Elk Scouting + Bonus Goats!

Due to changing hunting regulations in the state of Washington, I will need to learn to hunt a new unit.  Consequently, I'll be trying to get out a few times prior to September to learn a few new areas and try to up my chances of being successful during the all-too-short Washington archery season.

I left work last Friday on my first of such scouting trips.  I selected a location based published maps and Google Earth images.  While driving there, I saw a cow elk crossing the road as well as two deer: a good sign that the elk I was looking for had already migrated up into the mountains where they should be in September.  I started hiking up a sizable, steep slope at about 8pm, with the intent of setting up camp when it got dark at around 9:30.  At about 9:00, I came over a small rise to see a 5-point bull elk about 10 yards off the trail and only about 20 yards from me.  I froze in my tracks and was surprised to learn that the bull had not yet noticed me.  I watched him feed for several minutes.  At one point, he was as close as 15 yards from me.  This time of year, their antlers are covered in velvet, making them appear much bigger than they are.  By the time I managed to retrieve the camera from my pack, it was too dark to capture a reasonable picture.  About 10 minutes later, the bull fed away from me and I moved on, remaining undetected.

I awoke the next morning as soon as it was light enough to see and continued up the slope to gain a prominent ridge.  When I reached the ridge, I began glassing the basin on the other side.  After finding no life with my binoculars that didn't classify as vegetative matter, I set up my new spotting scope for the first time.  I was amazed at the clarity and ease of use of my new scope/tripod setup.  I soon spotted a cow elk lying in the grass on the shady edge of a meadow.  I watched her for quite a while before moving along the ridge to gain a new vantage point.

A short while later, I spotted a bull in the same basin, a few hundred yards from the cow, with my binoculars.  I quickly set up my spotting scope and watched him feed for about 30 minutes.

Photo taken through the spotting scope

Photo taken with 18x optical zoom camera

Another one with the 18x zoom

This was a nice 6-point bull and the largest one I saw on my scouting trip.  I'm not sure how much more his antlers will grow, if any, but there's a chance he was pretty big for the area.  Alas, I will be hunting cows and spikes, so he's safe from me for at least another year.

As I continued across the ridge, I was heading down a slight snow slope when I saw the top of a goat's head moving toward me over a small rise.  I quickly ducked back out of sight, tucked in next to some trees and rocks, and got my camera back out.  The next several minutes consisted of a herd of goats (about a dozen in total), slowly moved toward me.  With goats as close as about 8 yards, I was able to get some great shots.  At their closest, I grew slightly nervous as I remembered stories of a man gored to death by a goat recently in Olympic National Park.  Once I moved to give away my position (I thought this would make them run away), the goats seemed to become very curious and got even closer before growing nervous themselves.

They're coming right for me!

This little guy just couldn't get enough of the snow

The most adorable kind of kid and its mother

Oh, hi.  Didn't see you there.  May I help you with something?

The basin where I'd been watching the elk is in the background

Shortly after continuing on, I spotted another herd of goats on the same ridge moving in the opposite direction.  I ignored them as I was on a mission to learn as much as I could about elk in the area.  I began an off-trail descent of the steep, forested slope a couple of miles from where I had come up.  Shortly after leaving the main ridge and getting back into the forested zone, I jumped another bull.  He saw me first, at about 25 yards, and only stuck around for a few seconds.

I had no idea how much it would work me by the end, but the 3,500 vertical foot bushwhack descent with plenty of dead fall and pretty much no flat ground to stand on, even for a short rest, left me exhausted by the time I returned to the car. . . a terrific end to a successful scouting mission!

Mt. Baker Ski

Back in early June, Ava, Kris, Evan and I set off to climb and ski Mt. Baker.  For those familiar with the ski area named Mt. Baker, take note that this is not the same place.  The ski area is several miles from the mountain, between Mt. Shuksan and Mt. Baker at about 4,000 to 5,000 ft in elevation.  Mt. Baker proper is a 10,781 ft, heavily glaciated volcano.

On our way up to camp on the first day

We opted for the Easton Glacier route as I was familiar with it and knew it would make a fantastic ski descent.  We parked at about 3,100 ft, shortly before reaching the Schriebers Meadows parking area as the road was still impassible due to snow.  Great news!  We'd get to ski from the car and not have to haul our skis up to the snowline.  We took our time ascending to treeline where we set up camp and proceeded to ponder the unstable mountain weather.  A questionable weather forecast, occasional rain, and rapidly morphing clouds kept us guessing.

