The bridge

As I mentioned earlier, the foothills of the Rocky Mountains is covered with running water. The main creek on my trapline runs through the valley where my cabin is located. The cabin is at about 3400 feet. The surrounding valley climbs to as high as 4300 feet. From there, I know of about 20 creeks that flow down. In my 38 mile trapline route, I cross probably 15 of these. Some are small but deep, and others are much wider, but none, other than the main creek, are wider than 14 feet. But all need a way to cross, at least if travel is going to be made by quad during warm weather periods. And it is these periods of warm weather where we need to be out there working on the line; not working on the line when we should be trapping.

During the trapping season, the snowmobile becomes the mode of transportation and many of these creeks are frozen over and filled with snow, making travel across them easy. Still, the wider ones need a bridge. With this in mind, Pierre and I, along with the Alaskan Sawmill, built a bridge over exactly one off those places.

Here I'm sawing the main log in half. These will become the bridge supports.

The main bridge supports complete.

And put into place.

Here I'm cutting the planks. Each plank is two-inches thick.

A view of the Alaskan Sawmill straight on.

The finished bridge.

In all, it took about six hours to complete the bridge. This bridge is about a 45-minute quad ride from my cabin and leads into some old growth forest that is prime for marten. This bridge is critical to the 38-mile route, as it is the only way into that old forest without a major journey.