against better judgement we hiked. it rained. it blew. i'm still not dry. and the wounds to my confidence as an outdoorsman aren't yet fully healed. the russian lakes trail, while majestic and beautiful, can take a juicy bite outta my hairy ass. the plan was to hike in 9 miles to aspen flats cabin for one night. take our time the next day for the next 3 miles to the upper russian cabin attempting to fish a bit behind all the sockeye. i knew there would be much bushwacking to get to the river from the trail. i knew the devil's club would be six feet high. i knew the weather would be fickle. i knew we'd be dancing with bears. i did my best to prepare lora of these facts. she said she was game.
having an adult bear stand up on the trail only fifteen yards ahead of you...downwind, while making a ton of racket, with no where to go because of the thick brush is somewhat concerning. and knowing how long is long enough for the bear to have left the area so we could keep on tramping thru isn't a decision i loved making.
simply put, we were out of shape...something else i was already aware of.
the chips were stacked against us before we even thought about getting motivated to fish.
the cabins were great. the newly remodeled upper russian cabin was amazing. kudos to the forest service. we chopped wood. napped. chopped more wood. watched the wind blow. had some black bear cubs dine on salmon off the front porch near the beach. it was peaceful and relaxing.
fishing was more difficult than i had imagined. the forest service provided row boat was useless due to the wind, although i attempted. this made my arms as useless as my already dead legs. i tried to fish the riverbank, but i admit, the bears had me spooked. they were darting in and out of the river like ghosts. and my visibility was crap. hearing cubs whining and screaming out off in the distance made it tough to concentrate on spotting rainbows amongst the millions of reds.
so the plan was one night at aspen, three at upper russian, back for one night at aspen, then back to the car. well, we gave it two nights at upper russian and said enough. i was craving a cheeseburger. lora was dying for a shower. we both needed a chiropractor. the decision was made to kill it back to the car from upper russian. 12 miles. it was crazy. but i wanted to get back to some water i could fish. oh and it was pouring rain. oh and we were cranky. oh and those fucking bears...especially the brown ones...they weren't scared of anything.
somewhere between the lakes, we shit our pants. i was hollerin' the entire hike. every ten yards it seemed, but probably not. lora had a dinner bell. we were, surprisingly, making great time. then out of nowhere...what sounded like the entire roster of the chicago bears came barrelling thru the woods. it actually was only a black bear, but it was right next to us. and it climbed a tree right after one of my shouts, so i didn't know what the hell was going on. lora said in a surprisingly calm tone, "bear." i said, "shit.", thinking a cub in a tree this close to us equals bad, bad news. i spun around and got lora behind me. a few seconds later it belly-flopped out of the tree and ran off screaming. we both laughed nervously. i tried to convince myself that it was only an adult with no cubs...definitely not an upset, protective mama. we trampled on thru the mess, i believe with a bit more pep in our step.
we got back to the car. collapsed. napped. got some lunch at gwin's. found a comfy cabin with a hot shower. and slept two days.
lessons learned.
No comments:
Post a Comment