pawlyb
FNG
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2022
- Messages
- 31
I wanted to write about the trip of a lifetime I was fortunate to have last fall.
My brother and I drove almost 24 hours up to the top of the province with sheep and goat tags in our pockets. Having caught about an hour's sleep on a pull-off we rolled into the float plane operation bagged but excited. This would be a new area for both of us. Good weather permitted us the beautiful flight into a lake flanked by steep mountains. Being my first fly-in hunt, I was anticipating that feeling one is supposed to get when the plane flies away. However, it felt quite comfortable being out where we were, whether that be from the adrenaline or lack of sleep I'm not sure. I felt ready to be on this adventure - it had been a long year of planning, e-scouting, researching logistics, training with the pack, and running through scenarios in my head - it was finally here.
The first day involved travelling up toward one of two reaches, each holding a stream in its valley funneling into the lake we had landed at. The drainage we would head toward looked as though it would slope gently upward such that one could then get on top of the ridgelines. It was a grueling slog at first through marsh. With about 75 lbs on our back, stepping in and out of mud from the get-go was not something I was used to. Immediately, the path we believed existed due to reading forums online and judging from maps petered out. The day was wearing on quickly as we had landed about 12 pm and this realization that we would have to adjust our plan occurred at about 3 pm. We contented ourselves with finding a spot for the night to sit and re-plan and spent the rest of the evening glassing from the junction of the Y between the two valleys.
We went to sleep as soon as dark fell and allowed ourselves to sleep in as we had not slept more than an hour for each of the previous two nights. We were down for 14 hours.
When we unzipped our tent, it was already mid-morning. Swearing that we wouldn't let a morning go to waste again we quickly set foot to a game trail that went up the west side of the creek. It seemed as though the trail wanted us to cross the creek at many points, but heading toward the valley bottom and the creek would run into the same slow-going marsh. Attempting to stay high as we traversed for better glassing windows, we kept up this routine of hiking for 20-30 mins, stopping to glass when a new mountain face appeared for 20-30 minutes, until our trail finally ran out. The only thing left to try was to cross the creek as the mountains on our side didn't look doable to scale. We looked across the marsh valley bottom at where we thought might be the easiest place to get up on the other side - a long slide from the mountain peak all the way to the valley floor - and decided to cross so that we would end up there. By the time we were across, we stood at the base of this approximately 2500 foot climb and it was mid-afternoon. We reasoned that if we gave it a hard push up the hill we could camp at the top and have the best possible glassing spot to wake up to. So began the thigh-burning trek up the gravelly hillside. As we neared the last 500 feet or so, the slope became distinctly steeper, leading to craggy features that appeared upon a closer view to require more work than we thought from the ground. Our pace had slowed, night was falling quickly and the rain started then. Not wanting to give up our progress, we spent a good 30 minutes searching for a flat spot, even flat enough to lay out in our rain gear for the night. But the best conceivable spot looked terribly uncomfortable and the rain was really pouring now. We had another discussion about how the work we had done to get here was now a sunk cost, and where would we rather be starting from tomorrow? The answer was clearly warm and dry at the bottom of the hill. With headlamps on we slid on heels all the way back down, eventually having to precariously cross a wet, mossy boulder field as the last step. At last we reached a grassy area, our gear completely soaked from the outside and the inside. We built a fire in the rain with the help of dead limbs and built our tents. Lesson learned: don't start a hill climb in the late afternoon.
The third day we woke and revived the fire, finishing off drying the wet gear. We pulled out the binos and looked back toward the lake we landed at, staring straight at a very steep mountain wall to the north. Almost immediately we spotted goats. Out came the spotter and we counted 7, including 3 kids. We watched them travel up and down ridiculous stuff. The decision was now to carry on up the game trail to what looked like on our maps to be exactly what we thought the other drainage would lead to - wide open grassy sheep territory, an opportunity to get on top of the ridgelines, and hopefully sheep sign - or go back to where game was clearly visible. We decided that the goats we were observing would likely stay on that mountain, which we would have excellent vision of all the way up the drainage we were hiking. We also preferred to exhaust our options for sheep before turning it into a goat hunt. We said to ourselves "lets at least see where this trail goes, and if not we know there are goats back toward the lake." What we found when we started hiking was that the game trail seemed to just get better and better. In fact, though there were no hoofprints, this surely had to be a horse trail with how beat down it was. We continued to hike and take breaks at every new opportunity to glass for sheep. Big open grassy bowls 2000-4000 feet above us looked like perfect habitat, and again, it was hard to choose whether to pick one and try again to go up, or stay the course and check out the whole area before committing to a climb again. We saw lots of G-bear sign, and at one point my brother quickly alerted me to an animal to our 6. What we thought at first was a black bear at about 150 yards then bounded away in the familiar doggish way. What we had seen was a jet-black wolf. Large! Things were starting to get interesting. We eventually ran out of light and lost the trail. Turning back to the most recent soft clearing, we set up our tents, had another small fire and talked about our options.
