I actually questioned God. I thought are you punishing me?
Forgive my memory where the timeline is concerned, because the first three years became a bit of a blur.
First probably the worst drought in nearly 100 years, despite the lefts claim it's getting worse due to AGW BS.
Bear Creek dried up completely but my spring kept a trickle because it has so many springs feeding it, so my source of water still kept running the entire time.
Even through this drought, the one the Marxists claim is the worst in history, Bear Creek is still flowing just fine.
I had parked my motorhome just above my water source, about 50' above the creek, a beautiful and quiet, where the most noise was the waterfall, I thought this would be a great place to build....
Well, 3 weeks and life was great, then winter hit, where God seems to punish the forest and its inhabitants.
In one weekend we got 3 and a half feet of snow, I was literally snowed in. The road was completely impassable, so I decided to cross the creek and climb the mountain. When I hit the creek, it looked as if there was 12' snowdrift in the canyon, so I attempted to cross.
One step and I fell 12' to the creek, it was a literal tunnel of snow. The brush acted like an arch, catching all the snow, so here I am walking up the creek in a fantasy world. I came to a point where I knew I could climb out, and yes, these are steep canyon walls. I climbed up and out, took quite awhile but I made it to the top of my property where the dozer was parked, so I was able to clear the road out to the main road, a one lane road about 5 miles long out to Hwy 193, which was also closed.
So there I sat, wondering WTF...
I neglected to mention, I had rented a Case 750? Dozer (way too small for the job), and was in the process of building a road to the bottom, being that it's a steep mountainside I had to serpentine down the mountain with several nasty switchbacks.
While working one of the tightest turns, I was forced to build the corner up along the cliff about 12' out of fresh fill. This was fine until it started raining and the new fill became saturated, which I realized only later.
I parked, killed the dozer admiring my work while perched on the cliff side, when suddenly it all broke away, here I am on my side, face in the mud as the dozer slid nearly a thousand feet into the creek.
No, it never rolled, but it scared the crap out of me on this slow motion ride to Hell. Yeah, got it out after three weeks.
(I found gold, and yes, it is an actual vein, which was confirmed the following year, I'll tell that story in a follow up article.)
Following year? A deep freeze, below zero, daytime highs of 12 degrees, but it was sunny and dry...
That alone made life virtually unbearable, water lines froze up, keep in mind I was still using the Ram pump.
It kept pumping long enough to create spires of ice sticking out and encapsulated the pump which was no longer useful, no water was flowing anyway.
The waterfall where my source of drinking water is located had a 12' foot frozen wave coming out.
Not that the water froze all at once, it was an accumulative ramp, where the water froze a little, and it just kept growing out further and further, it was sooo beautiful.
I did take pictures, but they somehow disappeared, memories lost. I later lost all my pics going back decades, thanks to rain, but that's another story for another time.
My holding tank was a 3'x8' culvert pipe I cemented in the ground, the water had frozen solid, the ice block literally unscrewed upward about 5' in the air. Yes, it looked like a crystal pipe sitting on top of the pipe.
According to my neighbor, he had wrapped his pipes with heating coils, problem is, during this time, we had an ice storm, brought down the main transmission lines from the Folsom dam that feeds Tahoe and beyond.
They literally laid across Hwy 193, no longer energize, they were like mini speed bumps on the highway into town.
The power was out for 6 weeks, so when his pipes finally warmed up, it flooded his house.
I was lucky, I had drained my lines, so I only had one frozen spot I had to replace in the motor home. What a headache...
