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Off Grid Alaska


mooseoutfront

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On 9/23/2024 at 8:47 PM, mooseoutfront said:

Had to light the wood stove for the season. There will be a fire burning until late April or early May. Time to slide into winter. 

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Sorry if already addressed, but how much wood did you stockpile to last you through the winter?

 

3 hours ago, mooseoutfront said:

I love the winter.  The tourists leave, the seasonal workers go away, the bugs are gone, my job slows way down.  The deep cold fascinates me.  It's so foreign and other worldly.  The snow covered woods are beautiful.  The Northern Lights are a common sight.  I really enjoy getting out and exploring on a snow machine.  It's a lot easier to get around when everything is frozen.  Alaska is basically a swamp.  The bears are asleep, so there is no worrying about critter safety and protocols.  There are negatives, but the positives outweigh them in my eyes.  It's a very peaceful, very simple life.

London's "White Silence."

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14 minutes ago, Braff Zacklin said:

 

Sorry if already addressed, but how much wood did you stockpile to last you through the winter?

 

London's "White Silence."

We try to put up 10 cords a year. We usually only burn 7 to 8 cords. Can never have enough fire wood. 
 

London is a must read for me in the winter. 

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1 minute ago, mooseoutfront said:

We try to put up 10 cords a year. We usually only burn 7 to 8 cords. Can never have enough fire wood. 
 

London is a must read for me in the winter. 

8X4X4.....times 8.  Damn.  That's a fair chunk of wood.  I'll see if I can dig up the pic of the wood that was stacked in the storage barn of a house in Norway we hiked by.  It was on a fjord, on the west coast, they obviously got some "winter" there.  Pic was taken in mid-summer, while they were still cutting and stacking.

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2 minutes ago, mooseoutfront said:

We try to put up 10 cords a year. We usually only burn 7 to 8 cords. Can never have enough fire wood. 
 

London is a must read for me in the winter. 

How's that handled in Alaska? Do you permit for x amount of wood in a certain zone/area and cut up already prone deadfall, or are you allowed to fell your own timber?

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18 minutes ago, Braff Zacklin said:

How's that handled in Alaska? Do you permit for x amount of wood in a certain zone/area and cut up already prone deadfall, or are you allowed to fell your own timber?

If you cut on state land you are supposed to have a permit.  I've never done that, so I don't know how that works.  We cut wood around the "neighborhood."  We are technically cutting on private property, but no one is around or cares.  Most of the property around here will never be developed.  People bought 5 or 10 acres plots to have land in Alaska.  Most have never been up here to even see it.  We take problem trees, windfall trees, or standing dead.  If that's not enough for the season, we know a guy out here who owns several hundred acres.  He's given us permission to cut wood off of his property as long as it's for our private use.  He doesn't want us to cut wood to sell to other folks.

33 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Here it is.  It was along the trail on a hike to some waterfall.  Nobody on the trail, just looked inside the open barn and realized shit....they get COLD round here.

 

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That's money in the bank for us Northern dwellers.

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Bear domestic violence. 

Quote

Fat Bear Week is back for its 10th anniversary, but the annual contest that celebrates brown bears and their healthy appetites was delayed after a bear in Alaska’s Katmai National Park killed another bear on a live webcam. 

Around 9:30 a.m. Alaska time Monday, the popular live webcam facing the Brooks River showed two bears fighting in the water. Bear 469, an older adult male, fought with – and eventually killed – Bear 402, an older adult female. 

"This is a difficult situation to witness," Explore.org’s resident naturalist Mike Fitz said in a YouTube video explaining the incident. "We love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and ample body fat, but the ferocity of bears is real. The risks they face are real. Their lives can be hard and their deaths can be painful." 

Fitz said the camera didn’t show what, if anything, happened to cause the fight. After Bear 469 killed Bear 402, he dragged her body ashore. 

https://www.fox4news.com/news/fat-bear-week-2024-voting-bear-killed

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2 hours ago, hookem2010 said:

How many hours of daylight up there now?

We’re getting a little over 10 hours currently. We will continue to lose light until the winter solstice, usually around December 20. That is the shortest day of the year when we have about 3 hours of daylight total. 

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8 minutes ago, mooseoutfront said:

We’re getting a little over 10 hours currently. We will continue to lose light until the winter solstice, usually around December 20. That is the shortest day of the year when we have about 3 hours of daylight total. 

