Eight days a week.

What a busy week! Time flew by and I'm still having a great time. The soup this afternoon at the KPI was a delicious red seafood chowder. We're all typing away on our laptops and the locals are having happy hour at the bar. They just sit on both sides of the bar here, it's really just a gathering place for friends.

I hear that the weather down south has been absolutely beautiful. It's been all kinds of cold up here. Not bad for working and snowshoeing in, but cold enough to stick my hands to metal traps and frost up the front of my jacket from my breath. I really love the way the snow squeaks so loudly under my snowshoes though.

This week we've had a visit from the professor who started this camp back in the 1980's. He still runs the place and works on all the projects, but mainly spends his time in Edmonton at the University of Alberta.

Just a few pictures this week. I'll try to take more next week and be more organized! There's just been a lot to learn, so days have been extra long trying to make sure all of my tasks have been completed. Yesterday was my camp day, so I had to make dinner for everyone. We had falafels from How to Cook Everything in wraps with homemade tzatiki sauce, lettuce, and tomatoes. I also made the mixed vegetable salad that I usually make in the summer, without cherry tomatoes though, and upside-down peach cake with brown sugar sauce. It turned out very well.

This is what it looks like when you accidentally trap two chickadees at one midden. This is annoying because they take away potential squirrel traps. I actually probably have one of the lowest chickadee trap rates out of everyone, for some reason. But not in this case. And now that I've said that, I'll probably only catch birds tomorrow. Squirrels will eat chickadees though, and once Dylan came back to one of his traps and a squirrel must have followed a chickadee in and tripped the trap. The squirrel managed to catch the poor little guy and ate him. I'm really glad I haven't had any weird trap stuff happen to me yet because I would probably freak out if I came across that.


Another shot of the beautiful St. Elias Range. The clouds do all sorts of crazy things over the mountains. I've been taking so many pretty shots of the landscape. You just can't get tired of this view. The stars here are also incredible. On a clear night you can see more stars than I have ever seen before. We have seen the northern lights one night. They were bright green. Really, we need to wait for the warmer weather to see them more clearly and in a larger spectrum of colours.


This is a lynx that came into our camp. He was hunting our camp squirrel, Pipes. He leapt about 4m into a tree to try to get Pipes after stalking him for an hour. Pipes dove directly out of the tree into one of his ground holes. We think he's okay, but we're not totally sure.


And finally, a squirrel free of squirrel jail. This little girl is named blue/red. I was trying to catch her all day long. Then, as soon as I closed up the traps she came over to check things out and was trying to lick the inside of the trap from the outside. I had cleaned all of the peanut butter out, but she could still smell it. And the entire time I was standing about 1m away. I probably could have reached out and picked her up, but I'm sure that would have ended badly, probably for me.


Well, that's all from me for now. It's happy hour at the KPI, so we're having a beer before we head out to camp. It was lovely to hear from everyone who sent notes! I hope all is well back home. Next week I'll try to have more about living off-the-grid. We have cool solar panels and an exciting! water collection system.

Love ya lots and miss you more, Cass