Most unusual gifts

We reached the Chamberlain Airstrip sometime in the afternoon and it suddenly seemed there was tons to do.  The Forest Service had flown in a re-supply for us a few days earlier, along with about 75 pounds of camera gear (so we didn’t have to carry it all in, we couldn’t have, we were already at our limits!)  We retrieved those boxes from the “warehouse” (one of the old buildings at the guard station), and made ourselves a nice meal of pesto rice-pasta, and ate while soaking our sore feet in the cool creek that runs by the station.  It was time to make plans for what to do next.  

It just so happened that we had converged on Chamberlain about the same time as a group of Forest Service and Fish and Game Bigwigs who were having a meeting on the neighboring Stonebreaker Ranch (just over the hill from Chamberlain), about certain issues involving monitoring wolves in the wilderness.  Though we have no intentions of making a “talking heads” type of film, we thought this opportunity, to run into these people talking about those particular issues, right smack in the middle of the wilderness, was just too good to pass up.  

The next couple days were spent walking back and forth from Chamberlain, where we were camped, to Stonebreaker, where we were generously given ample time to talk with everyone there, as well as invited to stay for various meals (a huge treat in the middle of the wilderness!).  This all happened after a brief, initial meeting where we let ourselves onto the property through an open gate, and were eyed rather coolly by the caretakers (as, we later found out, they were rushing to get dinner ready for the soon returning meeting participants) and told, on our inquirey, that, yes, there was a meeting going on, but, no, it was certainly not public.  As soon as we had explained what we were up to, our project, and that we had already met with some of these people, the environment warmed up considerably.

Though they would not let us film anything, the issues were too sensitive, they were very gracious and willing to talk freely with us.  The last day we left Stonebreaker, they plied us with all their leftover food (apples, potatoes, onions, bread, melons) and, most unusual of all, a sourdough starter.  What were we going to do with a sourdough starter while backpacking around the wilderness?  We still have no idea… but we’re still trying to work it out.  The story goes something like this.  At lunch on the first day, we had been fed sandwiches on homemade sourdough bread, which was commented on by several people, including me.  The proud bread-maker mentioned that it was from a starter he had in the family for 25 years, and would divide and give away if anyone was interested, he had more at home.  My ears perked up, but I also realized the difficulty of keeping a starter going while hiking around the backcountry for a year.  However, the next night, after we had stayed for dinner and everyone was in an especially congenial mood due to generously poured gin and tonics, a good fire pit, and the end of the meetings, the bread maker (Dennis) managed to persuade me into taking some starter, exclaiming that it would be no problem at all to backpack with.  He then persuaded us into taking not only the starter, in a rather large jar, but also a ten pound bag of flour (to feed it with of course!) and a jug of maple syrup (to pour over the flapjacks we would make the next morning for ourselves and the trail crew staying also at Chamberlain)…

We laughed our way back to our camp at Chamberlain, me proudly clutching my new acquisition (which we named “Denny” so we’d always remember who gave it to us), and trying to figure out the logistics of backpacking with something only slightly less needy than an infant, or so it seemed.  To make a long story short, Denny had a rough first day.  As Isaac and I scouted for wolf sign and where to go next, Denny fended for himself alone back at camp, slightly less than successfully.  We returned to find a bold squirrel (who hopefully had a tummy ache by then) had knocked over the loosely-lidded jar, spilling more than half Denny’s bulk all over the ground cloth of our tent.  We managed to save a little bit, fed him some more flour and fresh creek water, but were unable to make pancakes for the trail crew, and instead pacified them with a big skillet of potatoes and onions and zuccini.  We left them with the excess flour and the syrup, as they would be out there all summer and certainly could use it.  I think we’ll have to find a caretaker for Denny until we return for good in the spring of next year…

Mosquito inspired lunacy

We spend the first half of the day re-charging batteries, spreading out our impressive array of flexible solar panels and hooking up trickle chargers and the camera batteries.  The two of us lay around re-charging our own personal batteries, reading in the tent (to avoid the mosquitoes) and enjoying the view.  Around mid-day we packed up camp and continued on, eventually branching off the ridge and heading down into a burned area called “Cow Corrals” on our map, which was so filled with blooming Bear Grass among the burned trunks that it looked like an entire city of miniature people carrying white orb lanterns silently through the woods.

