that was because I slowed down instead of ploughing through this one area.
We had seen a lot of area but no wildlife today. Though this terrain is bad for trees, it is absolutely great for blueberries and they were everywhere. When we got back to the parking lot, we found it was filled. Everyone out picking blueberries. We had eaten a few during the day but did not bring a container to take any home with us.
It had been a good day and despite all the trials, we had had a lot of fun.
Today, we had to get a couple more loads of firewood cut. We counted trees and figure at 5 trees per truck load, we probably have 8 more loads to go.
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