Our little group consisted of MrFishingToughGuy, gotascii and myself. We decided on a stream in the central section of the east slope with no trail. We hiked a couple miles up the trail of the main stream and then bushwhacked our way into the trib, finally getting on the stream above the first falls. The stream had plenty of water and the fishing was just fine. We didn't find any big ones but everyone landed their fair share. The fish were definitley spawned out and pretty skinny. Here are a few shots from our day:
I wasn't planning on documenting the rest of our adventure, but in the interest of accuracy and teaching a lesson about what not to do in the backcountry, here goes.
At about 2:30 we found ourselves higher up this drainage than any of us had ever been and formulated a plan to boogy the rest of the way up the mountain and hit a fire road that would take us back down a different drainage. We thought this would be better than going back the way we came through the trailess woods. The only problem was that we grossly underestimated the distance we still had left to go. We kept thinking that the fire road had to be just ahead and stupidly continued putting more distance between ourselves and the car. At about 4:30 we still hadn't made it to the top and had no idea how far we were away. At this point we were faced with the decision of continuing up, or turning around and bushwhacking our way back out. We decided on the latter alternative. Looking back on it now, we should have continued climbing. That fire road couldn't have been far away. With no trail and little remaining light we made our way down the mountain as quick as we could. The fact that we were all completely worn out with no food or water further compounded our problem.
A quick check of gotascii's altimeter showed that we were still over 1,000 vertical feet above where we entered the stream when the last of the light finally drained from the sky. Anyone who's been up this hollow and knows how rugged it is also knows that this is definitely not the place to be walking around in the dark. Now we were faced with another decision. Continue down risking broken legs and smashed heads or sit down and spend the night. Since it was wet and getting cold and we had nothing to make a fire with, we decided to continue on. We made slow, slow progress in the dark with nothing but the LCD screen on a camera lighting our way. I lost count of the number of times I fell. I think I did the splits at least 5 times (something us fat guys are not meant to do) and banged my knees into countless rocks.
Then the battery in the camera died... We were without any kind of light and still had about 400-500 vertical feet to go. More falls, more rocks, more downed trees and more sticker bushes followed in almost complete blackness. At one point, I fell and lost my favorite hat and couldn't find it in the dark. Then Marty fell and thought he busted his brand new bamboo rod (luckily he didn't). We struggled on, keeping the sound of the stream to our left and the ridge on our right. On and on we went with seemingly no end in sight. I couldn't make my legs work right anymore and I lost all track of time. We just knew that the car was down there somewhere and we had to keep going.
Then I heard the most wonderful sound in the world, Marty saying that he was on the trail!! We were still 2 miles from the car but finding that trail was better than the first time I got l*id. We made our way down the trail, only losing it a few times, and finally found ourselves at the car. The watch read 11:30. It had taken us 7 hours to get down. The fact that we made our way off that mountain in the dark and nobody got hurt was a complete miracle. Marty and I apologized to gotascii for putting him through all of that and for his part, he took the whole thing with composure. Our next step was to find the closest convenience store, where I had the best grape gatorade of my life.
So there's the story of a couple world class morons who almost died in the SNP...
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