We took a break among the quiet masses and munched a snack of homemade fruit leather (strawberry-banana-date, quite delicious!), before taking the left fork of the new trail that would guide us down into the Chamberlain Valley.  The going became fairly lush as we descended, along a nicely graded trail through filtered sunlight.  But as we slowly walked lower, the bugs worsened, biting our sweaty skin with more and more vigor.  As the afternoon grew long the trail also worsened.  I began to swish through bug swatters pretty fast, swatting with more and more frenzy back and forth over my shoulders until the branch was limp-leafed, and then leafless and I’d have to hurry to find a new replacement.  

As we began to have to bush-whack around large sections of the trail that were impassible with fallen timber, the mosquitoes had become a satanic orchestra with a badly tuned string section.  Scrambling through underbrush littered heavily with large fallen trunks and broken branches, and sprinkled freely with unseen holes and boggy areas, is not the easiest of tasks with a heavy pack throwing off your already shaky balance.  Together with the frenzied swatting and the symphonic hell, it all added up to a fairly crazed mindset.  

We crossed the creek three times and began looking for a tent sight for the night.  It was difficult to even see straight enough to find a site.  We were hot, tired, and quickly going insane.  We each had our own personal swarm of bugs around us, drilling our arms and shoulders, and so many mosquito bodies smashed in our hair it felt like gravel to run a hand through it.  

Finally finding a suitable spot to put up our tent, we whipped on fleeces and pants over our sweaty limbs, put the ten up as fast as we could, and went to fill our water containers.  We both plunged stinging bodies into the icy cold water and enjoyed a few moments of frigid, mosquito-free bliss.  Then it was back to the tent where we dove in, not to emerge until morning.      

On the trail again

This morning we parked our gear-laden truck near Pueblo Summit at the head of Big Creek, close to the trailhead for Mosquito Ridge.  Yes, you read that right: Mosquito Ridge.  Although, at the time, that particular vernacular had not fully sunk into my blissfully ignorant brain.  We had already been out for a few days in the area, around the town of Edwardsburg (population 25 in summer, 0 in winter).  

But now we are finally back on the real trail, the roadless trail, the trail you can only get to by your own power… or if you’re lucky, the power of four-legged helpers.  We are free again of civilization, for better or for worse, and marching only to the tick of the sun rising and setting, the weather, and the wolves.  It feels good to be back out, though it is a bit of a shock to our bodies as we shouldered heavy packs (Isaac’s weighed 95 lbs.!!) and waddled up the trail.  

It is a long and steady grind up to Mosquito Ridge, and you might ask, “why would one want to go to a place called ‘Mosquito Ridge’ anyhow?” and it would be a perfectly valid question.  We were already being sucked free of blood as we packed up our gear at the truck, ate the last hardboiled eggs, and picked willow branches to swish at our shoulders as we walked.  But for some reason, it did not sink in for me, until we were well on our way, well beyond the point of turning back.

We decided we would simply go as slow as we needed to in order to be careful with our bodies, soft from almost two weeks in the front country.  However, we soon realized that the ratio of flesh losing blood to mosquitoes, to the flesh not loosing blood to mosquitoes, was directly related to how fast you could walk…  So it was a constant battle to walk slowly and gently for our legs, and to keep up enough momentum to have a few less whiners swirling the air around our ears.  Mosquito Ridge was our route.  Not to be changed now.  Besides, it was the most direct way into the Chamberlain basin, our destination.  

Once we got up onto the ridge, the mosquitoes got worse, making it hard to even stop and take a rest.  We learned to have our wind-proof fleece jackets at the ready, so as soon as we stopped, no matter how sweaty and hot we were ( and we were hot and sweaty for sure!) we would whip them on and enjoy a few minutes where at least our arms and shoulders and backs were off limits to the insatiable appetites of those most annoying of insects.  

