January 8

5 C Overcast.
Rained off and on all day yesterday.
Friends from the club in for a board game, then dinner last night. Nice evening. I see the bird feeders are empty so I better fill those this morning.
Here is more of Kiwa Creek.

the issue two man aluminum mess kit we had brought.

There was a wood shed attached at the back that had a good supply of seasoned wood stacked in it.

We unpacked everything, I told the other two they would be sharing the double bed, then as I knew that I was the least tired I made us a supper of Liptons soup and a pork steak each. We were all in our sleeping bags immediately after eating.

The next morning, the cabin was cold, the water we had left on the stove was frozen, but in a few minutes with the fire going and coffee on the boil, things seemed pretty good.

After a breakfast of rolled outs and powdered milk, I told Scotty I wanted him to stay in and get everything livable. I had noticed that there was both a cross cut and a swede saw hanging up in the shed so also told him if he could find some logs to try and get some wood that wasn’t quite so dry.

George and I made our lunches, gathered up our cruising accessories, strapped on our snow shoes and headed out.

Now that it was daylight, we could see that the cabin had been built on a slight knoll about a hundred yards from a circular open spot about a hundred and fifty yards across; I would later discover that this was actually a small lake that had been created from a snowchute that rose directly from the far side up a towering mountain. There was at least two thousand feet of almost perpendicular drop. The lake was also the head of Kiwa Creek.

With work to do we didn’t spend much time sight seeing but headed further into the valley towards where we could see the trees start about a half mile away.

That distance, being somewhat different than what I had been told would now have an immediate impact on how much work was done each day.