Roughing It

Yesterday a friend and I were discussing a possible trip to the mountains this summer to go backpacking. It got me thinking about all the good times I've had on backpacking trips. The great plains are great, but this post is in honor of the greater Rocky Mountains.


As a twelve-year-old boy scout on the first backpacking trip I ever took, I hiked 50 miles in five days. I think my pack weighed more than I did.


On trips these days we usually hike into one lake, set up a base camp, and do pack-less day hikes to nearby lakes. That way we can see and go a lot more places, and we have a lot more energy to have fun:

My brother and friend returning victoriously from their conquest to the other side of the lake, and me enjoying an afternoon swim. It was definitely no hot tub.

For me, a backpacking trip isn't complete without a fly rod. One of the benefits of hiking into the middle of nowhere is you get to catch fish that have rarely seen an artificial fly or lure. They have not wised up to to the ways of man, so it's often easy to catch numbers of fish in the triple digits. They're never very big, but they fight as though they are, like this Rainbow Trout I caught on the lake's surface with a low-floating elk-haired caddis.


The rarest, yet most beautiful, trout in North America, the Golden Trout, can be found in only a few places, most of which are thousands of feet above sea level. I had to hike 14 miles to catch this one. Click the pic to zoom in and look how bright red his belly is. God must have been in a colorful mood when he created this species.


Here I stand about 12,000 feet above sea level atop the Continental Divide. Had I spilled my Gatorade in front of me, it would have eventually ended up in the Pacific Ocean. Had I spilled it behind me, it would have been Atlantic bound. The wind was fierce.


This picture was taken atop another windy pass. As we crested the top we noticed a large thunderstorm rolling our way. Carrying my graphite fishing pole in that high and wide open country felt like holding a little lighting rod. Needless to say, we hurried down the hill, praying that the next bolt of lightning was aimed at anything but us.

Somewhere during our descent I misstepped and strained some tendon or ligament in my right knee. For the rest of that trip I limped around straight-legged because any weight on my bended knee sent waves of pain from ankle to hip. Fourteen miles in the back country and injured, with hiking...well, limping...as my only way out was an intimidating thought. Luckily I was with good guys who were willing to help lighten my load by carrying some of my gear. Still, when I finally limped my sad self to the truck at 1:00 AM, I dropped my enemy pack off my sore shoulders and decided I would never go backpacking again.

The next year I packed in the ingredients to make a cheesecake.


When you pack the whole week's worth of food on your back you tend to go for lightweight noodles or dehydrated anything, but we have a tradition of surprising each other with luxury food items, (such as cheesecake). In the past we've brought Pepsi, Johnsonville Brats, or steak with A1 sauce; and I've even seen a fellow packer bake a chocolate cake up there. One year my buddy packed in a watermelon. No kidding. I say he should make it a habit, especially since I was lucky enough to get a piece of it.

Backpacking offers some crazy fun, like skiing down glaciers:


and cliff jumping into ice-cold, alpine lakes:


But it also offers serene and soul-satisfying moments, like my wife and I up with the sun fooling a few final fish before breaking camp to head home.


It's no easy task to put ten or so pack-laden, high-altitude miles under your feet in one day, but it's worth it when you get to wake up to this:

Friends, For Better or Worse

I'm kind of homesick today so I've taken a little stroll down memory lane, looking at old pictures. I had a lot of fun growing up. I dated, played sports, and did what most kids do, but my favorite memories all include two things: the outdoors and my friends. We never got hooked on Nintendo or PlayStation. Instead, we had fun the old fashioned way, even though we didn't always come up with the brightest ideas...

I wouldn't trade those days for any others, even though they are not mistake-free. Like the time we skipped out in the middle of church to go "diggin" (a.k.a: Driving Jake's dad's truck straight up a hill only to slide back down and ruin the bumper).

Or when my buddies came and got me after work (while I was still in my white shirt and tie) to go look for deer, but we ended up breaking the Jeep's suspension playing in a mud pit.

