Winter has arrived!

My goal of doing a weekly post hasn't quite happened yet, but here's an update for early December.

We had 24" of snow in November with rain in between to pretty much clear the snow off.  It started snowing on the 1st and we are now at 42" for the month of December.  We usually don't start to get our serious snow until late December, so this could end up being in "interesting" winter.

Looking out at the greenhouse from the lodge.

View of the bay between snow squalls.

Looking across Warm Springs Bay from the deck.

Looking out through the dining room window.

We had some serious icicles on all sides of the lodge!

Sadie Creek looking downstream from the bridge.

Sadie Creek upstream from the bridge.

Jen clearing snow from the stairs and deck.

A Sitka black-tail deer wandered by one day.

Feral wondering where that gob of snow went.

 

This harbor seal swims by every day making his rounds.

Feral's Toilet Trail--she usually comes back faster than she goes out.

Jen's taking a photo class and this is one of her artsy experiments. 

Luckily, we have a very fast snow blower!

 

Martens Running Amuck!

Mike (the owner of the Baranof Wilderness Lodge) warned me this fall that they had had a lot of trouble with martens getting into the lodge and boats.  Now that it's started to snow, we are seeing marten tracks everywhere.  The other night, I heard a thud coming from the "cold room", a mudroom we use as a walk in refrigerator.  I opened the door to check it out and there was a marten who alternated his gaze between me at the door and the plate of halibut burritos that he had knocked off the shelf.  I chased him out, but noticed a few days later that 4 hard boiled eggs were missing from a chewed up carton.  That was bad enough, but I went to make a burrito yesterday and found the whole costco bag of tortillas was missing.  We're taking care now to make sure that the persnickity latch on the cold room door catches when we close it.

 

This good looking guy has cruises our dock every morning.  When Jen came down to take some photos, he squeezed through a little crack in the decking and waited her out.

 

This little guy jumped up on the rail to see if there was anything that looked good to eat inside.

Our friend Christine runs a little store over at the townsite.  She had a group of martens move in and make a big mess last winter.  She had a lot of work done to marten-proof the building, but we have discovered there are at least three martens now living inside.  We can't figure out where they're getting in and out.  We haven't been able to find any of the live traps rumored to be in town, so  Amazon.com has one on the way to Harris Air.  In the meantime, there is a home made version we've been using with limited success.  Keith and Jackie are the caretakers at the townsite and Keith called me the other day to let me know he had a marten in the trap.  Since I have a skiff in the water, Jen and I went over to relocate him.  Here we are leaving the store, rolling down the boardwalk.

It was a nice day for a skiff ride--no wind, flat water, and just a little snow.

Dropping the marten off at an undisclosed location that is hopefully far enough away so he won't make his way back to the cushy comforts of the store.

After a night in the trap, he was ready for a little run as soon as the cover was removed.

Run Marty!

 

 

Marty did a pretty good job of chewing up the trap.....