Hitch 5 Wildlife
SCA Wildlife was back in action, this time in the Lost River Mountain Range of Idaho. Being the range that is home to Mt. Borah, Idaho’s tallest Mt, it was sure to be a good time. Besides some minor setbacks in the beginning of the hitch, everything went as smooth as possible. Each day started with a mighty helping of quinoa flaked banana nut bread with raspberry preserve. Before our super powers kicked into action, we had already begun our days hitting the mountain canyons in search of Aspen plots. Some days were awesome, only hiking a mile and finding almost 15 plots, while others were horrible, hiking 6 miles and only finding 1 or 2 plots; the pure beauty of the scenery around make up for the lack of plots. We saw forests that looked like they belonged to a rainforest, mountain peaks that looked like something from the Alps, wildlife that looked like it belonged at a taxidermy office because everything we saw, besides raptors, was either road kill or attacked by bears or mountain lions. Speaking of bears we even came across a bear trap with bear bait, cameras, and rigged tension lines. As the nights rolled around, it was time to cook and get some rest. But cooking in the rain? That doesn’t sound fun. Luckily, we had access to a local BLM field office with full ammonites. We cooked ourselves some good meals, nachos, pasta, hot dogs with avocado, tomatoes and cheese. Afterwards we had blueberry cheesecake courtesy of one of the crew members. Nights sometime ended with a movie such as Mr. Deeds or G. I. Jane. All in all it was a good and productive hitch to say the least. We surveyed almost 50 Aspen plots and had chances to hike extremely remote mountain locations in Idaho. Did I mention the gooseberries, squaw, golden and rose hips and wild raspberries….Yessss!