I never did get the mud stains out of that shirt.


One place that saw its fair share of good times is Chris's cabin. Standing on the deck of the cabin is where we first attempted to cut down a tree with our shotguns. His dad was not too happy about it, so we waited to try again until later in the summer on a campout near Pump Ridge where we unloaded our boredom on a much larger tree. Forty five shotgun shells into it we finally realized how stupid the whole idea was and moved on to waste our money elsewhere. That wounded tree still stands in that field as a monument to our senselessness.

The Utah desert is another place where many memorable moments were born. Once on a southern desert trip we found ourselves bored around the campfire. Why not tempt fate by jumping over the fire with a big box burning in it?


When that got old we began searching for more interesting ways to entertain ourselves. "How can we involve guns," we wondered aloud, "Shotguns always make things more interesting." Right about then Ryan yelled from the truck, "Hey, aerosol bug spray is flammable isn't it?" I think it was Chris who linked the two together, suggesting that we place the can near the fire's edge and shoot it into the flames.


We had fun that trip climbing up rock goblins, hiking up slot canyons, and cliff jumping into flash-flood potholes.


I'm surprised we all came out of it uninjured.

On other desert trips we'd go out to hunt turkeys, coyotes, or rabbits, but usually end up messing around, trying to talk each other into letting us shoot a hole in the other one's hat, or seeing if we could keep an old tire rolling by repeatedly hitting the top of it with bullets. Once after waking up early and hunting hard all morning, but not seeing one coyote nor a single rabbit, (and as a result developing an intense need to shoot something), Jake finally found satisfaction for his incredibly itchy trigger finger...

He moved the crosshairs of his dad's .30-06 rifle into place and sent 180 grains of copper-coated lead down range at 2800 feet per second, carrying just over three thousand foot-pounds of energy, (enough to kill a mature bull moose), to eventually strike...of all things...a meadowlark. Pieces were everywhere.


He was so proud of himself. That stunt was almost as bad as shooting a little hummingbird out of the air with high-brass pheasant load. We won't mention who did that one, (because then my wife might not speak to me for awhile).

We've definitely grown up a lot since then, but I do miss it. I love the outdoors. The rise of hungry trout to a dry fly that I tied, the drilling of a woodpecker echoing through a hollow grove of white-barked aspens, the satisfying ache in my muscles after a long hike back to camp, the blended smell of dutch oven chicken and campfire smoke, and the satisfied look in the eyes of my hard-hunted, sun-soaked dog that declares "The world is a beautiful place", all fill me with life and energy; but the people I enjoy it with are what I prize the most.

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I plan to continue making more of "the good ol' days" in the years ahead of me. I have a feeling that though they won't be as senseless as the originals, they'll be just as enjoyable.

Nebraska's Spring Woods

This time of year Nebraska gobblers are out strutting their stuff, hoping to impress the hens whose sides they never leave.

This morning they weren't calling much, and I was lucky that I spotted them before they spotted me. I crept in as close as I dared, set up two decoys, and started calling softly. They gobbled every time I hen-yelped and they eyed my decoys up and down, but I guess my plastic birds just don't compare to the real thing cause they never came.

It's still early in the archery season, and most of the hens have yet to be bred. Trying to coax a gobbler into leaving his ladies is just about impossible. I finally gave up and turned to Plan B: sneak within bow range. I got pretty close too, until this young doe walked up and ruined things.



I don't think she had any idea what I was at first. Still, she bounced off waving the white tail of warning, and the turkeys grew nervous. Though I followed them a little, I never could get close enough for a shot; and eventually left, not wanting to spook them completely out of the woods. The rest of the morning was filled with photos.


Since it is Spring, the bird-nerd blood in me is running thick, so here are a few species you don't find in Utah or Idaho that I spotted this morning.

Northern Cardinal

Winter Wren

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Harris's Sparrow