Elk Hunting, Not Shooting 10/21-10/23

Went out for the first weekend of my cow elk hunt, did not have any success. Along the way to Steamboat I stopped to do some fishing around Walden on Thursday night and Friday morning. I only caught one small fish around midnight on North Delaney, and it was probably the smallest rainbow I have ever caught there. I did find some Browns spawning in a mud line on the north end of the lake, but they seemed very disinterested in the large crayfish pattern I was using, so I decided to let them do their thing. The next morning I fished the Michigan river to no avail, but did spot a couple of nice fish as well as had some chases on a sex dungeon from some smaller trout. The Michigan is a very slow, slough-like creek with heavy irrigation and grazing damage, but I have seen pictures of large browns taken from the deep undercut banks.

Looking at some lenticulars over the Cameron pass region.

I arrived at the Hinman Campground on Friday afternoon and was a little disappointed to see all of the hunting traffic in the unit for which I had drawn a cow tag, but I guess I forgot that there was an OTC hunt for bulls going on at the same time. It was cool to see some of the hunting compounds that people had set up for the coming week and I couldn't help but think that these camps would more than qualify for homes in many parts of the world. 

The makings of a great dinner

The first day I decided to hike about 4 miles into 3 island lake where I assumed there would be little pressure. There was about 6 inches of snow on the ground back by the lakes and I followed a set of elk tracks for about a half a mile, but never caught up to the animals. The tracks were maybe 8-12 hrs old and appeared to be a cow and a calf, but I also found some human tracks to the east of lake (and I have no idea how they got there since they didn't take the same trail as me).

A partially frozen 3 island lake at sunrise

After about 2-3 hours of working around the area I decided to head back to camp and hunt a little closer to the trail head since I didn't want to pack something out that far later in the day. After some glassing and still hunting back towards the trail head I decided to call it a day and head back for dinner, undecided as to what to do next. 

Hybrid tepee-cabin. This thing lit up like a fucking champ. Re-inventing the game out here.

That evening I saw some cool clouds and decided to drive to an area to the north of where I was and check out the hunting opportunities in a more heavily roaded section of the unit. All I found were more hunters and no sign of elk, but it was nice country to do a lot of glassing. 

Too many to count doesn't seem like a valid excuse 

Next weekend I will be joined by my father and hopefully we can make some magic happen, but as of yet I have yet to actually see an elk in my combined 6 days of hunting/scouting the area. I might need to get farther off the beaten path, but with temperatures in the 60's I'm not sure I can reasonably expect to pack out an elk by myself that is over 4 miles from a trail head. Maybe I'm making excuses. Hopefully there is still some snow on the ground in a week!

Categorize this cloud

Cynical Pinnacle, South Platte

Yesterday I went out and climbed the Center Route on the Cynical Pinnacle with my new buddy Mitchell. Mitchell and I had never climbed together except for the gym and we met via the Eldora Ski Patrol. Usually I don’t like climbing multi-pitch routes with brand new partners, but I was feeling fairly confident after Devils Tower last weekend and I really wanted to tick this one of the list before ski season comes around.

Approaching the route, the center route is in the center of the formation

The route itself was a real doozy, and every pitch provided some quality entertainment. I took some pictures with my phone but everything seemed to be over-exposed so I might have had some chalk on the lens of the phone case.

Looking down the first pitch, my phone was really taking some crappy pics

After I set up the first belay I was feeling pretty good, but the sustained 30 mph winds with gusts in the 50's had blown all of the chalk out of my worthless chalk bag and given me a rather severe case of cottonmouth. As I was nearing the top of the second pitch I was beginning to feel pretty worked physically, and I had to hang out about 10 ft below the belay to let a party rap down (the only other people on the rock yesterday). When I was finally able to build a belay I started to feel pretty shitty. It was at this moment that I remembered the breakfast burrito I had gotten at Safeway that morning was definitely not fully cooked, but I ate it with tenacity anyways. As I was putting 2 and 2 together I suddenly had the urge to vomit and tried to direct the spray into the back of a chimney near the hanging belay. However, due to the power of the wind my spray flew up into my face and coated the adjacent wall of the belay. At least I didn’t puke on Mitch or the party that was rappelling. 

Chilling at the top, getting ready to rappel

After I belayed Mitch up I took the rack and switched positions with him so he didn’t have to sit in the puke pile. As I worked my way up the third and final pitch I started to feel better but I was thirstier than ever and actually thought the wind might blow me off if I wasn’t wedged in the knee sized crack. The rappels back to the ground went smoothly and we didn’t get the ropes stuck despite the wind blowing them all the way over to Wunsch’s Dihedral (did I mention how fucking windy it was?). All in all it was a good day.

Looking back at the Cyn Pin on the descent, taken with a real functional camera

A Day On the Dream Stream

Yesterday I went out on the South Platte to see if I could intercept some lake run browns from Elevenmile reservoir. When I showed up at around 1 pm almost every parking lot was full, so I knew I was in for a real treat.

Not exactly what you want to see when you roll up to the river

There were a fair amount of Kokanee in the system and a few lake run browns below the Spinney State Park fence line, but boy were their a lot of anglers. I tried to cover a lot of water just looking for some big fish, but I only managed to spook a couple. I did try a black sex dungeon at a few likely looking spots as I made my way down to the reservoir, and I managed two decent resident cutt-bows. My plan was to try and spot a big fish or two and come back at night when there would be less people around (or so I thought).

