11/14-16/06 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way up I saw the mud slide site between mileposts 53 and 54 that had stopped me last week. It was on a slope that had been extensively cut as part of a major road widening project a few years ago. They had placed a huge boulder riprap up the first 50 feet or so of the slope, but from there up, it was just planted in grass. The grassy area had slumped and shoved the boulders and mud right down onto the road. Someone told me last week that it involved 80,000 yards of mud and rocks. That's a lot.

There was snow on the road everywhere above 1300 feet and all the way to the property. I arrived at 12:30. There was 6 inches of wet snow on the ground, but by getting a few good runs at it, I was able to barge the pickup halfway to the trailer. I shoveled tracks for another 20 or 30 feet and then was able to get the pickup another quarter of the way up.

When I was moving in, I saw what I think was a set of coyote tracks down by the trailer. After moving in and having lunch, I decided to take the gate down. It looks like there will probably be snow on the ground from now on. I brought a scaffold frame, a come-along, and a short chain down and removed the gate. I have the technique perfected now so it is no problem. I also screwed the wand to the gatepost so Mike can see where it is under the snow, and while I had the cordless screwdriver down there, I backed the screws out a little more that are holding the house number sign to the tree. That will give the tree a little more room to grow.

The snowbank under the eave was pretty big and had come over onto the first tread and the bottom of the newel post. I took some pictures of the treads and the snowbank, and then I got a piece of plywood and placed it against the newel post as a baffle to keep the snow off the stairs. I think this is something that will have to be done each winter.

The treads were soaking wet as a result of the snow on them and the next thing I planned to do was to align and scribe the second tread. You can't easily write on a wet log, especially if the wood is dark from UV exposure. I needed to scrape the tread where I wanted to draw on it, but before that, I needed to dry the wood out. So I got my propane torch and used it to dry the underside of the second tread. With the tread nice and dry, I got a start on scraping the tread.

On Wednesday it snowed an inch in the morning but by 9:30 it turned to rain. I fed the whole flock of gray jays. Then I got the planer out and finished planing and scraping the underside of the second tread.

I fixed the plywood baffle a little better to keep the snow off the treads and then I made snow steps in the snowbank so I could get into the building from the front door. Then I hacksawed the corners off the CB66 flanges on the left because they were sticking up above the stringer and would interfere with the tread. I also had to hacksaw the top bolt to make it shorter.

With that done, I suspended the second tread from the jigs and trued it up so that it was exactly level and directly above where it was supposed to go on the stringers. It helped to already have the marks on the stringers.

With the tread accurately suspended, I could measure the height above the first tread and calculate the scribe distance. With that distance known, I set up the scribe truing jig, and then put the scribe together to the correct length and trued it up using the jig. That whole process works well and didn't take very long. With the scribe ready, I scribed the tread and both stringers, got the chainsaw out, and got a start cutting the notches.

I decided not to notch the left stringer at all and to make a complete notch in the left side of the tread. I couldn't really notch the left stringer because the CB66 flanges were right there. But I don't want to notch that stringer much anyway because it is made of a weaker log than the right one is. On the right side, I decided to make a complex joint where both the stringer and the tread are notched.

It rained all day but the temperature hovered around 32 degrees. I thought the rain would turn to snow overnight and snow in my pickup if I didn't move it. So I backed the pickup down to the driveway entrance before I went in for the night.

On Thursday morning, there was no new snow. It had rained most of the night. After breakfast, I went back to work on the notches for the second tread. Larry came up for a visit and watched to see how I was going about it. I had the tread to within an inch of where I wanted it and I had to repeatedly put the tread in place, try to figure out where the wood was high and needed to be cut. Then after taking the tread out and tipping it over, I would cut it some more with a hammer and chisel or with the chainsaw. I was at the point where I needed a sheet of carbon paper to put in the joint to tell me where the high spots were, so when Larry left, I walked him down to the road and then stopped in to the trailer to get the carbon paper. Using the carbon paper for a few more iterations of testing and cutting, I got the left side down almost exactly where it should be and the right side is about a quarter of an inch high. I was about out of time, so I quit for the week. I drove the pickup back closer to the trailer to load up, and I left for home at 1:15.