We camped that night at a beautiful spot.  Though “beautiful” refers specifically to the view, and not the physical circumstances.  We were on a high ridge, a nice grassy meadow with trees falling away in every direction and an endless vista of gentle mountain ridges overlapping each other like a paper Mache sculpture.  The meadow was dotted with the last of the Lupines and Indian Paintbrush.  Mosquito Springs sprang up less than fifty meters away, where we sucked up cool, clear, delicious water in gulping slurps, bathed, and filled all our water containers.  But that is where the “beautiful” ends.  The air was filled with the thickest mosquitoes I had seen to date (very quickly to be over-ridden by where we camped the second night, but at this point I was still oblivious).  Besides the fact that we had to cook dinner while inside our tent, sticking just our arms out to tend the stove, saving as much skin as possible from the voracious bugs, it was lovely.  

We watched the last of the pink sunlight fade from the mountain ridges around us from the blissfully peaceful inside of our mesh tent.  Smiling up at the coating of hungry insects sticking their proboscises through the netting and finding nothing.  We slept the sleep of the very tired…

Remote camera woes

         The remote camera seemed like a good idea in the beginning.  We could simply set it up on a trail (or a likely stream crossing, or a wolf den area), leave it alone for a while, and come back to wonderful wildlife footage unhindered by our presence.  Wolf pups would tumble and play in front of it, whole packs would come trotting down trails right over it, elk would cross rivers within its frame, bears would fight over carcasses completely unaware of its presence.  Right. 

So far, in our year and a half of owning the thing, we have been successful exactly once.  Yes, you read that correctly: one time.  It was spring of last year, and we set the thing up outside a wolf den and miraculously (though we were only vaguely aware of this fact at the time) filmed three wolf pups, two black and one gray, playing and running around outside the den hole.  It was great.  But those were the last animals we ever filmed with the thing, excluding the occasional bird or insect.  

Mostly we have since filmed an entire library's worth of waving grasses, fluttering leaves, and patches of bare ground, heated by the sun and therefore giving off invisible signals to our camera's remote sensor to film, film, and film some more.

It has alternately become a source of extreme frustration, and (less frequently) humor, as we struggle to find the perfect settings so the contraption will capture animals (preferably the larger-than-bird types) and not simply heated, waving leaves.  

Just a week ago we found an elk carcass, freshly killed, on the edge of a stream near the town of Stanley where we had gone to check-in.  Rubbing our hands together in anticipation, we excitedly set up the remote camera, carefully placing its infrared sensor and combing the scene for mischievous grasses that could wave their fronds and set off our camera unnecessarily.  We had high hopes of wolves or bears coming in to dine: the thing was barely touched, only one hind leg gone when we found it.  We even found a set of wolf tracks nearby, and knew they would no doubt be back soon for the rest.  And if they weren't, then a bear would surely smell the decay and B-line in to eat and snooze intermittently until the carcass was done.  

Two days later we returned, sneaking the camera out of its weatherproof housing, and retreating a distance to watch our amazing footage.  Forty-five, minute-long clips later we had seen nothing more than, yep, you guessed it, grass dancing in the wind around a quickly rotting elk body.  Beautiful.  

Only minorly fazed, we re-set the camera, left it over-night, and re-checked.  This time, not only did we get no animals, but midway through the blank footage, the carcass simply disappeared.  Not slowly, as if it had been eaten by unseen carnivores, but quite suddenly.  One clip it was there, laying pungently in the afternoon sun, and the next it was nowhere to be seen.  We stared at each other in disbelief.  How could an object the size of an adult elk, move (at least we assumed that it did not vaporize) out of frame, without our ever-so-sensitive sensors (which seem to love the minute movements of grass tips) turning on the camera?

The only possibility was that the confiscation had happened during the sizzling mid-day hours when we had set the camera to not record, as it would look terrible, and we (wrongly) assumed that our target animals generally lay low during that period.  As well as, this carcass was near a road and we thought cars passing during the day would keep them shy.  Apparently we were wrong on all counts.  

We will keep trying, but our patience in waning.  If we ever do film anything else with it, it will surely be cause for celebration.  We did find the carcass again, about twenty yards away and nearly gone (all that remains now is one single upper foreleg, and a bunch of bones and hide.  We also found wolf hair at the scene.  But apparently our camera did not think it was noteworthy enough to open its one eye and record.  

We will learn?

A couple days later:

Yahoo!  Success!  We returned to pick up the camera just yesterday morning, before heading back to McCall for a few days of needed truck repairs (another story entirely), to find we had actually recorded wolves at the scene!  Amazing...

