So we got our estimation back from the first excavation company and unfortunately they quadrupled our projections. I won't post their name but I found their prices beyond reason. The following is what we had required:

1. Clear and level a 50' x 50' area (tearing up stumps and moving to the side of the property)
2. Dig a 2' wide x 2' deep foundation trench in a 100' circumference circle
3. Put in a 10' x 20' gravel driveway.
4. Deliver 40 cubic yards of compactable soil and 18 cubic yards of stone.

As I previously wrote the land is rather sloped and that accounts for some of the cost. Also the delivery of that large an amount of soil and stone requires arrangements to be made for the large trucks to move onto the property. Still the cost of those materials was outrageous. Quality soil is generally around $20 - $30 a yard. Their cost was around $70. Stone is somewhere around $40 a yard around here. Their price was close to $122! We did not deal with this company on burying the rear of the cabin in the slope since this initial estimate came back so high. 

Unfortunately this highlights the cost of doing business in remote areas. There are less qualified companies available for labor and the delivery of common building materials can be expensive or impossible. We have another private contractor to get an estimate from on May 7th. We'll see what happens but since he is an individual rather than a company I expect a much cheaper quote. Also we are going to contract the soil and stone separately from the excavation. I post those results.

Last weekend three of us took a trip up to the land to do some cutting and clearing. We began with a densely wooded and overgrown patch and after two days of work ended up with a fairly clear 50' x 50' area. I say fairly clear due to the fact that a giant granddaddy of a triple trunk tree is left smack dab in the middle of the site. This monster must be 110'+ and it splits into what would be three fairly large size trees on their own You can see it in the picture above on the left side of the clearing. Obviously they have to come down but we just ran out of steam.
The plan is for a 30' diameter roundhouse, so 50' gives us about ten feet clear all around. The trouble with the piece of land we are working on is that it steadily slopes to the back of the property giving us very little working room. Regulations state that the building must be 100' from the road and we are currently at 90'. We therefore need to push the cabin back but are faced with some substantial sloping the further from the road we travel.
We are looking into two options right now to tackle this problem:

1. We spend the money to have an excavator build up and level the site toward the back.
2. We spend the money to have an excavator dig a semicircle down into the slope thereby burying the back of the cabin and leveling out to the front. I've made some models of this using Google Sketchup and Skitch for labeling.

Either way... we spend the money. Ugh! At this point though I'm hoping to go with option 2. This way we can leave the property behind the cabin still fairly natural and make the cabin less noticeable from the road. Also earth sheltering helps to moderate indoor temperatures due to the fact that the ground tends to remain a fairly constant temp a few feet below the surface. This helps even out heating and cooling requirements even more. The problem of course would be with managing the moisture but we've got a pretty solid plan of how to deal with that. If we decide to go this route I'll definitely do a post on it.

I have been playing around with the idea of using hyperadobe building method rather than earthbags for a few months now but I am facing a supply problem. Hyperadobe is a building method that is a relatively recent find by alternative builders. As a constuction method it is similar to earthbags that I have described but the retaining material for the soil is different. Instead of slippery poly bags, hyperadobe uses a strong mesh tubing similar to what is used in produce packaging for onions or potatoes or erosion control booms. The tubing is filled with soil and tamped down solid just like earthbags but each course has greater adhesion to the course below due to the mesh openings. The dirt becomes a monolithic structure and achieves great stability with less effort. The most appropriate tubing material in the US that I have found is called Raschel Mesh or Leno Mesh. The Leno Mesh is pictured above. 

The difficulty I am facing now is where to purchase the materials. Since the material is so thin and lightweight it comes in lengths between 1000' to 3000' which is more than enough to build one cabin of the size that I am planning. However, most manufacturers of these types of tubes will only deal in large quantities like shipping containers or skids. And the few suppliers that I have found are imposing a huge markup on the products. For example, a manufacturer of erosion control booms in Canada lists the product at $300 - $350 per roll, while their supplier wants double that.

If you have any leads on where I might purchase the type of material pictured or listed above please leave me a clue in the comments. Thanks!