Endangered Grizzly Bear Photo Thread
- Thread starter BigHornRam
- Start date
recurveman
Well-known member
With all the crazy people out there right now it would be a great time to spend 14 days in the beartooths and leave your phone and garmin at the truck.
shines@times
Well-known member
Sounds like a reasonable response to me! I know that I've been getting itchy feet lately; and I am now sorely regretting all the tasks I loaded upon myself over the past ten months.
Cav1
Well-known member
Went ahead and got all my tags. I really did enjoy running around up above timberline in #300 the last couple of years and just spending time up in the high country. I deliberately hunted north of Tom Miner to stay far, far away from Yellowstone NP. But for all the sheep I glassed pretty much every day I never did see anything even close to a legal ram and heard from too many people (including a couple of USFS guys and a Parkie) that most of the big boys are hanging out inside the Park during that early September hot weather. So I'm switching over to #500, even if geetar can't make it this year. Now if I can just find a good bargain on a 6x6 deuce-and-a-half to drive the last 5 miles of the Boulder River Road...
I went up to help pack a buddy’s billy out of that country in 2015 and he had his crew cab, 8ft bed F-350 up that goat path.
Send it!
shines@times
Well-known member
Hey Cav 1, would you settle for a 5-Ton? It has low miles, Allison Automatic transmission and an 8.3 L Cummins.
I'll have the one pictured up for sale at $19,500.00 after I retrieve it from WI. Or, I will discount the price if you are willing to pick it up yourself. Will require a CDL until it is converted to a legal RV in Montana (weighs over 28K pounds).
I subsequently found something that I have always wanted more as the basis for an off-road-capable motorhome:
The Oshkosh P-19 will be more work to convert, but it will end up a lot lighter.
That box on the BMY 6x6 is what they call an "expansible" meaning both sides slide out similar to a motorhome. The auction company didn't shoot a picture with the extensions deployed; but here is a photo that I grabbed from the Internet of the same model (just not the exact one that I bought) in that configuration:
ACT QUICKLY!
WL
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recurveman
Well-known member
CAV1 - yeah those vehicles wouldn't make it unless you brought a chain saw. There were a few people that walked from the parking lot to the trial head and then up to the hunting area. They were much younger, skinnier, and in much better shape than me.
Cav1
Well-known member
I like the 5-ton with the shop van in the box but it would probably be sheared off to cab level by the time I got to the trailhead. And I'll definitely pass on the crew cab F350, Gomer. USFS uses a lot of them for wildland fire engines and I've seen two stranded like turtles, the pumpkin of the back axle high centered on a big old rock. I'll just keep beating up the poor old F-150, though I'm thinking 2-inch lift and some larger tires before Sept. I wound up hitting those staubs along the sides of the road cuz I was crawling back and forth from rock to rock trying to avoid bottoming out. I thought about recurveman's idea of walking in from the end of the "good" road but I'm too old and fat and sway-backed for that. Even without the extra 5 miles my ass came dragging into camp a good five minutes after the rest of me that first night. And yet I can't wait to do it all again.
recurveman
Well-known member
Just walk!!!!!!!! You will be in great shape once you get to the top.
520 Road Sow
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- Mar 17, 2017
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Or dead
shines@times
Well-known member
Ahh! The voice of experience.
Howdy:
I am down here just north of 500. I intend to head up to the north end of the unit instead of beating myself to death on that independence road.
Sammckeeth
Member
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I truly despise that road.
recurveman
Well-known member
Oh but the hike up is more painful than death!!!!!!!!! Very few make it to the top. Even fewer do it again.......that is a fact.
recurveman
Well-known member
Why? Just because your speed is measured in hours per mile instead of MPH!!!!!!LOL It is quite possibly the best core workout a guy could ask for.
520 Road Sow
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The pain endured on the road is the first sign of what that hunt actually is. If it is that rough to get to where you start walking you should know it's not gonna get much better Haha.
Cav1
Well-known member
I wonder if that goat trail shows up on the USFS interactive on-line map as another "dirt road suitable for passenger cars". Maybe they assume your passenger car is a HUMVEE. On an old Absaroka-Beartooth map I have dated 1986 the whole area is just a big blank space on the map labeled "Here There Be Dragons".
buffybr
Well-known member
The last time I went up that road I packed 20# of explosives up to the Boulder Pass where I blew up a horse that had died there the previous fall and the next summer when it thawed out, a grizzly claimed it and he didn't like the hikers and horseback riders on the trail near "his" bear. He was on the carcass when I got there and he ran off. When I left there was just 4 hoofs and a couple hundred or so pounds of Big Mac or smaller size pieces of horse flesh scattered over a couple acres of the hillside.
Cav1
Well-known member
I got in on blowing up a lot of stuff with the USFS for a couple of summers, including a dead horse like that up Tom Miner and a fallen boulder blocking Upsidedown Creek trail in the late 90's. The forest's licensed blaster did not have a Haz Mat CDL but I did so they kinda needed me to actually get the explosives anywhere. On my own I backpacked a couple of the trails off the Boulder in the early 1990s when I first moved to MT but hadn't been back into that country until last year when geetar and I did our scouting trip. The road had not improved or mellowed with age, but then I probably haven't either.
I never did picket pin. The only time I was going to, I hit a big drift before the rough stuff and had to turn around.
I worked at East Boulder mine, and they have a couple vent raises that come to the surface up there, but I never got to visit them before moving.