High winds make cool clouds, making my way down to the reservoir

After sundown I headed back to the truck and refueled, then went back out on the water around 8:30 or so. I fished under the full moon until around 1 am, and to my dismay there were still around 30 anglers out there. Everyone I interacted with was very cordial and inquisitive, and most found it odd that I thought no moon periods seemed to be better for brown trout fishing. I managed one fish (a rainbow), and when I was packing up back at the rig I had a hell of conversation with a guy named Jay. It seems as though you always meet the craziest (or coolest depending on your definition) people night fishing.

Another fucking sunset, happens every day

Before unloading some seriously incoherent wisdom on me, Jay warned me that he had been known to smoke weed from time to time.

"Fishing is a total mind-fuck. On the one hand your supposed to catch the fish, I mean what are they fucking here for? On the other you've got to do it the right way, and they're always telling you what you can't do. Do this, don't do that, use flies, catch and release, blah, blah, blah. Fish can be delicious on your fucking tongue sometimes."

"Maybe 1% of the people know what they're doing out here. Maybe it's 10%. You seem to know what your talking about. I see guys raking fish of off redds all the time, very few of the big bobby browns get caught in the mouth out here, especially during the day. When was the last time you saw a big brown that wasn't trying to hide during the day? My buddy caught a 31" down by the lake on an RS-2. In the mouth. A fucking RS-2."

"They need to shut this place down during the spawn. Actually close it for two years. It would suck for the guides who make a living off of this place, but there's other places to fish. I guess we are here during the spawn, so what the fuck am I talking about? Yeah, shut it down during the spawn."

"Anyone that comes out here to challenge themselves and try and catch a fucking fish is alright in my book."

I wish I could remember more, but I know there was some serious wisdom in some of his words, as well as a brain full of THC. 

Devil's Tower Weekend 10/7 -10/9

It is said that the Lakota name for Devil’s Tower is Matho Thipila , which is translated as “Bear Lodge”. In some regards the formation does resemble a tipi of sorts, and especially from the north east where the igneous intrusion appears more slender and tapered in form. 

En route to the Tower. Some people just can't keep it in their pants.

Many feel that the currently accepted name of “Devils Tower” is inappropriate and offensive to the native tribes and communities such as the Kiowa and Lakota who hold the Tower and the surrounding black hills as sacred terra firma. A comparison has been drawn by many (native and non-native alike) that the white man’s name for the formation would be akin to renaming a Catholic Church as the House of the Devil. I guess it could be far worse, and at least the tower was not burdened with a moniker along the lines of “the Devils Butt Sex Palace”.

It should also be noted that the name for America’s first national monument is grammatically incorrect, but hopefully the money saved by refraining from the use of the apostrophe has gone towards higher causes (like education for children?).

First sunlit glimpse of the tower from camp.

Regardless of what it is or should be called, the Lodge captures the imagination and curiosity of all who lay their trying eyes upon it. From a distance its elegant form is cloaked by the ponderosa pine forests and grasslands of the Black Hills, but depending on the direction of approach the edge of an innocent tree or the horizon of a golden field will give way to the geographic anomaly. The first time I gazed upon the tower was around 8 or so at night, at least an hour after sunset. The tower was illuminated by a waxing moon and back lit by a starry sky. My brain was having trouble understanding why some of the stars seemed to shine through the center of the Lodge’s outline as I drove along, and why these stars moved so much in relation to their stoic and solitary neighbors. Then I realized that I was seeing the headlamps of a few wayward sailors who had probably worn out their welcome on the last few pitches of Durrance.

When Subaru is life and you can't let go.  

My friends weren’t arriving for another 4 hours, so after securing a camp site inside the monument I commenced the back-breaking labor that defines setting up a modern back-packing tent and starting a fire with WD-40, aka “girl scout juice”. Luckily there was a large wood pile near the pay kiosk, likely a remnant of happily retired folks realizing that they had brought too much. I have never had the problem of “having too much fire wood”, and I set to work constructing a conflagration that would have made my ancestors deeply envious. With camp in working order and a seemingly endless supply of wood, I cooked dinner and set about entertaining myself with a little Huck Finn. My land lord had given me a bottle of champagne a few weeks earlier as a celebratory gesture towards passing some exams in school, and now seemed like the right time to drain the bottles contents. All the while the shadow of the Tower stood solitary to remind me exactly why I had driven 6 hours across the state of Wyoming to get here. 

My comrades showed up around mid-night, and after some much needed shooting of the shit we retired to out tents in order to engage in a more physical relationship with the monolith the very next day. 

Starting up assembly line on day 2

On day one we climbed Walt Bailey Memorial and took it to the summit, and on the second morning we climbed New Wave into Assembly Line. Definitely one of the coolest places I've been fortunate enough to climb.

The Bear Lodge and a waxing moon

Routt National Forest 9/30-10/2

The proof is in the pudding

Went on a weekend elk-scouting trip north of Steamboat and stopped to do some fishing along the way. No elk were sighted, some fish were caught.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

        Maybe this is why all of the fish at the Delaney grow so fast

My father looks onward for the elusive wapiti

Butterball enjoys a pancake breafast