My sleeping pattern is way out of whack due to work, so I was wide awake early this morning, and figured what the heck, I'll get out for an early start and have a good day in the bush.
I also just recently picked up an Osprey Atmos 50, and wanted to get some more trail time with it. Way overkill for a day hike obviously, but I wanted to test it out some more, so I loaded it up with gear for an overnighter. As I went to put my knife on my belt, I realized there was no firesteel in the loop. I must have forgotten it when I was out the other night:grumpy:. Fortunately I was heading out to the same general area, and checking to see if my firesteel was still there wouldn't be too far out of the way.
I left my house at 6:53am, and was at the trailhead by 7:00. Gotta love it
The trail to where I'd left my firesteel:
Parts of the trail are pretty much a creekbed:
After about 35 minutes of hiking, I found it right where I left it
Gear for the day. Atmos 50, 10x4 bottle holder kit. Knife of choice was a Breeden SERE 5.5.
The sun coming through the trees:
Now on to where I was planning on heading for the day. There's lots of old wreckage off the side of the main trail:
And a few minutes down the trail:
Sort of a waterfall, sort of just gnarly river:
The bridge higher up to cross that same creek. I was standing up on the bank taking that pic, so the bridge is actually quite a bit longer than it looks.
Once across the bridge, I cut out of the trail to a nice spot under the powerlines. I was initially just going to hang out in the sun for a little bit, but there was a downed pine off the side of the trail, so I figured I'd cut a couple of pieces off and have a fire.
The view looking up:
The view looking down:
Fire prep. It was pretty much a one stick fire(well, more than one stick, but everything was batonned down from the pine):
The wood was still a little green though, so I used some fatwood to get it started:
Burning down:
Once it burned itself out, I made sure it was done, cleaned up, and kept on moving.
This one is a little crazy. There's no way they could've gotten a vehicle across that creek without a bridge, and I don't really think there's any way up coming from the other direction. There's no remnants of a bridge at all, so I imagine it was a pretty sketchy operation, that didn't end up all that succesful. Looks to be the front cab of a truck:
A few feet down the trail looks to be the back end:
And another few feet down the trail, I guess it was a Chevy:
There's tons of mountain biking trails and stuff all around the mountain, but this is probably the most ridiculous stunts I've seen:
My plan was to cross another creek to explore this area:
The ground on that side of the creek turned out to be pretty brutal though. It was pretty much all rotted deadfall that had been covered in duff and moss. This creates voids between the deadfall that are well hidden, and are just waiting to snap an ankle or a leg. I didn't end up doing much exploring because of this, but I got far enough in to see these boulders:
This is the area on the other side of the creek, a spot that I like to come to:
Down towards the creek:
Fire time!:
The wood for this fire was nice, dry, standing deadwood, soI wanted to get this one going just using regular scrapings and not having to use fatwood, but I couldn't coax them into flame, so a dash of fatwood was needed.
That about did it for the day. Once that fire was done, I put it out, cleaned it up, and headed for home. Got back to the car at about 2:45. Not a bad day, though most of the time was spent kickin around a fire. I'm loving the Osprey so far, gotta get it out for a real overnighter soon.
I'd like to make particular note of my Breeden blade. This has been pretty much my go-to knife since I got it. It was my first real high end knife(previous was a Gerber LMF-II), and my first custom. I've done some rough things to it in the past, and it took it all and kept on kicking. However, it'd been a while since I really beat on it until today. Most of the wood for both fires was pine. Twisty, knotty pine. I didn't avoid any of the knots, I just beat right through em. Also, both fires were "one stick fires", and though there was a small amount of hatchet use today, most of the work was done by the knife. It saw a ton of use today, and was still shaving when I got home:
Gotta give credit to Bryan B for making a fantastic knife. I'd trust this thing indefinitley.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Sorry for the crappy pics, my camera and my skills suck
I also just recently picked up an Osprey Atmos 50, and wanted to get some more trail time with it. Way overkill for a day hike obviously, but I wanted to test it out some more, so I loaded it up with gear for an overnighter. As I went to put my knife on my belt, I realized there was no firesteel in the loop. I must have forgotten it when I was out the other night:grumpy:. Fortunately I was heading out to the same general area, and checking to see if my firesteel was still there wouldn't be too far out of the way.
I left my house at 6:53am, and was at the trailhead by 7:00. Gotta love it
The trail to where I'd left my firesteel:
Parts of the trail are pretty much a creekbed:
After about 35 minutes of hiking, I found it right where I left it
Gear for the day. Atmos 50, 10x4 bottle holder kit. Knife of choice was a Breeden SERE 5.5.
The sun coming through the trees:
Now on to where I was planning on heading for the day. There's lots of old wreckage off the side of the main trail:
And a few minutes down the trail:
Sort of a waterfall, sort of just gnarly river:
The bridge higher up to cross that same creek. I was standing up on the bank taking that pic, so the bridge is actually quite a bit longer than it looks.
Once across the bridge, I cut out of the trail to a nice spot under the powerlines. I was initially just going to hang out in the sun for a little bit, but there was a downed pine off the side of the trail, so I figured I'd cut a couple of pieces off and have a fire.
The view looking up:
The view looking down:
Fire prep. It was pretty much a one stick fire(well, more than one stick, but everything was batonned down from the pine):
The wood was still a little green though, so I used some fatwood to get it started:
Burning down:
Once it burned itself out, I made sure it was done, cleaned up, and kept on moving.
This one is a little crazy. There's no way they could've gotten a vehicle across that creek without a bridge, and I don't really think there's any way up coming from the other direction. There's no remnants of a bridge at all, so I imagine it was a pretty sketchy operation, that didn't end up all that succesful. Looks to be the front cab of a truck:
A few feet down the trail looks to be the back end:
And another few feet down the trail, I guess it was a Chevy:
There's tons of mountain biking trails and stuff all around the mountain, but this is probably the most ridiculous stunts I've seen:
My plan was to cross another creek to explore this area:
The ground on that side of the creek turned out to be pretty brutal though. It was pretty much all rotted deadfall that had been covered in duff and moss. This creates voids between the deadfall that are well hidden, and are just waiting to snap an ankle or a leg. I didn't end up doing much exploring because of this, but I got far enough in to see these boulders:
This is the area on the other side of the creek, a spot that I like to come to:
Down towards the creek:
Fire time!:
The wood for this fire was nice, dry, standing deadwood, soI wanted to get this one going just using regular scrapings and not having to use fatwood, but I couldn't coax them into flame, so a dash of fatwood was needed.
That about did it for the day. Once that fire was done, I put it out, cleaned it up, and headed for home. Got back to the car at about 2:45. Not a bad day, though most of the time was spent kickin around a fire. I'm loving the Osprey so far, gotta get it out for a real overnighter soon.
I'd like to make particular note of my Breeden blade. This has been pretty much my go-to knife since I got it. It was my first real high end knife(previous was a Gerber LMF-II), and my first custom. I've done some rough things to it in the past, and it took it all and kept on kicking. However, it'd been a while since I really beat on it until today. Most of the wood for both fires was pine. Twisty, knotty pine. I didn't avoid any of the knots, I just beat right through em. Also, both fires were "one stick fires", and though there was a small amount of hatchet use today, most of the work was done by the knife. It saw a ton of use today, and was still shaving when I got home:
Gotta give credit to Bryan B for making a fantastic knife. I'd trust this thing indefinitley.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Sorry for the crappy pics, my camera and my skills suck
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