Well I didn’t make the national team, so life goes on as
usual in the land of the midnight sun. And actually it’s going along really
well. I kept the training pretty steady through April, following a top-secret
training plan put together by Graham Nishikawa (thanks Nish). Also new to the
Yukon Elite Squad coaching staff is Coach Pav, returning from Ontario. Usually
there’s a maximum of two at our intensity workouts, now I’ll at least have
someone cheering me on.
It seems like the race season is my time to relax, now that
its over I’m busier than ever. Here’s a little taste of what I’ve been up to…
As part of our
sponsorship with Air North, Colin and I flew up to Old Crow in April to ski
with the local kids.
Old Crow has a rich history in Cross Country skiing that
goes back to the T.E.S.T. days where Father Mouchet coahed the Gwitchin First
Nation’s people into national champions. However skiing has died out in the community
in the last couple decades. It was great to see the kids getting outside and
enjoying the snow that lasts until may!
Trapping is a big part of Old Crow and is still many peoples livelihood. We set a few snares along the ski trails and cooked up a rabbit stew for dinner!
Collecting birch sap: I have a bad habit of under taking projects I
really don’t have time for and this was one of them. As you probably know I’m
really into the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. My favorite foods are meat, berries,
and sugar. Meat and berries are generally easy to come by in the Yukon
but sugars like honey or syrup are not. With the exception of a short stint in
Quebec, I’ve never made syrup. Unfortunately there’s no maples in the Yukon,
but you can find the odd birch. They’re the only hardwood found in the Yukon
and apparently you can make syrup from it.
I cut a bunch of pipe, drilled some holes in trees, stuck the pipe in there, hung a 4L milk jug, and before you know it I had an operation taking in over a hundred litres of birch sap a day.
Colin helped me collect the sap, and my dog helped drink it
Its a 100:1 ratio of sap to syrup, lots of boiling
finished product after a week of collecting 800L of sap. 8 litres of syrup and a really high electricity bill
As you could imagine it was hard to boil off a hundred litres of water a day. I started on my kitchen stove and had to expand to my nieghbour’s stove, Colin’s bbq and an outside fire pit. Even then it was hard to keep up and you have to keep up because the sap will spoil in a couple days if not used. This got me started on my next project.
Colin pouring the yeast over a piece of rye bread floating in honey birch sap
Some of the finished product
My first bottle bomb. 160fl oz of beer down the drain. By down the drain I mean all over my bedroom floor. Maybe I'll measure my priming sugar next time.
The beer should be ready for drinking in a few weeks. I'll probably share some.
My friend Malkolm landed me this sweet opportunity to get
flown up to the Kluane Icefields at the base of Mt Logan. The deal was I get a
free flight and all I had to do was help with digging out the cache. Wouldn’t
you know it, Mt Logan gets 3 meters of snow a year. And wouldn’t you also know
it, digging out the “cache” involved hauling out full size propane ovens frozen
in ice, 3 meters deep.
Our hole/cave. still a few things buried in there
jumping over our hole with ice axes
Hard work aside, we enjoyed the worlds largest non-polar ice
field to ourselves.
Not bad
I’ve also been able to fit in a little fishing. We skied
into a remote lake and were slaying some little lake trout through the ice
white tube jig with some belly meat on it
smallest lake trout ever caught?
going for a hike with a stringer of trout
sailing canoes on Tutshi Lake with our tent fly
May long weekend
Colin owning everyone at disc golf
Work is pretty steady on the side of things. This guy’s getting
a new kitchen in his rental unit.
Nice work there Jonathan Kerr.
And thats about it. I'll save the rest for the next blog post.
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