Oh woe's my finger!!

Feb. 17th 2010.


We were out milling this afternoon. Dick operates one side of the sawmill (canterman and sawyer) I operate the other (lowly lumber piler). Dick was setting the dogs and the logs being covered with ice and snow, he was really ramming them down good. He felt his glove snag on the tip of the dog, but he was too late. He rammed the dog into the log, taking his gloved hand with it. We are pretty sure he missed the bone, but he split his finger wide open. Them dogs do bite! After a "Dr. Sandy" treatment... and I think I did a pretty good job, we had to cut the finger right off the glove and slit it open before he could fit it back on his hand. Then we went out to finish the deck before his hand got too painful. By the time we finished the deck I could tell he was in pain, but being the stubborn ole man that he is; as I sit and type, he is still out there nailing all the newly sawn lumber to the back wall of his mill. I offered to stay and help, but apparently fussing over him and bitching that he should "call it quits for the day", isn't what he considers 'help'. Fortunately it was his left hand... him being a left handed man and all....
(picture: Dick milling lumber on a better day, using the sawmill to build the mill house. Oct 2009)

This morning we walked to the Kibbee Lake Portage to check out the conditions. It appears that there may be a party of skiers out on the East Side right now, as two cars are parked at the end of the road. The snow was nice with a hard crust, we didn't break through at all. We actually wore our ice cleats to help secure our footing, especially along the plowed road, which was a sheet of ice. The Portage trail had a thin layer of hard packed snow with some icy patches. We continued through the bush down to the campground finding lots of bare ground under the trees. Then we headed down to Bowron Lake to get home by crossing the Lake. The surface of the Lake has refrozen... again. Yesterday we had rain and warm weather and spider holes began to appear. Today the spider holes are healed up (hope Dicks finger heals up as fast!!), the rain and melt water that was on top of the ice are solid again. The ice was nice, kind of pebbly, just right for curling. As we walked we talked about how easy it would be to go to the river cabin right now. You could walk all the way (using ice cleats of course) and bushwacking along the right side near the base of Sugar Loaf, hence staying away from the Bowron River, would probably be a snap.