The following day we were socked into our tents with no visibility and heavy rain till about 11 am. When we got up, we discussed how to handle another compromised day and decided that this trail had only gotten more interesting as time went on. It was starting to climb and heading toward a basin at the headwaters of the drainage. With half a day to hike, we reasoned that we would travel light and take very reduced packs up the trail as far as it could go before making any more decisions about where to get up. In retrospect, I do wonder why we didn't just take our whole packs with us, but I also remember at the time that we had seen several other candidates to get up on the mountains. Perhaps we felt that while we wanted to check out the basin, we were more likely headed back this way. At lunch time we departed, and immediately began climbing up the trail. The trail continued to get better until at times it was almost like a dedicated hiking trail. The views into valleys started getting really nice as our base elevation climbed and brought us closer to the bottoms of these upper reaches. Eventually the path took us onto a sidehill. Heading perpendicular to the trail, we went up the grassy hill to get the best possible glassing location.
After reaching the top of the grass bench, we had 180 degree views of the entire valley we had come up in the last 3 days, from the lake up to the basin we were heading toward. The basin was surrounded by sheer cliffs and was basically a gigantic sand pit where slides would tumble into from all angles. Amazingly, my brother again used his spotter to investigate a curious white dot he had seen on the side of one of these rock walls, and it was a lone mountain goat. We estimated that we were about 3000 yards from the animal when we spotted it. Moving toward it, we sidehilled and began thinking about stealth. By the time we could make out the animal's facial features in the optics, it had its face trained directly on us.
All the while we moved we finally started seeing sheep sign. We saw prints inside caves that bordered the grassy shelf we were on, and very old sheep scat. Was it the time of year, or had there been something chase these animals away this season? We then got our answer when we entered what looked like an area that must have been a grizzly bear's home. We saw more bear scat, prints, and torn up bushes in that area than we'd ever seen in a localized place before. With tall brush all around, the memo was "keep your head up," but also keep your eyes on the goat. About 1500 yards now. We had one last final talk about whether this was the animal that we were going to make the move on - it looked like a shooter, we hadn't seen anything but very old sheep sign to this point and this area was harder to navigate than we had banked on. However, it was about 7:30 pm and light would go to about 9 pm. We were at least 2 hours hike from our camp. "Can't be afraid to spend a night on the mountain," my brother 6 years my senior and very experienced outdoorsman said to me. So we went.
Part two continued below...
My brother and I drove almost 24 hours up to the top of the province with sheep and goat tags in our pockets. Having caught about an hour's sleep on a pull-off we rolled into the float plane operation bagged but excited. This would be a new area for both of us. Good weather permitted us the beautiful flight into a lake flanked by steep mountains. Being my first fly-in hunt, I was anticipating that feeling one is supposed to get when the plane flies away. However, it felt quite comfortable being out where we were, whether that be from the adrenaline or lack of sleep I'm not sure. I felt ready to be on this adventure - it had been a long year of planning, e-scouting, researching logistics, training with the pack, and running through scenarios in my head - it was finally here.
The first day involved travelling up toward one of two reaches, each holding a stream in its valley funneling into the lake we had landed at. The drainage we would head toward looked as though it would slope gently upward such that one could then get on top of the ridgelines. It was a grueling slog at first through marsh. With about 75 lbs on our back, stepping in and out of mud from the get-go was not something I was used to. Immediately, the path we believed existed due to reading forums online and judging from maps petered out. The day was wearing on quickly as we had landed about 12 pm and this realization that we would have to adjust our plan occurred at about 3 pm. We contented ourselves with finding a spot for the night to sit and re-plan and spent the rest of the evening glassing from the junction of the Y between the two valleys.
We went to sleep as soon as dark fell and allowed ourselves to sleep in as we had not slept more than an hour for each of the previous two nights. We were down for 14 hours.
When we unzipped our tent, it was already mid-morning. Swearing that we wouldn't let a morning go to waste again we quickly set foot to a game trail that went up the west side of the creek. It seemed as though the trail wanted us to cross the creek at many points, but heading toward the valley bottom and the creek would run into the same slow-going marsh. Attempting to stay high as we traversed for better glassing windows, we kept up this routine of hiking for 20-30 mins, stopping to glass when a new mountain face appeared for 20-30 minutes, until our trail finally ran out. The only thing left to try was to cross the creek as the mountains on our side didn't look doable to scale. We looked across the marsh valley bottom at where we thought might be the easiest place to get up on the other side - a long slide from the mountain peak all the way to the valley floor - and decided to cross so that we would end up there. By the time we were across, we stood at the base of this approximately 2500 foot climb and it was mid-afternoon. We reasoned that if we gave it a hard push up the hill we could camp at the top and have the best possible glassing spot to wake up to. So began the thigh-burning trek up the gravelly hillside. As we neared the last 500 feet or so, the slope became distinctly steeper, leading to craggy features that appeared upon a closer view to require more work than we thought from the ground. Our pace had slowed, night was falling quickly and the rain started then. Not wanting to give up our progress, we spent a good 30 minutes searching for a flat spot, even flat enough to lay out in our rain gear for the night. But the best conceivable spot looked terribly uncomfortable and the rain was really pouring now. We had another discussion about how the work we had done to get here was now a sunk cost, and where would we rather be starting from tomorrow? The answer was clearly warm and dry at the bottom of the hill. With headlamps on we slid on heels all the way back down, eventually having to precariously cross a wet, mossy boulder field as the last step. At last we reached a grassy area, our gear completely soaked from the outside and the inside. We built a fire in the rain with the help of dead limbs and built our tents. Lesson learned: don't start a hill climb in the late afternoon.
