Hitch 1 Wildlife, Hitch Lead: Jason Member: Jeff

Hitch 1 Wildlife: Jason Klotz and Jeff Stenzel

We started out doing multi-mile hikes trying to identify the aspen plots we were going to record throughout the weeks. The first few days consisted of hiking around Opal Lake, Forney Mountain and Bull Springs area. Not only did we come across some epic views that were completely hidden from the road, but we came across some massive herds of elk and a few golden eagles as well. We feel we are quite comfortable with exploring all of Moyer basin from hiking literally everywhere now. Our backcountry skills have gotten better from the second part of the hitch when we actually went out and camped in a valley. At first, we were a little rusty at using the densitometer and other tools we were given to survey the plots but once we got into the swing of things, it went quite smoothly. We now have a good estimate of what a quarter acre looks like so we no longer have to count paces to determine this. Overall, it was a good hitch experience and we learned a lot about inventorying, the local area and what we are truly made of. Can’t wait to do it again. The only bad part was the dang tick bite :(