Last year I was lucky enough to be able to tag along with Dan Staton, a local bow hunter from the Spokane area, on his limited entry archery mule deer hunt. We both woke up around 5 am worked a full shift and then proceed to leave at the same time in separate vehicles at 11:00 pm that night. We drove for 16 hours non-stop hitting the trail head around 3. Dan got out his bow and began to shoot but something seemed to be off. He made adjustments and hesitantly decided it was as good as he could get it without screwing everything up. As we were prepping our gear we noticed how dry it was. This made us a bit nervous about how much water would be up on top of the mountain. Our packs were both HEAVY! I recall carrying two DSLR cameras, 3 lenses, a Vortex Razor 20-60x spotter, two tripods (including a larger heavy duty vortex tripod), 1.5 liters of water, and the rest of my gear*. (*Most of my gear isn't super light weight backpacking gear, I'm working on it
) We then started hiking at about 8000ft and made it two camp three hours later at 10000ft. The pack in was tough but doable. Who knows if sleep deprivation has anything to do with it. Once we hit the top all the pain in my legs went away to see how beautiful it was. We set up camp in some quakies near a small stream and crashed for the night ready to hit it hard in the morning. I'll let you guys watch the video to find out what happened after that. Hope you enjoy it!
