Beckerhead West Pics!! Pic heavy ADDED THE WRITE UP!

[Captain Airyca]

I'll do a write up review of the gathering later, I'm exhausted today but i wanted to get the pics uploaded for ya'll.

I Haven't gotten EROCK's pics yet but I'll start with mine.

Yes, they're out of order, don't know why. I'll post a sample of the album, but there's a lot of pics so check out the album for the full experience!


WRITE UP: I'm just going to start typing and see where this goes....



So obviously by the pics the gathering was a ton of fun. I'll just kinda go in order of events. The first day (friday) we mostly just waited for people to show up. OREGON FAL'ER, Dan, and Mark all got there early and spent some time setting some stuff up. I showed up friday morning, with my jeep loaded with a whole box of prizes!



We spent some time rummaging around through them and deciding how we were going to give them out because there was so much cool stuff. Ethan and KaBar really were incredibly generous. Widerstand and Mingo showed up not too long after that and then everyone else started trickling in. Even snakedoc showed up on saturday! He lives way far away and couldn't stay the night because he's got a baby on the way but he drove really far to see us, which was totally cool. We got a group pic on Saturday.

So pictured right to left: I have RRR1977, Awesome, Bill Seigle, oso_blanco, EROCK, Clayton, Snakedoc, Logan, Mark, Widerstand, Mingo, OREGON FAL'ER, Captain Airyca, abrasion, Kelly, and Clinton(i think)



Oh, and barlow braclets!!


Dan was incredibly nice and brought one of his bunnies along for the trip! He knocked it on the head and well, we skinned and ate it. FAL'ER got stuck with the gutting job, I got the fun skinning job :P I started the process with my 11, realized it was incredibly dull and moved on to one of bill's knives, it was really great! I'd never skinned a rabbit before, so it was a great learning experience. And I watched it getting gutted, FAL'ER, yes I'll switch jobs with you next time



Me, peeking inside a rabbit for the first time, not too bad or gross at all!


Dan showing me how to cut around the legs and butt and stuff






Tastes like chicken!




So friday night was just pretty much sitting around the fire chatting, getting to know peoples. Widerstand and Mingo passed around some apple pie moonshine. yes APPLE PIE moonshine. it was excellent!

Saturday morning after breakfast (involving lots of bacon of course) We got right down to business with contests, because there were knives to be won! The first contest was the tomahawk throwing contest. Whomever collected the most cards wins kind of thing. Awesome brought this sweet target along with him and it worked great. and of course.... he cleaned house! He won first place fair and square and received a BK7 and then RRR1977 got second and got a remora.

oso_blanco with the hawk in mid air




Next up was the chopping contest. Let me tell ya, there was some stiff competition!! it was amazing!







And our winners, Mark chopped through the 4x4 in 45 seconds with 55 chops, and logan did it in 45 seconds as well, but with 62 chops. It was a close battle!!


We decided to take a lunch break at this point and Mingo cooked up some delicious ferns in our left over bacon grease. mmmm....



And then it was fire time! Jared totally smoked everyone with his mad fire skills, but there were some decent times! The rules were you could have a knife, a ferro rod and then a piece of pitchwood (pre cut to the same sizes). I really think we all learned a bit from this challenge, it was fun to watch.






Winner!


the second and third person in the fire contest already won knifes and so we decided to give the second prize to Bill, because he placed next in both the chopping and the tomahawk contest.




we spent the afternoon just kinda doing whatever, some people went shooting and stuff like that. in the evening we had a community style stew which ended up being good (we need a bigger pot next time)



Much love from your fellow beckerheads!


The moonshine got passed around again, beer was drank, stuff like that, we epic failed on the joke contest, stuff like that.

I woke up bright and early the next morning, because of my boozing the night before I was still a little tipsy or somethin because I just couldn't sleep and was feeling adventurous so I went and got a few pics of the sunrise....







Jared caught me wandering around...


Breakfast!


sleeping in


The first thing we did sunday morning is mingo took us on a plant walk and taught us things about plants, and what is and isn't edible.





Awesome reading a plant book


Next was the last contest, Shooting a rifle, we each got one shot, and then a pistol competition where if you hit the clay pigeon you were in, if you missed you were out. and then rotated through till one person was left!


Kurt is the one that really helped all of this happen, it was his land we were borrowing for the gathering. so thank you sir!!






Bill got first in the rifle shot and I got second, but he wanted the 14 which was the prize but you could only leave with one knife so he choose the 14 and I got his 2. Sweet!!!


Clatyon one 1st place in the pistol contest and got an 11.




After that we packed up camp and headed home, what a great time. I'm sure I missed some stuff, but thats the gist of what we did. GO TO THE GATHERINGS!! They're worth it!!

[thrillbilly]

holy crap...that's the most overkill I have ever seen done to a stump! LOL

[Captain Airyca]

holy crap...that's the most overkill I have ever seen done to a stump! LOL

that was just a few of the MANY blades at camp. these were just some favorites :P

[MikeyJ]

That looks like tons 'o fun! Pretty nice turnout of folks too...

[wasatchdan]

Awesome! It looks like a hell of a fun time. Looking forward to the full write up.

[clich]

awesome. nice work skinning that rabbit. howd the RBK do for you guys?

[dresnor]

Looks like you guys had a great time.

I need to go out west...

Jeremy

[tradewater]

Oh hell yes. Looks like a blast.

[MyWifeThinksImCrazy]

I so wish I could have stayed for it!

[The Warrior]

Looks awesome.

[axesbold]

Looks great... looking forward to the writeup also...

[Bill Siegle]

Thanks for the pics! Had a blast!

[FAL'ER]

Here's the synopsis, Knives, food, beer, suppressed weapons, chopping, night vision w/ IR lasers, fire, hawk throwing and a nature walk.

[Bladite]

very interesting.

backstop on the rifle range seems ... non existent

lots of nice knives

where/when was the rabbit bagged? yay, skinnering!

[LG&M]

Thanks for the pic's looks like a lot of fun. I hope to go one day.

[PapaTango52]

bacon! bacon bacon bacon! looks like a good time had by all.

love that group knife in the stump pic. and I missed a target that big. from no more than 20' away too.

[Murphnuge]

I will make it out sometime, I have to! Nicely done all, I'm jealous!

[BRL]

awesome, great pics and it looked like everyone except the rabbit had a great time!

[Axisjoe]

That looked like a great time.

[Haze240]

Damn. OK, Cap'n you can put me down as Attending for next year's (or whenever the next Beckerhead West gathering is). I will drag my watterlogged butt down there no matter what, I was bummed that I didn't plan out a way to attend this year, looks like your guys had a great time.

I'm still gonna look into a Beckerhead North gathering :P