Boulder River Mt Goat

[zoorda]

I wish I would have been better prepared for taking long range photo's. I have a decent camera with a telephoto lens, but it didn't make the cut when I was trying to get weight off my pack. The pack with every thing including rifle and water for the trip in was right at 65lbs.
 

[zoorda]

[180-GRAIN]

Were due for an update

[luvmystang67]

Were due for an update

I second that... this is like that girl that talks big and then on the way home you find out you're sleeping alone that night.

[HUNT-HARD]

 

[zoorda]

Were due for an update

I second that... this is like that girl that talks big and then on the way home you find out you're sleeping alone that night.

That's pretty funny! I have been trying to organize all the photos for this story, just had a buddy email some pics he had taken. This one is from the hike up Neiderprum in late Sept.

[zoorda]

Google Earth view of camp. The trail in is around 3.5 miles, starting at 800ft. There is wash out in the road in that adds another 1.25 miles to the hike. As soon as you hit the trail its starts climbing, I set up camp around 4200ft. It took me 6.5 hours to make the hike in.
 

Expand photo to see where I camped.

[zoorda]

The first part of the trail is pretty nice, fern covered switch backs for about 3/4 of a mile. Then it gets nasty, steep, lots of brush and climbing up roots

[zoorda]

Last day of September I headed back up the Neiderprum trail. I was planning on staying up to 10 days. I was going to be solo for the first week, and then my buddy Ty was going to come up for a few days. This would be the longest solo camping I had ever done, and the terrain was concerning. A guy could brake a leg really easy, especially if I allowed myself to be tempted in to going where I shouldn't chasing after a mt goat. I decided to buy a Delorme inReach satellite communicator. I figure with all the money I had spent buying gear for this trip a few hundred dollars more it was good insurance. I did end up having decent cell service on this side of the mountain most of the time though. When I got up to camp I found my great water source that use to be several feet deep and 20 feet across was almost dried up, this was going to be a problem as the last water I had seen was half way back down and the snow in the goggle earth pics was not here this year. I filled all my water containers, which would last me maybe two days. The water hole was dry the next morning.
Picture from the first trip
 

Picture from this trip, next day it was dry.

[zoorda]

Water had been a problem during a lot of my scouting trips so I picked up a few of these little funnels off the Hennessy hammock web site. They screw right into a water bottle and have a little screen filter. During the storm while on the scouting trip up 8 mile creek trail the bottles would fill in about 45 seconds. It never rained this trip enough to get more than 1/4 of a bottle.

[zoorda]

Along with my water issue I had another concern when I got to camp..... no goats. Where I could see a dozen goats at a time a week earlier, now not a single goat. I glassed the cliffs to the east and the base of the water fall until dark and never spotted a goat.
This is a view of where I camped from the west, looking east. I was camped at the base of the big trees in the middle of the pic. The large rocky area on the left side of the pic is where I could glass from and see for a mile and a half.
 

[zoorda]

The next morning I was on the rock ready to do some glassing at daylight, about the time the sun came up the fog rolled in. Made for some cool pictures, not so good for glassing.
 

[zoorda]

[zoorda]

With the fog blowing in keeping me from doing much glassing and needing to find water, I decided to go for a hike to the east and eventually go up as high as I could go with out ropes.[
URL=http://s499.photobucket.com/user/zoorda/media/MT%20Goat/P1030683.jpg.html][/URL]
My camp was in the middle of the trail the climbers use to get to White Horse mountain.
The patch of green in the upper right side of the picture is the trail up to Lone Tree Pass and ultimately to White Horse mountain.
 

[zoorda]

The good news, I found water. About an hour and a half round trip away from camp.
Bad news, the fog really got thick.