- Joined
- Sep 21, 2017
- Messages
- 64
Buddy and I went after sheep last weekend. Had a pretty solid hike of 6 miles and 3000’ elevation gain to get to where we wanted to be.
Left Friday after work and got an hour or so away from the river. Felt good to be a little ways away from the river cause it’s stacked with brownies gorging themselves on fish right now, and even though I’ve got a brownie tag I can’t wait to use, tempting fate at night is not on my list of things to do.
Finally got up above treeline around lunch on Saturday and hunted our way up to the top. Didn’t see anything until our last leg when I spotted a group of about 15 lambs/ewes/small rams (gotta be full curl to be legal). Very cool to see and also was a nice reaffirmation that we were in the right zip code.
Found a pair of mountain goats near camp sat night, just a nanny and a lamb, but still very cool to see (and be looking down on!). Hard to beat eating supper and having a nip of bourbon while watching sheep from camp.
Sunday morning rolls around and my buddy and I split up with the plan to meet back at camp around noon to head back down. I saw this little nook on the backside of the ridge I wanted to check out, and he wanted to look at this one ridge face. Off we go...I get to my spot and see there’s another angle that may get me a whole new ridge face to see, so I head to check it out a little better. I get over there and see a black rock that looks like it moved...well it turned out to be a pretty solid bear.
I’m 1.5 miles from our spike camp, and another 6 from the river we have to cross with the canoe. So I’m definitely weighing things out cause I know if I pull the trigger it’s gonna cause some pretty major suckage for the next 8 hours of my life. So I glassed again and the more I look, the more I can tell this is a solid bear; ears are far apart, big ole ass, and it’s waddling around. The right ear is half gone too. Well damnit, this is gonna suck, but I figure it’s gonna make a good story when I finally drag ass to the truck.
Left our spike camp at 1230ish and got left the parking spot about 630ish.
An awesome weekend for sure. I felt it for a couple days afterwards. My right knee was screaming the whole way down with 70# of gear and bear in my pack.
Upper spike camp if you look close
What the trail looked like at the start
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Left Friday after work and got an hour or so away from the river. Felt good to be a little ways away from the river cause it’s stacked with brownies gorging themselves on fish right now, and even though I’ve got a brownie tag I can’t wait to use, tempting fate at night is not on my list of things to do.
Finally got up above treeline around lunch on Saturday and hunted our way up to the top. Didn’t see anything until our last leg when I spotted a group of about 15 lambs/ewes/small rams (gotta be full curl to be legal). Very cool to see and also was a nice reaffirmation that we were in the right zip code.
Found a pair of mountain goats near camp sat night, just a nanny and a lamb, but still very cool to see (and be looking down on!). Hard to beat eating supper and having a nip of bourbon while watching sheep from camp.
Sunday morning rolls around and my buddy and I split up with the plan to meet back at camp around noon to head back down. I saw this little nook on the backside of the ridge I wanted to check out, and he wanted to look at this one ridge face. Off we go...I get to my spot and see there’s another angle that may get me a whole new ridge face to see, so I head to check it out a little better. I get over there and see a black rock that looks like it moved...well it turned out to be a pretty solid bear.
I’m 1.5 miles from our spike camp, and another 6 from the river we have to cross with the canoe. So I’m definitely weighing things out cause I know if I pull the trigger it’s gonna cause some pretty major suckage for the next 8 hours of my life. So I glassed again and the more I look, the more I can tell this is a solid bear; ears are far apart, big ole ass, and it’s waddling around. The right ear is half gone too. Well damnit, this is gonna suck, but I figure it’s gonna make a good story when I finally drag ass to the truck.
Left our spike camp at 1230ish and got left the parking spot about 630ish.
An awesome weekend for sure. I felt it for a couple days afterwards. My right knee was screaming the whole way down with 70# of gear and bear in my pack.
Upper spike camp if you look close
What the trail looked like at the start
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
