I cleaned out all the junk, repaired the window shutters, hung some plastic to catch water drips, put a new sheet of plywood on a table, built a new "coffee" table, re-hung the door on it's hinges and generally tidied up.
Remember, the daylight up here is already 6am-10pm, so there is tons of daylight for activities, and lots of the cabin work can be done in the evening, when the sun is setting but it's not yet dark enough for Northern Lights photos.
I knew you had the sun on your side but I figured the lack of a Home Despot within snowshoe distance was going to be a killer. I know from experience that having to recycle/repurpose materials can triple the length of time it takes to complete any project and on top of that you have to factor in the working solo 50% time tax. I am impressed.
Was the door rehanging due to some sort of winterizing or bear-proofing?
I don't know the history of the cabin, and I am trying to find out from old-time friends.
I suspect it was built in the '60s or '70s, likely a trappers cabin (most up here are). It was built with logs much too big to be from the Yukon though, so I think it must have been something important for them to import logs like that (likely from just down the road in Alaska). Which is confusing, because it wasn't on any important routes like you expect to find on, say, the Yukon river, or big lakes up here.
Judging from the materials, recent improvements and nails, books, clothes, stove, etc, I then suspect sometime in the 90's someone moved in for a summer and did a ton of work. New window shutters (built with screws indicating a cordless drill), new floorboards with paint, roof work, etc. etc. Also they conveniently left a bunch of brand new sheets of plywood and 2x4s out of the weather, and many thousands of nails. The only "visitors message" was from '98, written in pencil, which was conveniently left in a tin of nails for use in construction.
The door was very solid and clearly bolted and locked in many places long ago - the thing about locked doors on cabins in the Yukon is they tend to get smashed in by people, as this one had been. People up here prefer cabins be left unlocked so they can be used in emergencies in the winter (when it's -40) so 99.9% of cabins are not locked, and simply have a book that says "please use this cabin and treat it as your own - also leave a note in the guest book if you like". It's a great sense of community. So the door had been smashed in and was lying under a couple of feet of snow. The first night I was busy with everything else, so I just nailed up a sheet of plastic over the door in an attempt to make it air-tight. (I brought the plastic with me, having been told the cabin was a wreck)
After I dug out the door and got all the snow/ice off it, It was easy to line up the hinges and put a couple of big nails through to get it hanging right. It's possible it was knocked in by a bear (not common, but it happens), though I didn't see any evidence to suggest that.
Bears are awake now, but I didn't see any or any evidence of them yet this spring, and I covered ~40km on snowshoes
All in all, as you might be able to tell, it's a great sense of adventure to go to remote rivers and lakes and simply explore :) I'm working through the photos now, I'll post back here when they're online so you can see what I'm talking about.
Remember, the daylight up here is already 6am-10pm, so there is tons of daylight for activities, and lots of the cabin work can be done in the evening, when the sun is setting but it's not yet dark enough for Northern Lights photos.