This country's hard on people. You can't stop what's coming.

7 hours since trigger pulling and we are sitting amongst our treasure at camp, eating dinner. The high was real but it was fading. Rapidly being replaced by the reality of what we had left to do.

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Holy shit did we have a lot of work left to do.

We will start with a round trip tomorrow. A big meat load to the truck and get back to camp. We anticipate three trips to the truck in total are needed.

#*^@#*
 
We don't get up as early as we should. Hurry through breakfast and coffee.

We still intend to do a round trip today. We are sleeping here tonight.

Time to bone out meat and get loaded up. It all takes a while. I really consider that we oughta grab our sleeping gear in case. I shove the thought down though, we need to force ourselves to come back.

I've got my two boned out hinds, the choice cuts, and the grind pile. Total pack weight is in the ball park of 100 lbs. Could I do more? Actually, I'm really not sure, given what it felt like getting ourselves out here with 65lb packs.

We set off around 10:30 am and begin our slog. It begins with a mile or so of downhill and our ridgeline provides some occasional relief from the intense tussocky tundra. It gives a false sense of security that this might not be so bad.
 
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The hours drag on. It's wildly disheartening when you realize how far you've gone over a given time frame. The pack cuts into your shoulders, the tundra claws at your feet and seems alive in it's ability to kick you off balance, causing you to step backwards or sideways. Every time you lose your balance you have to stop and reassess your footing. The tundra has it's own unique way of forcing you into a 1 step forward 2 steps backward rhythm at times. The legs burn. The hip belts hurt. The relentless need to put extra push in each step off the spongey tundra floor wreaks havoc on the balls of your feet after so many hours. My blistery heel hurts like hell.

When you realize you're only halfway through your nearly 9 mile trek, it starts to become really mentally destabilizing.

We are busting through caribou along the way. Keeps things interesting.

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Need a pack break. We eat wild blueberries, throw down snickers, suck down water, and keep pushing.

I think we are each silently realizing, without saying anything to each other about it yet, that we may have made a grave, grave mistake in leaving our sleeping gear at camp.
 
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It genuinely feels like you're never gonna get there. But we do.

And it's almost 7 pm. We're not going back to camp tonight are we? By the time we make and eat dinner, fill water, and get back to it...

Well, we could do it, but it just feels senseless. It is such a freaking haul. So, here we are, at the safety of the truck, but without sleeping pads and bags.

Whatever, first things first, let's warm up and consume calories. I mean, you are truly kind of famished at this point. We grab sodas, apples, oranges, I grab a protein shake, and we snag our second of three bags of chips and head to cab to turn on the engine and warm up. The bag of chips is gone before long. It was hands down one of the most enjoyable things I've consumed in my life. Something to write home about. Those chips. My god.

Boots off, nursing feet. My heel looks like hell. No wonder it felt like hell.

We better go make real dinner soon. But no one wants to leave the cab of the truck.

We opt for Kraft Mac and Andouille sausage. I really don't know what we would've done if my WhisperLite was not in the truck.

We rationalize that with having no milk we better put, like, oh, 4-5x the amount of butter than the instructions call for.

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This glorious meal is my Ella Langley to another's Sydney Sweeney.

Keep the comfort coming cause tonight's gonna suck.
 
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We discuss our strategy for sleeping. I definitely want to give the box a go before the cab. If you've never been in a U-Haul, it ranks high on the little known but very real list of "worst vehicles to sleep in."

We put on every layer of clothing we can, though my puffy is in the tent, but I at least have lot of layers here I can put on, thankfully I have the puffy pants. We lay out the rest of the clothes we have in layers to sleep on. Our waders under all of it. Bluffgruff tries some large dry bags with a small bit of air in them.

Pro tip for out of state Haul Road hunting: buy the 5 dollar bed pillows in the home section at Fred Meyer for the truck camping.

All layered up we jump in the cab one more time to sauna up in our layering before goin back to the metal bed of the U-Haul to attempt sleep.

Gosh this sucks. We agree, whenever someone get's too cold to continue we will move to the cab and finish out the night.

Lights out, sliding door open just a crack. I switch my system around, pillow under lower back and butt, my piles of clothes and my duffle under my upper back. I'm able to lay on my side this way.

Before I know it I wake up, shivering. I look at my watch, 2 am. Wow, I actually did seem to fall asleep. Maybe 2 hours at best. The cold has really seeped deep in the bones.

I whisper over to Bluffgruff to see if he's awake. Unsurprisingly he is, also cold. Time to bail
 
Morning finally comes. What misery. But at least we were warm. Cycling the truck on and off every couple of hours.

At one point I awoke in a cramped position, my entire right leg completely numb. At another point I awoke slumped forward on the dash, basically drooling on it.

My watch reported around 3 hours of sleep. Frankly, much better than I expected.

Ugh. Today was going to be an actual round trip.

8.7 miles in, 8.7 miles back. After yesterday it's really hard to believe that will only have us 2/3 the way done.

Alright, oatmeal, coffee, water, packed lunch, go. We find our stride with such light packs. And we've learned a trick or two about route finding the tundra. Our return trip takes 4 hr 39 min. But as usual, we started later then ideal.

We return to a camp untouched by undesirable visitors. Exactly 3 pm.

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We need to filter water, skin heads, eat some food, pack up a load and go. Bluffgruff also has one more shoulder to bone out.

Somehow this takes us over 2 hours.

"Man, how do you always end up with heads that can stand upright on their own?" as I snap a pic. This is like the third such head of his that I've seen do this

"Just shoot big stuff." he says with a smirk.

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We're a bit stressed. A little astonished at the fact that we spent this much time at camp. It's 5:30 and we're setting off, with heavy packs, for a long, long, long grind. I'm alread salivating at the thought of ripping open that last bag of cheddar Ruffles and cranking the heat.

Yes we have our sleeping gear packed.

I'm taking fronts, hide, head along with a handful of other items from camp that I might as well take the opportunity to ferry out. My pack was right around 85 lbs. A welcome reprieve from the first load, but still, given the tundra and the distance, not a light pack. We estimate the camp pack out tomorrow will be around 60 lbs each.

Onward.

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Dang man when you said you were planning a round trip yesterday I thought to myself “no friggin way”. I did a one day 5.5 mile out and 5.5 miles back round trip last year with 3 boned out quarters on my back and it was a grind. And the day after I did it again to get my buddies bull. Couldn’t imagine an 8.7x2 mile round trip in a day.

I’m sympathetically reminiscing in your suffer fest.
 

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