Camp - at about 5,250 ft

Suspect weather makes for great scenery

We woke the next morning to clear skies and set off from camp at about 0500.  We attempted to time it so that we would be descending the upper part of the mountain at corn-o-clock, the time when the the sun has melted the surficial snow perfectly (not too icy, not too slushy).

Mt. Baker - a mere 5,000 ft above us with absolutely no sense of scale

We made good time skiing up the mountain.  Finding the glacier very well filled in with only occasional crevasses visible and following a heavily trodden path (we weren't the only ones on the mountain), we found it reasonable to continue on skis without roping up.

Snack break part way up the glacier

We made it all the way to the base of the Roman Wall (9,800 ft) before we decided to stop skinning and rope up.  After making good, steady time up this steeper section, we put the skis back on and continued.

Roped up for the slightly steeper Roman Wall section of the climb

Sharing a sandwich on the summit plateau

After topping out on the Roman Wall section, you're on the summit plateau.  To reach the true summit, you must cross about 1/4 mile of nearly flat terrain.  With whiteout conditions (a lenticular cloud had set in on the upper 500 ft of the mountain) and feeling the altitude a bit, Ava decided to wait for the rest of us to tag the summit and return.

Three Amigos Summit Shot - the wind must have been blowing from our left side based on the frost buildup

It didn't take us long to ski over to the summit and back, find Ava in the whiteout, and descend out of the wind and cloud.

More balanced frost action after descending off the summit plateau

To make a long ski story short, we nailed corn-o-clock and had an amazing ski down with permanent grins and frequent giggles.  We stopped at 5,250 ft to pick up our camp and effectively had a 7,650 ft ski run back to the car.

Deschutes River Rainbow Trout

I'm going to try and play a bit of catch up here.  Back in May, Molly and I traveled down to Oregon to join our dad on a Deschutes River fly fishing trip during the stone fly hatch.  The trip was in honor of Dad's recent 60th birthday!  We went with Helfrich Guides (Drake and Rob) who had an excellent reputation and still managed to exceed expectations.  I'll admit it was weird to to be catered to, but it was scary how easy it was to get used to.

The trip involved floating in drift boats for three days and spending two nights on the river, taking out in Maupin, OR where most people put in for the classic raft run.  This was my first time fly fishing for "real".  By this I mean that I've caught dumb alpine lake brook trout in lakes that never get fished, but never even attempted something like this.

After catching many trout on dry flies in three days, I developed some opinions of the sport that I never had before.  Mainly, I was stoked at how "athletic" it was.  No, I wasn't breathing hard, but the requisite hand eye coordination and reaction time required to set the hook before the trout realizes it's a lip-ripping trap is pretty rad.  Also, chest waders make everyone look really awesome.

Drake and Me with a nice Rainbow! (Photo by Molly)

Josh - Molly - Dad

Molly with one of her first fish caught on a fly rod

Drake coaching Molly

Snoqualmie Mountain

It appears Spring is here, or at least doing a brief cameo appearance.  Taking advantage of the beautiful weather, Molly, Evan, Ava, and I went up to Snoqualmie Pass to attempt, yet again, a ski descent of Snoqualmie Mountain.

Clothing accessories can be a dead giveaway that it's springtime

 We found the skinning to be fairly technical on steep, icy terrain.  I'm generally not an advocate of ski crampons, but there's no doubt that they would have been useful today.

Skinning up the west side of Snoqualmie Mountain

The views of Rainier didn't suck

. . . neither did the views of Chair Peak

At the top, we considered making a lap off the backside or skiing the Slot Couloir, but the tracks made by previous skiers revealed about 3 inches of powder snow over a sheet of ice, making these steeper lines less appealing.

Everyone loves summit ski descents

We ended up skiing back down the way we had ascended and hit the snow just about right: earlier, and it would have been too icy; later, and it would have been too softened by the sun and warm temperatures.  On the way home we stopped at Seattle Bouldering Project to top the day off with a bit of gym climbing - good times.

Real Ski Photos

In lieu of an engagement shoot, part of the standard package with our friend and photographer, Matt Pool, we opted for a backcountry ski day.  We suggested the idea to Matt a while back, and managed to convince him it was a good idea for him to haul his not-so-light camera equipment and follow us around for a photo-documented day of skiing.  We scheduled the day far in advance, so the fact that we had over a foot of fresh snow and were rapidly accumulating more was luck of the draw.