We approached the site, thinking nothing had changed.  The carcass remained virtually the same as it had been when we left it a few days prior.  There was perhaps a tiny bit of the last remaining segment of meat on the foreleg, missing, but it was so little it could have easily been bird pickings.  After our last bought of failures, we were in the mindset of simply picking up the camera, and tossing the hours of footage of waving grasses that were surely recorded.

Back on the road and heading home, I sat in the passengers seat, mindlessly rewinding through the clips as Isaac drove, watching little more than the sun shifting position over the fly-ridden elk ribcage, when all of a sudden, there in the corner of the screen, was a huge wolf head.  I stopped and let the camera play forward in disbelief.

"I think I just saw a wolf head?" I said cautiously to Isaac.

"What?" All disbelief.

There is was, staring straight at the camera from about five feet away.  Then it was gone, and then it re-appeared and walked carefully over to the ribcage, glancing around nervously before grabbing onto the foreleg and giving a good tug at the meat.  

"We did it!" I yelped, "It's a wolf!"

Isaac swerved to the side of the road and peered over my shoulder.  We watched another wolf enter the frame and circle around, more nervous than the first.  It was broad daylight, eight-fifteen in the morning, in fact.  The wolves were both nice looking and healthy, and both wearing GPS collars, which had us scratching our heads.  They clearly were not from either of the packs we had suspected would be in that area.  

That was it.  It was about three minutes of footage.  But it was enough.  We were (are) hooked, totally ready to continue blithely onwards with the remote camera.  We drove on towards home, planning all the set-ups we wanted to try next.  We were in the game again...

Bear Valley

It was a mystical morning, gilded with an ethereal fog, lit vaguely from above by early morning's first attempts at daylight, and accompanied by a delicate and heavily layered orchestra of exotic sounds.  There were birds of more species than I can name, including the Nighthawk, Sandhill Crane, and some impossibly clear song sounding like a mythic melody played on an instrument blown of the purest glass.  Threaded into that soundtrack was the occasional burst of elk noises, cows grunting and calling to each other as they grazed along in the dewy grass.

We are still holed up at Dagger Falls, but headed out early to Bear Valley, only a few miles away, to try to film some elk and their calves cavorting in the wide meadows.  We had barely begun looking when we ran across three bull elk, bunched at the edge of the fog bank, surprised at our sudden arrival.  They trotted off into the fog and wildflowers, relaxing once they had put a few hundred yards between us and them, and obliged our lenses by looking regal and statuesque through the morning vapor.  While Isaac filmed, I walked around in a musical stupor, the stereo microphone leading me into pockets of lush sounds, which I recorded with reckless abandon.  

We then moved on, filming a few wide shots of opaque fog laying heavy over the meandering Bear Valley Creek as the sun barely squinted over the nearest ridge, creating something I had never seen before this particular morning: a fogbow.  No color, just a gauzy arc springing lightly from the moist earth and hanging over our heads wherever we moved.  

Hearing the elk noises, we attempted to find their origins in the fog, but true to the magic of the morning, wherever we moved, the noise would sound elsewhere.  We slushed through marshy areas up to our knees in water, and eventually came up against the river, too deep to cross.  We did eventually spot the elk, grazing on the other side a quarter mile away.  Redwing Blackbirds ended up taking the limelight as they cruised and swooped over our heads in the new light, singing and playing for the camera with flashes of red on jetblack wings.

Though we found no cavorting elk calves, only browsing elk cows munching the juicy grasses, it was such a mystic morning it didn't seem to matter.

          

Dagger Falls

Happy 4th of July!

We are celebrating the day by watching salmon exploding up waterfalls, firecrackers of miraculous strength.  The heavens are applauding with rumbles of thunder, purring appreciatively around the clouds.  We made it to Dagger Falls (just above the Boundary Creek put-in on the Middle Fork, where we began our river trip back on June 1), and have been watching the Salmon make their amazing struggle to reach their spawning beds, still long miles up the river.  [Historically 2,000,000 Salmon made the over 900 mile journey back to the Salmon River system in Idaho, and today only about 10,000 return.]  Dagger Falls is a relatively narrow stretch of the river, where the canyon walls push the water over a series of large ledges and through chutes.  Rocky spikes stick up out of the churning water like the teeth of a huge dragon mouth, gaping at the top of the falls.

