If I am not mistaken, some of that misery Brent described on the "back side" drove us to the "front side" or the Alpine side of the divide. I was young, but it seems like the first hunt on the Alpine side, with the Foxes in tow, was another disaster. We rode/hiked up in a rain storm, set up a wet camp near McDaniel's Cabin, endured a miserable night, and woke up to 18" of snow the next morning.
I can still remember sleeping in that little orange nylon A-frame tent next to Dennis and (Brent?). I was crammed over against the side and woke up at O-dark-thirty to find the tent pushed against my freezing cold and wet face. I couldn't quite understand why the tent was pressed against me, so I reached up and pushed the nylon wall away from my face. Instantly, two things happened. First, a shower of freezing water rained down all over me and my bag. Secondly, the tent wall sprung back into place as an avalanche of snow slid off the side. It was then that I knew we were in trouble.
Sure enough, when light came, we unzipped the tent to look out and see the damage. You know it is going to be a miserable morning when you look out of the tent from your sleeping bag and can only see a wall of white. We literally had to get on our knees to see over the bank of snow built up in front of our tent. I suspect only the top half of our tent was visible to the naked eye. On top of that, the fog had settled in and you couldn't see more than 20 yards in front of you. Nice!
And so began the cold, wet miserable march back down the mountain. Another excellent McGhie hunt!
1 comment:
Ya, that was a dandy hunt, actually at Turner's Cabin and just pounded us with snow. I still remember Dennis saying, "This is bull crap, I'm outta here!" Only problem is he had no idea what direction to even start walking for home.
We had another snowy miserable hunt where we hiked up the night before, Todd Murdock came with me, and Dad was bringing up our camp on Charlie's horse. But he never showed, so we finally hiked off the mountain in the dark, freezing our butts off. Ran into tag clear down by the trail head just coming up in the dark. He was very glad to see us coming down, until I told him Marty and Steven were still up there. LOL Dad pressed on and we went and stood around Bill Brian's camp fire and ate dinner with them. Todd never went deer hunting again. LOL
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