Matt with all the gear we made him carry

When all was said and done, Matt did an incredible job of both capturing the day and getting some amazing action shots.  The photos can be viewed at: http://mattpoolphotography.smugmug.com/Clien/Ava-and-Josh/Engagement.  Matt also put together his own blog post with a paired down selection of the photos at: http://www.mattpoolblog.com/ava-josh-backcountry-engagement-session/.

Montana!

For about the last year or more, Ava and I have had a bit of an obsession with Montana.  This manifests itself in many diverse ways.  One example of this is that after battling through Seattle traffic for an hour in order to travel about 5 miles, we'll state matter-of-factly that this would never happen in Montana.  At any rate, we finally committed to a road trip in which we would spend 4 days skiing in the wonderfully underpopulated state of Montana.

Our first stop was Missoula, where we headed toward Lolo Pass in search of snow cover.  While most of the Rockies were suffering even more than usual for a solid snowpack, the situation seemed particularly wanting in the Missoula area.  We drove the Impreza up a snowy Forest Service road slightly farther than we reasonably should have.  Unfortunately the road was the only part of the hillside with snow on it, but we managed to have a good day out anyway.

Aerial Snow Starfish

Then we were off to Bozeman, where we had booked a place on Air BnB for the duration of our trip.  Over the next three days, we encountered nuking snow storms, blue skies, and came a long way in terms of figuring out the backcountry ski scene in the Bozeman vicinity.

First Peek at Deer Creek Peak

Deer Creek Peak Summit (me sporting a front rat tail)

Shreddin' Hella

Backside at Lick Creek

The snowpack was pretty consistent, with one to three feet of snow over about 6 inches of facets making for predictably unstable conditions everywhere.  Relatively cool air temperatures were great for powder preservation, so even when it wasn't snowing we had plenty of powder snow to ski on.  In four days of Montana backcountry skiing, we saw only one other backcountry skier, and that was in the parking area.  For the most part, it was hard to even find tracks from previous visitors, and this was on a holiday weekend. It's safe to say that Montana was everything we'd hoped it would be.

Archery Success!

While I still stand behind my argument that hunting success can be defined as going hunting, having a great time, and coming home with exciting stories, this time success took the form of my arrow resulting in freezer fodder.  Yes, after two years of semi-dedicated hunting, I killed my first big-game animal!

For the late archery season, I was inspired by Kris's success hunting blacktail on Whidbey Island on Ann and Ron's property.  Luckily, Ann and Ron were still excited about culling the deer population around their home, so I had no problems obtaining an invite.  I ended up traveling out there on the last day of November with Pat (Ann's brother). Evan, who had never really been exposed to hunting and wanted to see what it was all about, joined us the following morning.

On December 1st, I was up in the second story of their barn shortly after first light.  My plan was to use the elevated vantage point to locate deer, and then figure out how to hunt said deer based on their exact location.  If things went perfectly, the deer would walk within shooting distance of one of the windows and I wouldn't even have to stalk it.  The barn was my glorified tree stand.

After a few hours of seeing no deer, Evan showed up.  We proceeded to spend the rest of the morning playing cribbage in the barn, waiting for a deer to walk by.  The deer continued to elude us for the rest of the morning, at which point we decided to try Ron's idea to hunt some of the property he owned about a mile away.  With me stationed along a fence line, Ron, Pat, Even, and 'T' (Ron's grandson) tried to jump deer and push them toward me.  In doing this, Ron and 'T' jumped two deer, but I never saw them.

I made sure to be back in the barn for the couple hours before dark as I thought this the most likely time for deer to be up and about in the yard.  Several hands of cribbage later, Pat came out to the barn to join Evan and me.  Pat would periodically check out one window while I played cribbage with Evan from a location where I could see out the other.  About a half hour before dark, Pat walked over to the window he was diligently checking and calmly announced there was a deer outside.  In a much calmer manner than I felt internally, I replied, "Really?  That's great.  We've been looking for one of those."  I grabbed my bow and hurried over to the window.

Sure enough, there was a deer standing in the yard, which I ranged at 24 yards.  It was quartered toward me, effectively blocking any shot at it's vitals.  As I was meat hunting and this was a reasonably good-sized deer, I decided to shoot as soon it presented a shot.  For what seemed like an eternity but Evan confirmed was actually about 6 minutes, the deer continued to feed while quartered to me, it's front shoulder safely guarding it's vitals.  During that time, I was able to study the deer and convince myself I was calmer than I was.  I noticed what appeared to be two light colored markings on it's fur right above it's eyes.

