 Good morning! It is day number seven. Tough day because it's pickup day and the weather is not going to be gentle. It's not going to be kind and it's not going to cooperate. We are looking at 16 below zero. It is just about 5 a.m. The wind is absolutely ripping out there already. Lucky for me where I have it this tent set up. It's a northwest wind so it's coming this way and I have all these trees and this forest and woods right here and even a mountain right over there. So that's blocking all the wind. I'm not eating any of it yet. To get across the lake and get back to the truck with all this gear I'm going to hit a couple patches where she'll be pushing pretty hard so I'll make sure I'm good and bundled up. I should be able to make it all in one trip if I jam everything in but I'm going to just make two trips. It's not too far. I got the new snowmobile so it's not too bad a ride. So I'm going to take all the loose stuff. I'll take the bedding, the cot, my clothes, and the lights and everything out. I'm going to leave the tent set up, the floor, obviously the floor set up, and the heater. I'm going to put the heater on blast to try to get rid of all this horror frost on the ceiling and on the tent so that way the tent's got a chance to dry out when I get home while I'm running that first load out. A lot of times if you have like a wet tent or some frost on it, if you put your heater on blast it's going to melt everything down and rain, which I don't like to do at all once I'm camping because I don't want to get my bed wet. If anybody's going to wet that bed it's going to be me. So I don't want to wet that bed or wet everything in here but once I get everything out I'm getting ready to go home. It's a good time to just let it rain in here and dry off. All in all, excellent trip. Really tough conditions. I mean, yeah, it was a lot of wind and a lot of cold and those two together make for some really tough conditions for ice fishing. Fish cooperated just about every day. We had some really, really good fishing. Awesome brook trout fishing. I'd say it's definitely one of Maine's premier native brook trout fisheries or at least a brook trout fishery. Going to drive some breakfast into me, some hash brown potatoes, some coffee and probably a blueberry muffin first and then just slowly pack up and work my way back towards the truck. No rush when it's this cold. You can't rush. You've got to take your time. You've got to think things through. Try not to break stuff and try not to overexert yourself and sweat because you've got to look at it like if you'd go out in the rain at 16 below zero and get wet. You know you're in trouble. Well look at it the opposite way. If you get wet from the inside of your clothing, it's just as bad. So try not to, I try to really focus on not getting wet or sweat by sweating. You know, my feet are pretty apt to sweat. That's why I only wear 200 gram insulated boots. On the other side of the token, you've got to make sure that you don't expose your skin to the elements either because at 16 below with a 30 to 45 mile an hour wind, then it gets real in a hurry. So you've got to be careful exposing any skin to that too. So there's kind of a fine line where you really have to focus and concentrate on the weather, which is something usually you overlook and just kind of react to. All right, she is a frosty out here. I got the first load ready to go. I'll pack that pretty good size load, leaving the tent and the floor and the heater to come back for those and get that as a separate load. I'm going to run this out, get unpacked, see the boys, maybe have a cup of coffee, come back out and finish her up. Pretty frosty out here. It's dropped again. It's 19 below. Wind hasn't softed at all. Snowmobile kind of started a little slow this morning, but it did start. So that's, that's a good thing. Take her easy going out first load. Oh, all right, made it back after that first load. She's dropped a couple clicks. We're at negative 21. It's, it's cold. I don't know if you could see it, but the wind is ripping down the lake over there. Oh man, that Northwest. I'm so glad I tucked behind these trees. There was a day and a half of South Southeast, which doesn't really help me much over here, but it was, it was well worth it to block the Northwest. Usually that South is, is a lot lighter and a lot warmer. So if you got a block one, if you got to choose one of the other block that Northwest, I am some glad I did today. Otherwise it would be almost unbearable. Hot tent didn't really get too hot. It's too cold out. I had that thing boiling hot while I was gone, but the overall turnaround trip wasn't too long. Actually, I took a gamble. The boys were up, but I left myself a backup plan. They were not. So I left myself a nice hot cup of coffee. So I'm going to drink some of this and plan out the rest of this escape route. That went really well. Snowmobile started cold this morning. Truck started cold this morning. Those mountains right over there, those are the culprit to all this weather we're getting. Those mountains right there, like south of them, you can kind of trust a forecast, but up here, those, those are the mountains that are making all this weather right here and downstate weather. And they don't really know what's going on. They kind of, they have a pretty good idea or the best idea they can downstate and then they just guess for this area. Then they're never held accountable because no one tells them how far off they were, how wrong they were. So if you plan on coming up and they say it's going to be 10 below, plan for 15 to 25 below as a minimum. If they say it's going to blow 20, plan for 30 or 40. They just don't know and you can't trust them. And it's always worse when you get out