- Joined
- Jun 27, 2011
- Messages
- 266
I'll put out all the good stuff first... this is probably going to be a long one, fair warning.
My wife left yesterday to go stay with family for a while (nothing dramatic, no worries), so I woke up feeling like a man with the world at my feet. I decided that I'd load up a pack, grab my knives and a rifle, drive down to Girdwood and just pick a mountain and go. I was thinking it'd be nice to run across a nice big black bear, but knew the chances were very slim since I've never scouted or even hunted down there.
Found a nice turnout to park in, and got loaded up.
Ok, so I didn't take a single picture on the way up because frankly I was getting my ass kicked. I was hauling ass until I got up to about 800 ft. Once I got above there, the bush went from thick to thicker, with plenty of thorns on every potential handhold. It looked a bit like this, but steeper.
At 1000 ft it got stupid. I started scrambling on all fours more than I was walking or even climbing. I realized that I had chosen just an awful route, but I was stubborn enough to think if I just stuck it out a little longer I'd be rewarded. Dumb. It took me 30 minutes to get the next 156 ft of elevation. I found a tiny opening that would give me a view of the valley and called it good enough.
Pulled out my AD and Wardog and snapped a few pictures and built a little fire. This is where one of the small redeeming factors of the day happened. I always heard that INFI didn't throw sparks on a steel very well. I tried using the spine of the Wardog and it would spark, but it wasn't usable. The spine of the AD was out of the running, and the edges were off limits too. Then I realized the choil on the WD that always kind of annoyed me was the perfect size. It threw absolute fountains of sparks. Now I had some payoff for all the work. I didn't take any firestarting pictures, as I'm really not any good at it and there's nothing I do that hasn't been shown before. Now some glamour shots.
The view from the bottom. I made it up to about where that yellow tree is. Another 100 ft or so higher and I'd have been on almost level ground, though I had no way to know that because of how thick it was up there.
The bad part of the day came when I got home and realized that my Benchmade 950 that I bought myself as an Infantry school graduation gift, and that I'd carried every day for 2 years, wasn't in my pocket any more. I lost it somewhere up on that damn mountain side and have no chance of finding it. Ugh... even though my AD and WD both usurped it as my favorite knife, this still stings. Can't believe I'm sad over a tool, but I just feel like I had so much invested in that knife. Makes me sick that its just going to be sitting in a thornbush rusting for the rest of its existence. Hopefully somebody finds it someday.
My wife left yesterday to go stay with family for a while (nothing dramatic, no worries), so I woke up feeling like a man with the world at my feet. I decided that I'd load up a pack, grab my knives and a rifle, drive down to Girdwood and just pick a mountain and go. I was thinking it'd be nice to run across a nice big black bear, but knew the chances were very slim since I've never scouted or even hunted down there.
Found a nice turnout to park in, and got loaded up.
Ok, so I didn't take a single picture on the way up because frankly I was getting my ass kicked. I was hauling ass until I got up to about 800 ft. Once I got above there, the bush went from thick to thicker, with plenty of thorns on every potential handhold. It looked a bit like this, but steeper.
At 1000 ft it got stupid. I started scrambling on all fours more than I was walking or even climbing. I realized that I had chosen just an awful route, but I was stubborn enough to think if I just stuck it out a little longer I'd be rewarded. Dumb. It took me 30 minutes to get the next 156 ft of elevation. I found a tiny opening that would give me a view of the valley and called it good enough.
Pulled out my AD and Wardog and snapped a few pictures and built a little fire. This is where one of the small redeeming factors of the day happened. I always heard that INFI didn't throw sparks on a steel very well. I tried using the spine of the Wardog and it would spark, but it wasn't usable. The spine of the AD was out of the running, and the edges were off limits too. Then I realized the choil on the WD that always kind of annoyed me was the perfect size. It threw absolute fountains of sparks. Now I had some payoff for all the work. I didn't take any firestarting pictures, as I'm really not any good at it and there's nothing I do that hasn't been shown before. Now some glamour shots.
The view from the bottom. I made it up to about where that yellow tree is. Another 100 ft or so higher and I'd have been on almost level ground, though I had no way to know that because of how thick it was up there.
The bad part of the day came when I got home and realized that my Benchmade 950 that I bought myself as an Infantry school graduation gift, and that I'd carried every day for 2 years, wasn't in my pocket any more. I lost it somewhere up on that damn mountain side and have no chance of finding it. Ugh... even though my AD and WD both usurped it as my favorite knife, this still stings. Can't believe I'm sad over a tool, but I just feel like I had so much invested in that knife. Makes me sick that its just going to be sitting in a thornbush rusting for the rest of its existence. Hopefully somebody finds it someday.