The third day we woke and revived the fire, finishing off drying the wet gear. We pulled out the binos and looked back toward the lake we landed at, staring straight at a very steep mountain wall to the north. Almost immediately we spotted goats. Out came the spotter and we counted 7, including 3 kids. We watched them travel up and down ridiculous stuff. The decision was now to carry on up the game trail to what looked like on our maps to be exactly what we thought the other drainage would lead to - wide open grassy sheep territory, an opportunity to get on top of the ridgelines, and hopefully sheep sign - or go back to where game was clearly visible. We decided that the goats we were observing would likely stay on that mountain, which we would have excellent vision of all the way up the drainage we were hiking. We also preferred to exhaust our options for sheep before turning it into a goat hunt. We said to ourselves "lets at least see where this trail goes, and if not we know there are goats back toward the lake." What we found when we started hiking was that the game trail seemed to just get better and better. In fact, though there were no hoofprints, this surely had to be a horse trail with how beat down it was. We continued to hike and take breaks at every new opportunity to glass for sheep. Big open grassy bowls 2000-4000 feet above us looked like perfect habitat, and again, it was hard to choose whether to pick one and try again to go up, or stay the course and check out the whole area before committing to a climb again. We saw lots of G-bear sign, and at one point my brother quickly alerted me to an animal to our 6. What we thought at first was a black bear at about 150 yards then bounded away in the familiar doggish way. What we had seen was a jet-black wolf. Large! Things were starting to get interesting. We eventually ran out of light and lost the trail. Turning back to the most recent soft clearing, we set up our tents, had another small fire and talked about our options.
The following day we were socked into our tents with no visibility and heavy rain till about 11 am. When we got up, we discussed how to handle another compromised day and decided that this trail had only gotten more interesting as time went on. It was starting to climb and heading toward a basin at the headwaters of the drainage. With half a day to hike, we reasoned that we would travel light and take very reduced packs up the trail as far as it could go before making any more decisions about where to get up. In retrospect, I do wonder why we didn't just take our whole packs with us, but I also remember at the time that we had seen several other candidates to get up on the mountains. Perhaps we felt that while we wanted to check out the basin, we were more likely headed back this way. At lunch time we departed, and immediately began climbing up the trail. The trail continued to get better until at times it was almost like a dedicated hiking trail. The views into valleys started getting really nice as our base elevation climbed and brought us closer to the bottoms of these upper reaches. Eventually the path took us onto a sidehill. Heading perpendicular to the trail, we went up the grassy hill to get the best possible glassing location.
After reaching the top of the grass bench, we had 180 degree views of the entire valley we had come up in the last 3 days, from the lake up to the basin we were heading toward. The basin was surrounded by sheer cliffs and was basically a gigantic sand pit where slides would tumble into from all angles. Amazingly, my brother again used his spotter to investigate a curious white dot he had seen on the side of one of these rock walls, and it was a lone mountain goat. We estimated that we were about 3000 yards from the animal when we spotted it. Moving toward it, we sidehilled and began thinking about stealth. By the time we could make out the animal's facial features in the optics, it had its face trained directly on us.
All the while we moved we finally started seeing sheep sign. We saw prints inside caves that bordered the grassy shelf we were on, and very old sheep scat. Was it the time of year, or had there been something chase these animals away this season? We then got our answer when we entered what looked like an area that must have been a grizzly bear's home. We saw more bear scat, prints, and torn up bushes in that area than we'd ever seen in a localized place before. With tall brush all around, the memo was "keep your head up," but also keep your eyes on the goat. About 1500 yards now. We had one last final talk about whether this was the animal that we were going to make the move on - it looked like a shooter, we hadn't seen anything but very old sheep sign to this point and this area was harder to navigate than we had banked on. However, it was about 7:30 pm and light would go to about 9 pm. We were at least 2 hours hike from our camp. "Can't be afraid to spend a night on the mountain," my brother 6 years my senior and very experienced outdoorsman said to me. So we went.
Part two continued below...
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