here. It is some beautiful, isn't it? Yeah, that coffee's about perfect drinking temperature. Yeah, I thought the hot tent was going to do a little bit better, but it didn't quite get rid of the frost. With the tent today, I really don't care if I get it in the bag or not. I got a, as you could see, it's got so much ice and frost on it. I got to bring it home and get it warmed up somewhere and dry it off because you don't want to go on the next trip starting out with just an ice block. So if I can get it folded down good, I don't even care if I get it in the bag, I'll just, just as long as I get it in that sled, I'll probably put the floor in first and then put that on top of it. That way I don't have to tie anything down or mess around. Only bad part about drinking coffee on a day like today is what goes in must come out. And it's not a pleasant day to be dangling, especially if you're layered up. Two lobs. She frosty. That's the worst I've ever seen it frozen down. I had to put a lot of snow in there because I couldn't get good stakes in the ground if she froze down. Yeah, that baby ain't going in the bag out of here. I could promise you that. Good. That was definitely the coldest I've ever taken camp down. That, that tent was not folding up. So I'll bring her home, get her dried out, then fold her up, get her in the bag. Should make it home like this. I'm just going to go easy, put her in low gear and pop, pop probably 20 miles an hour across the lake. As long as the side wind doesn't catch me, which looks like it's picking up pretty good. But can't really get the tarp over it, but that's all right. We, we should be able to make it. If not, I'll get it in the, I'll get, I'll take another drip. But that's what camp looks like. She's all cleaned up. It's important to always leave things as clean as you found them. I get a couple of coffee grounds on the ground there, which are biodegradable, but that's about it. The rest of the coffee grinds went home. Everything looks clean. Everything looks good. Let's get this load out of here. Good decision today. Oh, this is worse than Tuesday right now. Yeah. Negative 15 when I got in the truck this morning. It's negative 20 out of the lake and she's blowing straight sideways. Blowing like a sim out there. I think we made the right decision. Yeah. Every truck's all started good. Nice. Mine buckled a little bit. My sled actually beeped once. Did it? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, great trip guys. I'm looking forward to the next one. Thank you. East Grand to West Grand. We'll meet again. That's right. We'll do them both. Thank you. Might even do Central Grand. Okay guys, loaded up. It's a negative 19. That wasn't too bad. It's, it's 735. So let's see. I probably, I did breakfast at five. I think I started packing around 545. So two hours all broke down and in the truck. It's pretty, I'm pretty happy with that. All packed. Everything stowed, stored and about putter and drive and see if this thing isn't frozen to the ground. There we go. I've had the truck running. I started it after that last trip. I started it with the heater on and nothing's really thought out. That's how cold it is, but it is a little bit warm and it's warmer than outside. So we'll take it. Oh, I hate like this is always the worst part of any trip is leaving. I love these trips and I love fishing. Today was going to be a challenge. Part of me this morning when I was breaking down was like, stick around another day, take another challenge. But man, it's just, it's, it's, it's a good time to leave. It's been a great trip and I got plenty more trips in front of me. If I could get out, get this added in uploaded off to the next one. I was thinking as I was coming off the lake, how much I love a challenge, you know, and, and guys at home like, don't be afraid to challenge yourselves. I've done it pretty much my whole life with sports and school and work and working on the farm. And if you could put a little challenge against yourself and try something that you don't think you can do or try something that's hard, be smart about it. You know, if you're taking a risk like this, but challenge yourself and just, it's just awesome. Like these, like this was probably some of the rudest weather I've ever been in. I challenged myself and made it through it totally unscathed and had a great time and caught some fish and it was just awesome. I just, I feel good about facing a challenge head on and defeating it. You know, I've been kicked down plenty of times. I've failed more times in my challenges than I've succeeded, but those are the ones that make me stronger and push me harder to the next one and also teach me a good lesson for the next one too. So I'm more prepared each time, even if it's a failure, it's not a failure. If it's, if the lessons learned from it. So don't be afraid guys to challenge yourselves and, and, you know, start small, start at the bottom step. Don't think you got to start at the top step and go from there. It was a great, great trip. I caught you a dinner. I caught you a delicious trout. There's your dinner. You got to throw it out. There's a hook attached to that line. So be careful. Oh man. You like it? Yeah. I'll put them in the freezer now. You don't have to put them, put them by the heater. It's been cold. I caught them yesterday. Were you frozen when you took them out of the water? There's that brookie for Donny. I'm going to see if I can sneak this fall fish by first as a brook trout. We'll see if he'll go for it. I brought you a delicious trout. It's frozen. Here, I got you a delicious brook trout. Look at him. It's a job. This one's your brook trout. Thank you so much. You guys are on video. That's great. Thank you. You're welcome. You want this job?