After about 6 minutes, the deer finally took a step and rotated into more of a broadside position.  With what seemed like pure instinct, I drew my bow, sighted my 20-yard pin about an inch higher than I wanted my arrow to land, and slowly squeezed the trigger on my release.  The next thing I knew, the deer had dropped right where it stood, kicking around on the ground.  I instinctively knocked another arrow and shot a second time.  With two arrows though both lungs, the deer expired quickly.

After walking up to the deer, I noticed that the two light patches I had mistaken for off-colored fur were tiny spike antlers, about 1.5 and 3 inches long.  Turns out I shot a young buck!  In the waning light, Evan and Pat took pictures while I posed with my first archery kill.  After about 35 days of bow hunting over the last two years, I finally turned an arrow into something more calorically valuable.  Thanks to Evan, Pat, Ann, Ron, and 'T' for helping make this happen!  Additional thanks to Evan and Pat for helping me process the deer, and thanks to Ava for supporting me in my hunting endeavors.

While hunting in a rural area with a severe deer overpopulation did not present the same challenge as the more wilderness-oriented elk hunts I've been on, it served as a great stepping stone in building my confidence in shooting at wild game, which is vastly different than a target.  I now have a renewed excitement and confidence leading into next year's September hunting season, but for now, it's ski season!

Deep Deep Pow Pow

My first day of ski season was downright epic.  With 39 inches of light, fresh snow, face shots were plentiful and breaking trail was burly.  Ava, Craig, Melissa, and I made our way up to Skyline Ridge (across from Steven's Pass Ski Area) on December 8th.  Even on 25 to 30 degree slopes, building speed was a challenge.  The entire day seemed to be in slow motion.  Images of Ava skiing down with snow billowing over her head were classic and would have been worthy of a magazine cover if we'd managed to capture it properly.  While breathing was often difficult for me while skiing down with blower powder seeking the depths of my lungs, Ava would literally have benefited from a snorkel.  Thanks to Craig for capturing a few shots and videos of the day's antics.

Josh

Josh's Head

Ava

Ava

13.1

After a 5-year hiatus from my amateur running career, I decided I don't hate running anymore.  With group motivation provided by Molly, Ava, and myself, we all trained for and ran the Grand Ridge Trail Half-Marathon near Issaquah, WA.  The trail was primarily and out-and-back (or in-and-out as Molly liked to call it) with a slight deviation in the middle.

Looking at past race results, I thought I'd have a chance to do really well based on winning paces of around 8 minutes per mile.  It didn't take long for me to realize that this was a blistering pace considering the 2,000 ft of elevation gain and loss over the 13.1 mile course.

The run itself was relatively uneventful as controlled falling on alternate legs brought us up and down hills on terrain that never seemed to be flat.  We all ran together until the first downhill, at which point I let gravity take over and started passing people.

I steadily passed people as the race progressed, and almost nobody passed me.  I was super happy with this as it meant that I didn't go out too hard and peter out toward the end.  Rather, I paced myself well and picked up the pace toward the end.

I was hoping to complete the race in under 2.5 hours.  When all was said and done, I finished in 2:18:08 with an average pace of 10:32/mile.  While far from making the podium, this was good enough for 17th place out of 161 finishers.  Molly came in 37th and Ava finished in 49th, all within about 18 minutes of one another.

Professional photos taken during the run:
Molly and Josh
Molly
Ava

The run served as great motivation to get in shape, which was my primary reason for paying to do something that I do all the time for free.  Seeing as I didn't injure myself during the training or the race, I think I might do something like this periodically as my fitness carrot.  But for right now, it's time to wrap up the hunting season and focus on skiing some epic northwest powder!

Meat in the Freezer

This year Kris drew a multi-season deer tag for Washington.  This means that he was able to hunt the archery season, muzzle loader season, and rifle season with the appropriate weapon.  Without this tag, you have to choose one.  After drawing the tag, Kris went out and bought a rifle so he would be prepared in the very likely event that he didn't shoot a deer with an arrow during bow season.