It seems the fish make their biggest push in the late afternoon and early evening hours, which is fairly ideal for filming.  You only have to watch for a few moments before seeing a huge, dark and glistening body come torpedoing out of the boiling water, hurling itself at a wall of foaming water.  A few make it in one airborne surge, only to land in a boiling pool that is just a turbulent lay-over between levels.  Some hit the rushing water somewhere in mid-falls and struggle valiantly for a few moments (you can see them hanging on underneath the veil of water), squirming ferociously to hold their ground, which they can for what seems an impossible amount of time, before tiring and flushing backwards into the churning pool below.  And some (Isaac and I have been imagining this group to be younger, less experience, fish) corkscrew out of the water like torpedos gone haywire, only to flair majestically, high above the pool for long seconds before crashing down, usually downstream of where they left the water on their helter-skelter trajectory.  

For a few hours it seems that fish are everywhere, being tossed haphazardly around in the turbulence.  Aside from the actual leapers, you can see fish bodies hurtling through the foaming water, fins flailing here, a tail flipping around there... I can't imagine what it must be like to be in that pool as a fish.  They must not be able to see a thing, and look like they are simply getting smashed around, crashing into each other and the unforgiving rock walls, unable to rest in water that refuses to remain still.  Perhaps the holding pools have some deeper areas where they can dive down near the bottom and get a bit of rest between leaps, but I sure doubt it.  It would be so interesting to see for a moment, down through the thick water to the bottom of the river, suspending all the fish for a single moment in time, to understand how it all works.  

We saw a couple unlucky fish leap and miss, landing on sharp and jagged rocks, flipping and bouncing head over tail, barrel rolling eventually back to water.  I could imagine these fish, dazed and seeing stars, slipping limply back over the falls they had just fought so hard to conquer, and finally coming to rest down stream a mile or so, on some sandy-bottomed limpid pool, wondering what the heck just happened.

While watching the fish, we also found a family of Dippers nesting precariously just above the very top falls.  Dippers (American Dipper, also known as the Water Ouzel), are an extremely interesting and endearing bird.  They spend their entire lives along rushing mountain streams, hunting water bugs and insects from off rocks and underwater in the streambeds.  They have the ability to walk and even "fly" underwater, clinging to the rocky bottom with their tiny feet.  They can navigate (and even prefer) the turbulent waters of rapids, and make their nests directly above the rushing waters.  Their nests are these round orbs made of mud and moss, with the entrance pointed straight down towards the water, a few feet off its churning surface.  When their young fledge, I can only imagine them shooting out these precarious holes, seeing a few frantic moments of spinning daylight, and then plummeting into the frothing waters to careen downstream, bobbing and spluttering their way to some rock or snag, whatever they can grab onto to drag themselves, bedraggled and half drowned, out of the water.

We found our family of Dippers valiantly feeding their hungry young, racing up and down the river, snagging bugs from the water and stuffing them into the gaping beak that would stick out the bottom of the nest whenever it heard the chirp of the incoming food-laden parent, and sometimes even when it didn't, just hanging its big pink mouth out the chute, clinging to the inside of the nest presumably by its toes as it swings upside down waiting for something to fly by and zip into its hungry mouth.

Just yesterday morning, I sat for a couple hours by the side of the river above the falls, waiting for the Dippers to fly by so I could record their feeding calls.  I never saw hide or hair of a Dipper, but had a peaceful morning anyway, leaning against a rock reading a good book ("Into Thick Air", Jim Malusa: I recommend it highly), with my finger poised over the record button of the sound-deck incase I heard the call.  Later that afternoon we found out why there were no Dippers upriver that morning.  We found the entire family, including newly fledged baby, below the falls.  The baby was perched on the edge of a river rock, looking fluffed and cold (to me) as it stood first on one leg, and then the other, dipping all the while (Dippers "dip" almost constantly, which is a bobbling up and down motion which nobody seems to know the purpose of.  There are many theories of course, the one I like best being that they "dip" as some weird sort of way to stay sane and oriented in their extremely turbulent world of rushing, tumbling, never still white water).  It's parents continued to feed it diligently all afternoon, and it would make these tiny, pitiful hopping flights from rock to rock, moving ever so slightly downstream, stretching its wings and learning how to fly.  

