Jim has started siding the east side of the lodge. He has put up the scaffolding, torn down about 1/2 of the old siding and installed 1/3 of the new siding so far. Luckily this side of the lodge was in much better shape than the west side. Goes so show, never install 3/8 inch exterior plywood right over old worn out tongue and groove siding (with no vapor barrier between). Anyway, on the east side, he did have to reset a few windows that were installed incorrectly and we had to order a new window that we had installed - but had broken on the sliders. So, more window trim to purchase and we will run out of siding before we get to the back of the cabin. When I originally ordered the siding, we did not have the screen room and the snow room planned for siding - alas.
It appears this year will be a dry drought year at the lodge. We have had no rain in May and little rain in April. A sign of global climate change. As a result, we have more cedars to remove this fall and a lot of branch clean up this spring. Looks like Cal Fire will be putting the burn moratorium in to place a lot earlier this year (we have already had many "no burn" days).
At the beginning of our adventure with the Emigrant Gap Lodge, we usually had snow up and over the roof for many days in winter and the snow lasted outside until Mother's Day. Those days seem to be gone.
We plan to take a ride with the Polaris soon up to Sailor Ridge Road to look for the remnants of our Air Mail Beacon (from the times prior to radar, when big concrete arrows and lighted beacons were used to guide air mail planes to the west coast). Here is a photo of a google maps search that looks like a likely area.
I did find a wonderful websites that lists the arrows and some of the beacons in the sierra. Here is a page that confirms that we did not have an arrow at Emigrant Gap (it was located at the Blue Canyon Airport) but we have a map from the 1930s that establishes that we did have a beacon at the highest point of Sailor Ridge.
And I recently found some additional historical information about the Gap. My section about the 1840s includes information about John C Fremont and his expedition to California and through Emigrant Gap. The reference was from a 49er who traveled to California and called out a few of Fremont's topographical references in our general area (though I am not sure where between Emigrant Gap and Colfax/Grass Valley these would have been. The first - the members of the expedition set up camps to explore the areas of the sierra. While at one of these camps near us, they stripped a large cedar of its branches and raised a flag. The flag could not be a US flag since the land that was being surveyed actually belonged to Spain. So Fremont's wife crafted a special flag for him to use. Here are tow examples of flags that Fremont used in his California expeditions. Additionally, Fremont wrote about a huge tree that a person could use for shelter. That tree was somewhere between Emigrant Gap and Colfax/Grass Valley and unfortunately was burned to the ground when some "shelterers" lit a fire inside and burn the core of the tree.
Here are a few URLS that provide information about Fremont's expedition:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/HNS/Domwest/mcauley.html
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/AAZ9580.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext;q1=John+C.+Fremont
http://collections.theautry.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=M231780;type=101
file:///Users/Carol/Downloads/Diary-of-John-Markle-1849-Letter-to-the-Donner-Trail-Marking-Expedition-from-Wendell-Robie-1940-1.pdf
https://www.octa-journals.org/merrill-mattes-collection/the-travels-of-a-gold-digger-enroute-to-california-john-a-markle
https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/projects/catalog/expeditions-of-john-charles-fremont
http://collections.theautry.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=M231780;type=101
