This thread is awesome. Anxiously waiting for more...
This thread is awesome. Anxiously waiting for more...
keep it coming!
Is Justin Competent, or just incompetent?
need More, more, more![]()
I want this guy's gear budget ... lol.
This will be a REAL good one!![]()
Love the helmet idea.....just a tip if you want to save on weight and volume use Canadian tire $, snow, mullen, or moss for ass-wipe lol.....
I climbed high cuz that’s what I like doing and get a good vantage point to glass a larger section of the basin. It was really cold.
Had to move my water inside my jacket to keep it the rest of it from freezing. Glassing was a bit of a trip. With the landscapes dotted in snow it all looked like white sheep butts. I don’t have enough experience but I would think that dotted with snow is harder to glass than no snow or all snow. But omg when I came across a slight head movement in my glassing my heart skipped a beat. A ram!!
And around him there were three more all hanging out on the slope across from me. My heart was beating out of its chest that I saw sheep. I zoom in on them but damn they are all immature.
So funny how you try to will those things to curl just a bit more. Nevertheless excited that I actually got to see rams for the first time. I go to sleep that night excited what the next day will bring. But i decide to climb into a different section of the drainage that is also accessible. I get up high again and set up to start glassing and ... more rams!!
A band of rams grazing at the foot of an escape route but all immature. I stare for longer again trying to make those horns curl more or have grandpa come around but neither happens. Saw nothing else that day but I just get this gut feeling the full curls are not here in this drainage or are all gone from the guides or others earlier in the year. So I make a new plan. I know the escape routes. They go up some nasty stuff into a completely different drainage. I could just tell based on the task of climbing out of the escape routes that not many (if any) people have done it. So the next day I plan to climb it.
Cont...
Come on! Such a tease.......
That night was cold! -20 rated sleeping bag but still I’m cold. I also wore my down jacket down pants and wrapped a second down jacket around my feet. In the morning everything in the tent was frozen except what was in the sleeping bag.
I glassed the route to climb out of the drainage I was in and I figured out a line. Put the crampons on and started my ascent. The climb out was sketchy and gruelling. A 6 hour climb up nasty technically challenging terrain. Frozen sections of rock and ice and large loose boulders. I have been climbing for most of my life and I have summited some of the higher mountains of bc and Washington so I’m comfortable but the implications of being alone can’t be diminished. One wrong step and I’m effed. I reach the summit ridge and look down into a new drainage that I just knew very few people if any have ever looked into (at least that section of it). And pretty cool I see fresh mountain lion tracks on the ridge.
Crazy that a mountain lion is hanging out up here, it’s desolate at that altitude. But i guess he is glassing like me. The winds picks up too and clouds roll in. I take my spotting scope and glass into the valley below while looking over my back to make sure that the mountain lion isn’t lurking.
After 30 minutes of glassing I see a solo ram. R u for real? I get an instant lump in my throat. I put the 60x on him and OM effing G he is a beast.
Cont..
(I’ll finish writing and post the next section tonight)
Love it. I started back country hunting solo this season off my back, something quite rewarding when its just you vs nature. Great story and pics so far!
.........beast