Day 9
Left Airbnb in slc, drove to campground in BCC, set up tent, skied at solitude.
day 10
Met up with
@Wildabeast (sorry for dragging you into this mildly inappropriate story) at deer valley and had a blast skiing with him.
This was my first time skiing with someone who knew how to ski and for better or worse it really made me push to speeds way beyond my comfort zone and opened my mind as to how fun flying down groomers can be.
day 11
Slept in. Getting out of a warm sleeping bag is hard.
went to Alta.
Ate a turkey and tillamook sandwich in the parking lot.
Stunted on some dude who claimed to be a mba student from usc who had skied approx the same amount of times as me.
He was from California and didn’t even know who Scott, Rob, Cody or Shane(rip) are so yeah take that for what it is.
(some people need to get their priorities straight)
and this is where the story gets weird and creepy.
love and lechery:
Not to get too emotional on you guys, but basically when I was in my mid 20’s I was just kinda lost, bored, down on myself for being a juco drop out and desperately looking for something to go do.
I got lucky and heard dork ass Cam Hanes on JRE talking about going backcountry hunting and he really just made it sound cool as hell

And yeah, I was kinda like
“ yeah bro! I’m good at things I want to be good at, not what people tell me to do! Im not going back to school! I’m gonna be a public land elk hunter!”



(What a moron)
But yeah for a few years I did some cycling, running, hiking, hunting, got comfortable being in the woods in the dark, drove to Colorado alone and killed a bull on opening day of archery season on the most shit house luck hunt of all time.
laugh at me for this if you will but there were just some parts of this journey that felt very fate and destiny like.
1. my first night in a tree stand since I was like 13 when I was still apprehensive as to whether or not I wanted to get back into hunting I killed a doe with my bow from 2004ish while wearing my camo from the same era. My bibs barely came down last my knees. Lol
2. My first ever time in the mountains after hiking 2.5mi up a 4wd road that I definitely thought I was gonna be able to drive in my Jetta Jimmy and I arrived at the trailhead to find a severed elks leg laying right in the middle of the trail. Is that weird?
“I guess there are elk here”

3. I accidentally called an elk into my camp and shot him twice with a bow and arrow.
4. after leaving him overnight and not being able to find any blood the next day I was walking back up the main trail in the area after grid searching the hillside with tears in my eyes because I was pretty sure I’d killed that poor thing and I’d come so close to doing what I’d set out to do when I looked up and that son of a bitch was laying dead right in the middle of the freaking walking trail.

*it turned into a rodeo. It was hot AF. I lost a lot of meat.
I suck

It’s gonna be a long time before I try to solo hunt an elk again. Deer tags only for awhile.