Be careful now

Like I said in the last post, I've been hearing that a lot lately. Well, I get back to my own domain, Mile 14, where I am supposedly the master of my own environment and guess what...I should have been careful.

That's a pic of the hole where I went through the ice at Mile 14 of the world famous Kenai River a couple of hours ago. It could have been worse, I always say you can't worry about what didn't happen but I am feeling kind of dumb for endangering myself and scaring MP...at least after she got done laughing . When it comes to the Kenai River I know for certain to never be complacent or assume things but it seemed to be so cold for so long while we were gone that I never dreamed the ice could be unstable.

Here's how it happened. We've been skiing a lot to get our exercise and its been fun.  The snow is so deep that it took us many days to get a track set down to Fall-in-Hole and through the swamp back to the boat launch. But today we decided that with the river so firm we'd ski up instead of down and look at the property below our house, access the beetle kill and the wind storm damage. Any of you that know the lay of the land here at Mile 14 knows that the bluff below our house runs straight down to the river and the water is extremely deep right next to shore. But, the old adage in Alaska is that if you see moose prints etc then the ice must be safe enough for you. Wrong. We skied out from shore up to 30 feet and jet was enjoying it although we did notice overflow water and decided that was enough. On the way back I spotted a limb protruding from the bank that would be perfect to put the camera on for a pic but when I got close my ski pole went through the ice and I could see water running. Well I'm right next to shore so I figure how dangerous can this really be and continue on when .....wooomp.....I go straight down and never touch the bottom. Yikes. I role over on the snow to the shore side my ski is caught under the ice and won't budge...that's when MP stopped laughing. She starts to come help but I tell her to get on the shore, shore for sure,  and I reach as far as I can and get hold of tree branch and it takes a few minutes but I finally get the ski out and stand up.

In that pic you'll notice everything I ignored. The water is deep. Being south facing the area is melting, as you can see theres bare ground right behind me. And we know that the velocity of the river is stronger along the bank here and swirls some that effects the freeze / thaw process.  No harm, no foul, just another lesson delivered to a guy still learning....the hard way. And the way I look at it is this ... if you stay home nothing will happen to you, but that's not me, I gotta go...

I wanted to post a couple pics of what we're dealing with in the snow department here. Its no news to all you Alaskans but I have to tell you that even though I kept up with the news while we were beach bound it didn't really sink in until I saw it. As creative as I think I am I just wasn't visualising what all the snow would look like. This pic is MP in the middle of the ramp we access the river with.

And this last pic is of course our house here at Mile 14. The snow has settled and I measured it at just under 2 feet. Today it warmed up and some of the load is leaving the south side of the house so I think we'll get through without shoveling like many people have. So now we're set for a world class break-up season to be followed by a world class fishing season...and I'm going to be careful, honest.