TGIM

Our boss, Bob, hailed us on the radio early this morning to ask us to accompany Mike and Glenn (two other seasonal workers) to Long Lake to cut and split wood for the shelter at the lake.

Mike and Glenn came by bearing gifts; two pounds of King salmon, a pound of smoked salmon, and two pounds of mountain goat breakfast sausage - all caught/hunted locally.

At the lake, we spotted a huge snag only twenty feet from the shelter. The problem with it was two fold; one, that it had a significant lean and two, that it didn't have a clean fall. After some discussion, we decided to take it. Jack came up with an estimated ring count age of 150 years. Glenn bucked the tree at the fall site, Mike bucked them into halves, and Jack carried them to the shelter where I bucked and stacked. The bugs at Long Lake are always terrible and, true to form, they were out with a vengeance. After we finished with the tree, we had lunch in the sun and packed out our gear.

Afterward, Jack and I finished our rounds and headed into town to dump our garbage, fill up with gas, and take showers. It was a picture perfect day today - we even ran the air conditioning in the truck! A far cry from the heater that I ran early this morning.

We're scheduled to head to the neighboring island of Etolin tomorrow to help with some trail work.

We did spot two black bears yesterday near Thom's Creek. The second bear was the largest black bear that I've ever seen- it was absolutely enormous.