Quick Update

March 15, 2017-  Quick update

Here are a few pictures of the wildlife George has seen so far.

I got a call at 11:00 PM last night from our soon to be “mountain wilderness man” telling me he made it.  He was happy and excited to tell me about his chicken dinner with mashed potatoes and green beans on the Alaskan Airlines.  They know a way to a man’s heart.  So here is the plan with already a few hitches: Barney, his pilot, was delayed getting his plane to Anchorage for its 100-hour maintenance and checkup yesterday due to high winds in one of the passes he has to fly through from Takotna to Anchorage.  Ditto that for today also.  So, George is still in Anchorage tonight and will fly out at 9 AM tomorrow for McGrath on a little puddle jumper plane.  Then Barney will fly to McGrath and pick George up and then he will attempt to take his plane to Anchorage if the wind Gods give him some relief through the mountain passes.  Hitch number 2:  I just found out that James from Hawaii isn’t coming.  I am worried his wife saw my blog and shook some sense in him.  Obviously, I didn’t shake George hard enough. 

Here is some boring info for most readers including me but I think the gold miners will enjoy this technical stuff.  Before the guys can leave they have a plan.  I can’t believe I just said that.  Here it is:  Barney is going to spend a 10-12-hour day on a snow-go run to bust a trail.  No worries here because Barney was one of the top 10 finishers in the Iron Dog Race.  We have already replaced wise ol’ James with Rick.  Rick was on the first 2 attempts at getting the dozer and excavator into the site.  (Rick must be a die-hard or he didn’t get the same memo James got).  While Barney is eating, snow blazing the trail, George and Rick will be cutting some holes in the excavator track to prevent snow build up and reduce the risk of coming off track.  Also, Barney said he wanted to weld the “dump box,” that sits under the grizzly, to the skid.  Then they are going to put the 500-gallon tank of fuel it the dump box and center it.  Apparently, the box with the grizzly on top tended to slip during the previous attempts when going up the slopes.  The mere fact that these guys have a plan will make me sleep so much better tonight.  Yet there is more:  When Barney takes his plane to Anchorage he is going to pick up a pump to pump fuel to the dozer and excavator and check on a fuel additive.  Our son in law, Jason, told George they needed to put something called “Power Source” in the diesel fuel to keep it from gelling up in the sub-zero weather.  WHAT A DEAL!  Now all I have to do is sit back and hopefully say, “their plan came through”.