A short while and a little research later, Kris realized he had an opportunity to hunt blacktail deer on his aunt-in-law's (Ann's) property on Whidbey Island.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that hunting with rifles is not permitted on the island, so Kris had to purchase a shotgun.  Shotguns are allowed as the bullets (slugs) they shoot travel much shorter distances than those from rifles.  With the proper gun acquired, Kris was ready to take advantage of this opportunity.

Regulations on the island allowed Kris to shoot "any deer".  As he had never killed a big game animal before, he had no intentions of being picky.  The first deer to get within about 100 yards of him was going to get a shot fired in its general direction, possibly getting hit depending on how well Kris sighted in his shotgun and was able to control his excitement.

About 15 minutes before daylight last Saturday, Kris and I made our way to the top (second) story of Ann's barn.  We removed the screens from a couple windows and situated ourselves so that we could each look out windows facing in opposite directions.  About 10 minutes after it started to get light, I saw a rabbit on my side, so I told Kris to come over and practice sighting his rifle on fur.  He did this, and a short while later the rabbit bounded out of view.  When Kris returned to his post at the window opposite the bunny, he immediately noticed a deer standing in the yard below him, oblivious to our presence.

He became so excited that speech became difficult and his coherency diminished.  I heard him utter, "There's a deer over here," so I walked over to see what was causing his altered mental state.  When I looked out the window in the early morning light, I remember thinking, "That's a pretty big doe for an island blacktail . . . wait . . . it has antlers . . . it's a buck!"  At this point I became about half as excited as Kris, which is really freaking excited.  However, I was able to overcome this and talk Kris through the next few steps, pretending to be calm the entire time.  It seemed we had plenty of time, so I told Kris to range the deer.  He did this and ranged him at about 75 yards.  I knew his first two reticle points in his scope were for 50 and 100 yards, so I calmly advised him to get a good rest and hold the area between those two dots right behind the buck's front shoulder.  Of course, Kris knew all this but his excitement was getting the better of him at this point and I think a calm, methodical voice helped him out.

Meanwhile, the buck was standing broadside in the middle of the yard like he was posing for a photo shoot for several minutes.  He wasn't feeding, wasn't bedding down, just standing there waiting to get shot.  At one point, Kris knocked something over in the barn, and the buck looked up and seemed nervous for a few seconds before going back to standing broadside.  After I moved a chair out of the way, Kris got a good rest on the window sill and mentioned how nervous and shaky he was. I calmly advised he take a few deep breaths, make sure his safety was off, take his time as the buck wasn't going anywhere any time soon,  get a steady hold, and ease the trigger.

Ten seconds later, "BOOM!"  Simultaneously, the deer reared up on it's back legs and bounded into a ravine and out of site.  I could tell by the way the buck jumped that he had been hit solidly, but I didn't know exactly where.  Two seconds after shooting, Kris burst into exuberance: shouting, hugging me, shouting some more.  At this point, we both felt like all the hunting days we put in over the past two years was finally going to result in some treats for the freezer.  While it only took about 25 minutes of "hunting" to put a bullet in this buck, we'd collectively hunted hard for about 40 days over the past two years with nothing tangible to show for it.

After waiting for a couple minutes, we decided to go down and see where the buck had gone, hoping that he hadn't run onto someone else's property to die.  As soon as we got to the edge of the ravine, Kris spotted the buck not 20 yards from where it stood when he shot it.  Now it was really starting to register with me that while Kris would have been more than happy with a doe, he had just killed a big-bodied forked horn!  And a pretty nice one by island standards.

We took several pictures before dragging the buck to a convenient processing location at the edge of the yard.  Since it was only about 7:45 am, we took our time, harvesting as much meat off of the deer as possible.  We then had to pack the meat about 130 yards to the driveway.  Later that evening, Ava and Mel joined us on the island and we all had a terrific, local, fresh, organic, free-range meal.

After the excitement wore off, I realized that this was the first time that I had been the most experienced hunter in a group when an animal was harvested.  When other, more experienced people are involved, it's easier to be successful but harder to feel much ownership in that success.  In this instance, Kris and I more or less had to work together to figure things out, making his/our success immensely more rewarding.

I occasionally lose sight of the fact that Kris shot this buck, mistakenly thinking I had a bigger role in it than I did.  I am responsible for getting Kris into hunting less than two years ago, and I like to think that my calm coaching in the heat of the moment was also very helpful, but Kris did the rest himself.  I am very happy I was able to accompany him on this successful outing and I hope to accomplish something very similar with my bow in December.