If I’ve learned anything from horror movies, this is the time to sharpen your stakes and prepare for the vampires to become more active and hungry. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/11/2024 at 12:30 PM, hookemATL said:

If I’ve learned anything from horror movies, this is the time to sharpen your stakes and prepare for the vampires to become more active and hungry. 

Anyone seen Fuchs?

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On 10/28/2024 at 9:26 AM, parkavenueguy said:

what are your opinions on ted kaczynski?

being semi-serious (the wildlife is absolutely beautiful btw)

Ted Kaczynski would fit it just fine around here.

Let me tell you about my neighbor Ken.  I have no idea what his last name is.  We've lived in our cabin about 14 years.  I've seen Ken twice.  Only ever spoken to him once, and it was a very weird conversation.  My wife saw him for the first time last winter.  It was like seeing Bigfoot for her.  Ken is nuttier than squirrel shit, but he keeps to himself and doesn't cause me any problems.  So Ken is alright by me.  I have no idea how he lives alone back there, but he does.  We had another neighbor named Mark who was also a hermit.  No one had seen or heard a word from him in a couple of years, so a wellness check was called into the Troopers.  They found his badly decomposed body on the floor of his cabin.  They figured he had been dead for over a year.  I expect to hear a similar story about Ken one of these days. 

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17 minutes ago, hookemATL said:

You mean if your plan to steal his shitstick via murder goes right.

just like Mark…

I envision a wasteland where backwoods Alaskans battle it out a la Highlander with their shitsticks. There can be only one. 

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8 hours ago, mooseoutfront said:

Ted Kaczynski would fit it just fine around here.

Let me tell you about my neighbor Ken.  I have no idea what his last name is.  We've lived in our cabin about 14 years.  I've seen Ken twice.  Only ever spoken to him once, and it was a very weird conversation.  My wife saw him for the first time last winter.  It was like seeing Bigfoot for her.  Ken is nuttier than squirrel shit, but he keeps to himself and doesn't cause me any problems.  So Ken is alright by me.  I have no idea how he lives alone back there, but he does.  We had another neighbor named Mark who was also a hermit.  No one had seen or heard a word from him in a couple of years, so a wellness check was called into the Troopers.  They found his badly decomposed body on the floor of his cabin.  They figured he had been dead for over a year.  I expect to hear a similar story about Ken one of these days. 

So does marks firewood and shit stick become first come first serve in this scenario?

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9 hours ago, mooseoutfront said:

Actually, in a way it does. It breaks down like this…Woodsies, as they are called, are their own tribe. There are fringe woodsies like me and my wife. I have a steady job, but we live woodsie. We are in the same “neighborhood,” which stretches 20 to 25 miles off the highway. I know of them and they know of us. Most of them piece it together as they go. PFDs are mailed out in October, so they are flush with cash right now. They truly live old school…you can smell a true woodsie

Anyway, they sorta keep track of each other. When the woodsie grapevine finally figured out no one had heard from Mark, that’s when the wellness check was called in

His cabin was raided once the body was cleared. Things weren’t necessarily “stolen,” people have dibs on things around here. We have dibs on some of our buddy Bobby’s stuff, and vice versa. People know it

What’s awesome about the neighborhood is that there is zero theft. We don’t lock our cabin or our garage. We leave keys in the vehicles and equipment. I don’t even think about it anymore

 

I thought somebody stole some shit out of your truck?

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9 hours ago, mooseoutfront said:

What’s awesome about the neighborhood is that there is zero theft. We don’t lock our cabin or our garage. We leave keys in the vehicles and equipment. I don’t even think about it anymore

Was that way growing up with my small-town, W. Texas g-parents.  Town had maybe a few dozen living in the city limits.  You had to rely on your neighbors as there was no cavalry coming to save the day.  I assume it's like that to some extent out there.  

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35 minutes ago, baboso said:

I thought somebody stole some shit out of your truck?

Yeah, that’s what pissed me off so much about that incident. The plow truck was parked up on the highway at a gravel pit when we had to evacuate due to a fire. There were some meth head squatters in the area at the time and I’m positive they’re the ones who tried to steal the truck. If it was back at my place, it wouldn’t have been touched. The squatters stayed up around the highway and stole mail out of mailboxes and such. They didn’t venture back into the woods. They knew better than to do that. 

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1 hour ago, mooseoutfront said:

The squatters stayed up around the highway and stole mail out of mailboxes and such. They didn’t venture back into the woods. They knew better than to do that. 

It’s almost as if there was more than one place to hide a body…

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