This was waiting for us when we reached the cabin -


The ladder got in with the help of my friend Mike – the two of us bravely fought the royal battle of the arctic air to raise the 16 foot ladder to its rightful place into the heavens… Oh, sorry, been reading too many books written during the hey-day of British Imperialism. Imperially or not, we still got the ladder in place and it is a pretty nice thing. The banister is still a work in progress; I will probably make it shorter at some point; and both the banister and the ladder will get a coat of oil when it is warmer.
In case you are wondering, the walls are getting done in the spring.

from the first floor
continuing into the second floor
looking down from the second floor
More snow had fallen since I was last there, so we parked in a neighbor’s driveway and climbed over the 6 foot snow bank blocking my driveway.
Mike and I planned on spending a night in the cabin, so we loaded up the sled with food, water and wood to burn. We had to make a couple of trips with the sled, which worked great – most of the hike in (a bit less than a quarter mile) is a gentle slope downhill, so sometimes it felt like the sled pulled us.




I had bought snow shoes on ebay thinking they might be handy, but there really isn’t enough snow yet to bother. I did use them, and it seems to keep me from going too far down in the snow, but again, the snow isn’t deep enough yet to warrant wearing them.
It was cold, but not terribly; in the 20’s in the day and the teens at night. After a few hours the new heater worked well enough that we could start peeling off most of our layers and hang out inside, in comfort!

We spent most of the time inside enjoying the view out the windows; it snowed lightly overnight, but not before we watched the moon rise.








By the end of the stay we started to fool around with floor plans -






to be continued!

Winter - what a better time to build a ship ladder

Each winter I have some extra time to go to a friends house and play in his unheated barn/workshop. Like last year, I prepped lumber for a privy, but then I also decided to whip up a 16' ships ladder. My friend Larry and his son Max were a great help & I couldn't have done it without them.

The lumber yard out by Larry is pretty limited, so we took some regular 2 by 6 yellow pine and trimmed them down to 5/4 by 6 - this would hopefully make a more graceful shape. We then sanded everything down, cut the steps to 18", marked and routed both rails of the ladder, shoved it all together and screwed it all in. Larry has a full shop, so making this happen took just one day - it would be impossible to have done this on site!

Larry then tied the beast to the car (thank you rent a car company!) and I drove 4 hours through snow squalls back to my cabin. Of course I didn't think about getting the 700' driveway plowed, and there was too much snow to drive in, but I could use the rails as ski treads and I simply pulled the ladder over the snow to the cabin.

Squeezing the 16' ladder into a 12' square cabin (11' square inside!) was an absolute challenge and that task took almost as long as building the ladder. As of now it is not quite in the position I want, but it is in the cabin. It is taking up all the space in the cabin, as it runs diagonally across the cabin - from corner to corner and floor to ceiling! But I'll fix that soon, and hopefully have more pictures.