There was an interesting and intense little interlude as afternoon moved into evening, when a mother otter and her cub appeared right next to the Dipper's rock, and eyed the tasty morsel skeptically for long moments, as the parent Dippers screamed angry warnings.  The baby stopped dipping and froze, wide-eyed and stunned (yes, anthropomorphizing shamelessly) as it watched the otter mama watching it.  Nothing ever came of it, but we did get some great otter footage as mom and pup played like only otters can, lolling on sunny rocks, spinning through golden sunlight-flecked water, fished in the rapids, and nursing.  The evening ended with some kind of insect hatch high above the molten river, sparkling like fairy-dust in the last burnished light of the long day, spinning lazy and hypnotic and mystical before the sun sank behind the peaks to the west, leaving us happily packing up camera gear and feeling like we'd had a productive day.

Better than any fireworks I've ever seen...  

            

The irony of wildlife filming

After hiking around for days trying to catch up with the wolves Isaac and Gabe had been filming when they were out, we finally had to come to the realization that without a stroke of near miraculous luck, we were not going to find these wolves again.  This country is so huge and wild and difficult to get around in when you only have two legs at your disposal (how many times have I wished for four legs to climb these hills, after watching wolves or elk or bighorns getting around with seeming ease...).  We found no new wolf sign, only a few older scats and tracks that had been left before the last of the rains, so we had to be content with simply seeing new country.

We found a new favorite spot when we hiked up to Cougar Point and spent two nights camped on top of the world, with a breathtaking 360 degree view of endless mountains decked out in an amazingly brilliant emerald green (after all the rain early on).  The slopes were absolutely popping with wildflowers: Arrowleaf Balsamroot, Indian Paintbrush, Ground Phlox, Blue Penstoman and the most abundant Lupine either one of us have ever seen.  Lupine seems to really like relatively newly burned areas, and as were bowled over by the scent as we hiked through endless meadows filled with nothing but vibrant Lupine and velvety black burned tree skeletons.  Really amazing color combination.

One evening we were up on Cougar Point, where there used to be a fire Lookout but it burned about 20 years ago.  We were filming big wide scenics as the sun sank low and golden over the mountains.  Isaac had just set up a time-lapse involving an artistically shaped burned tree snag backlit with the falling sun.  Somewhere right about in the middle of the twenty-minute time-lapse, a pair of cavorting bluebirds swooped into frame and decided that very tree snag was the place to hang out for a while.  I was watching with binoculars and got the most amazing show as they perched on the branches, fluttering and playing and completely backlit with molten sunset dripping from their wings.  I kept "oooing" and "ahhhing" as if I were watching a fireworks display, as Isaac sat beside me behind the camera cursing those very same bluebirds as they ruined his time-lapse.  But that is the story of wildlife filming.  It is so rare to have the right gear at the right moment.  With the right lens (not the one we had at that moment), and shot in slow motion (not a time-lapse), that bluebird moment would have been gorgeous.  But I enjoyed the show anyhow...

           

The first two weeks

 It is a little difficult to write about Isaac and Gabe's first couple weeks out filming as I wasn't even there, but I will do my best to sum it up from the little snippets that they told me later.  Imagine, if you can, two brothers cooped up for two weeks in a blind barely big enough for one person and a camera, in endless cold rain, sitting on mini camp stools that are barely big enough to balance one butt cheek on, picking the seeds off bagels one at a time to make the food last longer... and you can begin to get an idea of what they experienced.  Apparently every time they tried to get out of the blind to go searching for other things to film, or to simply stretch their legs, the wolves were onto them.  Never able to go anywhere undetected, or without stumbling accidentally across a pack member returning to the rendezvous site on the trail.  We know this area from other years filming these very same wolves, and are usually able to get around undetected, at least for a while.  And yet this year it seemed they were always underfoot, always just downwind, or popping up over a near ridge or just down the trail.  Eventually the pack split, whether it was because they ran into Isaac and Gabe one too many times or not it is hard to say.  There were several factors involved, including the fact that the day before the pack split, a couple new wolves ("intruders", we began calling them) showed up in the original pack's area, sniffing around and acting like they owned the place.  A few minor skirmishes ensued, always just out of sight, which could have had a lot to do with why they moved.  Impossible to say really.  

