Cache Don't Carry

Enlarge Image Image Gallery [1] Jeff wires short poles securely to the crosspieces. [2] With the floor in place, he uses a handsaw to even the platform's edges. [4] Our colorful ""wilderness minaret"" . . . raintight and (more or less) critterproof. [5] A friend's cache is a tiny cabin on four sawed-off trees. PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

Just about everybody in the Alaskan bush uses a cache — an elevated storage shelter of one kind or another — to keep food and gear high and dry. You see, when a person is living many miles from the nearest store, protecting his or her vital supplies from the elements — and from four-legged marauders — is a downright necessity. But I'll bet that a lot of you folks in the lower forty-eight (and in the Aloha State, as well) could sometimes — for any of a number of reasons — also make use of a sturdy and secure storage loft.

Now I don't suppose that many of you are likely to need anything quite as elaborate as the big 10' X 10' log-cabin-on-stilts caches that a lot of settlers up here have built at their permanent homesteads . . . but you might have occasion to use a more temporary sort of stash. Say, for example, that you're on an extended hunting trip, and you plan to leave your base camp for several days to scout the surrounding territory. You wouldn't want to carry all your provisions with you . . . but you wouldn't want to leave any of them unprotected, either. That's one instance when you might choose to build a treetop cache of the sort my partner, Jeff Coe, put together one spring.

Jeff and I had just finished trapping in the area surrounding a tiny outpost cabin some 22 miles from home. We planned to be away from camp all summer . . . but we also knew that we'd be back later in the year to resume our activities. So it made good sense to us to construct a critter-resistant cache for storing our supplies until the next trapping season.

Well, within just a couple of hours, Jeff had assembled a strong, rustic repository . . . using little more than a few nails, some heavy wire, and two tin cans! Here's how he did it:

UP A TREE

The completed cache is about 12 feet above the ground. (The sturdy, broad-based ladder — which is kept well away from the storehouse when not in use — was fashioned from two tall spruce poles lashed together at the top and fitted with progressively widening rungs.)

My partner first chose a tall spruce about ten inches in diameter: The conifer was sturdy enough to support a substantial amount of weight, but small enough in circumference to be difficult for a bear to climb. Jeff then scrambled some 16 feet up the trunk . . . sawed off the tree at that level (he was careful, of course, to stay clear of the falling top) . . . and then — as he worked his way down — chopped of all the lower branches flush to the bark, leaving no stubs for animals to use as clawholds.