A chilly situation

On a recent hunting trip, my two hunting partners and I stayed at a public use cabin. The cabin was heated with a Nordic oil stove and we brought about 10 pounds of heating oil on the boat ride with us. Luckily, the previous tenants had topped off the fuel tank at the cabin and we went into a weeklong trip with over 15 gallons of fuel. Things looked great for our heating situation.

Temperatures during the hunt dropped into the 20s at night and rose into the low 40s during the day, if the sun poked out through the clouds and we weren’t tucked behind a ridge. The bay was frozen most mornings and all of the muskegs were crisp and crunchy. The rain barrel where we collected water had a thin layer of ice that we had to bust through every morning for water.

We would crank the stove up high every evening to take the chill off as we warmed up and dried out from the day. Sometimes we’d keep it hot to cook duck breasts, deer tenderloins or sautée onions and to boil water. We’d turn it down about halfway during the night to keep it comfortable while we slept and crank it high again in the morning before turning it all the way off during the day while we were gone.

Early one morning around 4:30 I woke to the cabin being a bit chillier than normal. I struggled with my zipper and crawled out of my bag to inspect the stove. No oil was pooling at the bottom and I figured we had ran out of oil. I slipped back into the bottom bunk and figured we’d deal with it in the morning.

Two of us pumped oil into the tank the next day and got the stove running and the cabin warmed up. We turned it off when we left without issue. That day we would end up harvesting three bucks and packed them all out in one trip, two and a half miles, returning to the cabin around 7 p.m. As had been routine, I walked into the cabin and started the stove. It fired up and I didn’t think anything of it. The three of us hung meat on the meat pole and when we went back inside, the fire was out.

We spent the next hour fiddling around with the stove to get it to work. We tried clearing buildup in the stove itself, worked the intake back and forth and checked the fuel level. Everything seemed to be functioning properly. I did notice that the filter between the fuel tank and the stove seemed a bit low and upon further inspection, realized it was full of ice!

Whether it was due to us letting the tank run low, or the freezing cold day, moisture in the fuel lines had completely frozen our filter and blocked fuel within the lines. Gloved up, two of us unscrewed and drained the filter of ice chunks and whatever buildup had accumulated. I massaged the internals of the filter to break it free of ice. The two of us had to hold on to the lines to thaw them for fuel to flow. Slowly, the filter began to fill again and we were all beyond relieved when the fire roared into life and stayed that way for the rest of the trip.

What could have been a very cold next couple of nights was saved by a little bit of Alaskan ingenuity and the sacrifice of several pairs of gloves and oil-stained clothes. If there’s one thing I’ve learned living in Alaska, it’s that every problem has a solution. You just have to be willing to figure out it out.