Back to Isaac and Gabe.  Imagine also their first night, after hiking for ten hours up trails that hadn't been maintained in a while, carrying packs that weighed eighty-plus pounds, finally getting to where they had planned to camp for the night, setting up the tent in rain that was just beginning to fall, falling tired into sleeping bags, and then Gabe in an accidental and joking flourish (again, remember I wasn't there, and have at this point only heard one side of the story), sticking his knife right through the top of our brand new, donated, tent.  Lucky for him (for them, really) the knife only went through the tent, and not the fly as well.  A good start to two weeks spent crammed together in very tight spaces.

But they returned seemingly unscathed, battle wounds nothing more than a possibly broken toe (Gabe's, from a too-fast trip down a too-rocky trail, with too-open shoes) and a possible bruised ego (Isaac's, from realizing that his body is not as young and strong as it used to be and having to give much more of the weight to his younger, stronger brother who is thankfully able to haul an unbelievable amount of weight).  

Finally an update

Hello again, I realize it has been over a month since I last wrote.  I was afraid that starting a blog would be difficult for this reason... 

Where to begin?  From the beginning, I guess.  So last I wrote, we were packing to go out and test gear before floating the river on June 1st.  We did go out, and a variety of things happened.  We ran into snow, more than we expected and sooner.  The road we took to get us into the wilderness was blown out.  Our trucks transmission boiled over and began spewing fluid long before the pass we were attempting to get over.  And my body decided that it would be a good time to not work so well, in the form of joint related difficulties.  So, once back home and packing for the river trip, we made a new plan.

We would float the Middle Fork of the Salmon River as planned, but instead of Isaac and I getting dropped off to hike into the wilderness a few days later, Isaac and his brother Gabe would be dropped off, and I would continue on down the river to fly out a few miles farther down on the mail plane, back to McCall where I would spend a couple weeks trying to figure out health issues.  

To make a long story short, all went smoothly.  The river was great: big, frothy, and exciting, Isaac and Gabe got dropped off at Cougar Creek to hike eight miles basically straight up with extremely heavy packs, filled with camera gear and food for two weeks, and I got dropped off at The Flying B ranch, a bit farther downstream to fly out on the mail plane the next morning.  

But that was all over a month ago now... time flies.  Gabe had to be back in town to begin summer work on June 15, so basically it was a changing of the guards.  I had been feeling really good, and felt ready to brave the Idaho hills by the time they returned to civilization, and after a few days of re-packing, re-supplying, and re-configuring, we were off again.  

For those of you who want to check out a map, we have been hanging out in the area of Loon Creek, Little Loon Creek, and Castle Fork Creek, and here are some names of places we hiked around to: Cougar Point, the Fur Farm, Blue Lake, Loon Creek Lookout, Falconberry Ranch, Indian Springs.  This is in the Southwest portion of the River of No Return Wilderness.    

We are writing now from Stanley, a tiny town in central Idaho where we have come out to check in and re-supply.  Things are going well, although we are definitely getting a bit of a reality check.  It is just plain difficult to get very far in this wilderness, on foot, hauling film gear.  On the map, our mileage looks downright meager, but in reality, our legs are telling us they have been long and hard-fought miles.  The mountains here are steep.  There is no such thing as flat ground.  And the gear is HEAVY.  

The reality of spending a full year, completely submersed in the wilderness with nothing more than a few re-supplies is fading.  It would be one thing if we were just backpacking around.  But when you add the filming aspect, not just hauling gear, but charging giant energy-hungry batteries, downloading footage onto hard drives, collecting sound, and keeping ourselves healthy and happy, it all becomes a little unrealistic.  

This last stint, we hiked in with all the gear we could carry (which wasn't everything), covered as much ground as we could (which was a lot, but mostly without camera gear) and saw everything we could (which ended up being a lot of fun).  So, as I said before, the plan is every changing.  We will do our best to follow our original plan, but we are trying to also be flexible and smart.