D went back up the hill to get his pack, and We started to work. What a pain in the ass. Super steep, NO where to step, no room, no nothing. Took us 3 hours to get it quartered up, bagged and off the ledge to another
semi flat spot. Meanwhile, the weather took a turn for the worse, the creek we are in, is now a raging flow,threatening to wash us and the elk off our precarious location. By now it's 4pm and dark is coming in 2 hours. I load up a Rear Quarter in the CC and we take off.
I take no pride in this; but I am not a man easily intimidated by anything mother nature can throw at me. I've goat hunted, sheep hunted, deer, bear, etc. I am not ashamed to admit that coming out of that hole with a heavy pack scared me. It was scary. Period. Nothing to hang onto, the grass is slick, it's steep. We had no choice but to rely on our cork boots and trekking poles and hope to god we didn't make a wrong step.
We would eventually make it to the top of the ridge, and halfway to camp. Here is where we nearly made a fatal mistake. We got in a hurry, we took a peek at D's gps, and saw what looked like an EASIER way down to camp. D had a new gps and wasn't fully learned in all it's functions. Soon it's dark and pissing down rain like a whole herd of cows pissing on the same small flat rock. Somehow we screwed up and got caught in this deep V notch, just a nasty big steep rocky ravine. It's darker than sin. Halfway down shit is getting dangerous and we decide to drop the meat. At this point I pull out my GPS slap in some new batteries. Waypoint the meat and carry on. No point to stopping, too late to go up, no way out left or right, already soaked. We keep moving down by the light of headlamps. At one point we hit this waterfall. And I almost cried. There is no way to possible tell how big it is. I grab some alders and swing out over it shining my headlamp down between my feet trying to see how big the fall is..?
Screw it, I let go and drop about 7 feet down. Hurt like hell landing on rocks with the corks, but we survived. Eventually we had to stop, worn out. We sat in the rain and ate some food. Eventually we hit some timber and hooked left bashing through devils club in the dark, til we made it back to camp. We ate a clif bar or two and climbed into our bags and passed out.
Saturday:
The plan was to go up and start shuttling meat over to where D's dad had found an easy way up to the top of the ridge, then we would have 3 guys for the pack down.
D and I went to the top, then we had to go over and Halfway back down the hill to where we stashed the meat the night before. Load up and go back up to the transfer point. We dropped off the rear quarter and the 40# sack of misc meat and then boot scooted towards the rest of the meat. Now it's 3pm and hesitant of making the same mistake of the night before we load up front quarters and head out. Let me tell you, a front shoulder in a MR CC is nothing. Good lord it felt good, I was flat moving. We made it easily to the transfer side. D's dad had grabbed the rear quarter already and moved back down to camp. I was feeling skippy, so I grabbed the misc meat bag and strapped it on the CC with the front shoulder. NOW its heavy. We made it down to camp that day with no incident.
Sunday:
Sunday was bad. Blowing and raining and flat nasty, in the interest of surviving, neither of us wanted to go down in the hole to the elk when it was sloppy muddy and the grass was super slick with the fog and rain. So we took the day off, even managed a fire in a brief clear moment and dried some clothes.
Monday:
Today was a do or die day. All that meat was coming down, tuesday the report we got on marine weather via sat phone, was going to be BAD. We went up fast as possible and reached the elk by 11am. With the good morning weather, we decided the hill was as dry as it was going to get and started shuttling meat out of the hell hole.. I strapped the rack to the CC to steal a little glory from D :hump:
The hill was sooo steep that I had to strap it on Horns pointing UP. Otherwise there was no way to sidestep and sidehill up. Talk about akward. They swayed this way and that, and I found myself nearly losing my footing multiple times. At the top we had two BIG bags of meat, plus a rear quarter and the rack. I took a big bag and the rack, now strapped on horns down and set out. D grabbed the rear quarter and took off ahead of me. He dropped the quarter off on the far side of the ridge near the transfer point and passed me going back for the last bag. I kept going til I ran into D's Dad and pointed him at the rear quarter behind me. Now with all three of us loaded up with full loads we went down to camp, and got it all there just before dark.
Last Set of Pics:
Checked in With the second family, picked up some things we still needed, and checked and rechecked my pack and weights etc etc.
