June 22nd

The North Wrangell shelter is located at the top of a 2,700 mountain near Shoemaker Bay. The trail to the shelter is roughly 3.5 miles all on boardwalk....boardwalk that is wet nearly every day of the year making it the slickest walking surface in the country. Last summer, I hiked to the shelter and found that it had been vandalized with graffiti. Bob and packed tools in to the shelter and spent the morning sanding the paint from the walls. The hike is extremely strenuous and Bob and I wanted to access not only the North Wrangell shelter but also the Shoemaker Bay Overlook, located about 3 miles away across another valley. I gave Jack the option of staying back and he took it.

Bob and I also marked the GPS location of stacks of surplus lumber stashed in the bush so that it could be located quickly by a helicopter for pickup at a later date.

The view either shelters is spectacular when the conditions are right but this was not one of those days. The summits of both mountains were far above the cloud line allowing us to see all of about ten feet.

The battery powered palm sander that Bob purchased for the job worked like a charm. It took about thirty minutes to get all of the "artwork" off the walls us each shelter.

Back at camp, Jack and I had lunch and then hit a couple of the closer sites before heading down to take showers and do a load of laundry.

The weekend movie playing at the Nolan Center was Disney's latest "Epic". As we sat in the theater, I couldn't hear a thing as all I could hear was the far away sound of Walt Disney spinning in his grave. They follow up "John Carter" with this? If you own Disney stock, I'd recommend a visit with your broker. I'm hopeful that Jack will be reviewing it shortly.