Mar 4-5-6 2011 trip   
 

 

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Mike, Terri and I made another attempt to go to Camp while there was snow on the ground. The trip several weeks ago failed because there was too much ice covered snow on Panther Run Trail. Mike got his Tracker stuck trying to get off the highway (Rt144) the head down the "Trail". After getting his car unstuck, I tried with my FJ which is great in the snow and couldn't get more than 10 or 15 feet at a time without having to back up and take another shot at it. I can only imagine what it would be trying to get back up the hill. I gave up only about halfway to the firebreak road. We called it a day and headed home to return in a few weeks.

So on Friday, 4th of March, I got to camp around noon and headed down the trail. I saw Mike's tracks in the snow which was about 4 to 6 inches deep. However, when I cleared the outhouse I could see he was stuck again right in front of Camp. 

      

He had it almost dug out so I hooked up my tow rope and pulled him out. Then we drove up the road to the highway to make sure we could get back out. Toughest part was right across the drainage ditch trying to make the turn onto Panther Run Trail. I got bogged down there too. Had to rock it back and forth to keep busting through. Some parts of it were still crusty from a few weeks ago.

   

Mike's Tracker                                  My Toyota 

 

  

 
No water inside camp. The spring was running and the well is full. The ram pump is toast again and the sink pump is not working. The Ram pump has more leaks in the black pipe and the main feed line at the pump is gone, all cracked and busted from freezing water. And the pressure dome on the pump is broken. It’s all over, I’m not fixing it anymore. We’ll have to figure out something else for the sink faucet, maybe a small 12 volt RV type pump to fill the big tank.

        

 

 
The pump inside the camp was broken away from the main pipe. Mike went to town to get a new plastic adapter to re-connect the pump to the main copper pipe coming up thru the counter top. The plastic adapter was cracked and broken, maybe from freezing water. We tore the pump apart after replacing the 1 1/4” inch connector but still couldn’t get it to pull water. We think the main line to the well is shot. Probably from frozen water because the drain valve in the well wasn’t opened. This could be a major project!

    

                               Terri and Mike wait for camp to warm up ------  Mike messes with broken pump connector

 

 
And somebody may have been there between Mike’s January trip and this past weekend without any log entries. The floor was pretty cruddy, the calendar he put up in January is missing, and there were cigarette buts in one ashtray. The butt could have been left over from hunting season but he’s pretty sure the calendar is missing.

 

 
 We found half a dozen dead baby mice in the sinks, probably fell in and couldn’t get out. Really nasty – yuk!

 

 
 I put some industrial strength bio-enzyme crud digester in the pooper before we left and some safer Bio-Clean in the sink drain.

     

 

 
Someone cut down two trees along the Panther Run Trail just down from the camp on the Eddy Ridge side of the road.  Mike said they were cut after he was there in January and before all the snow came. There were also snowmobile tracks going down towards State Line Road.