My Greatest Wilderness adventure!

W

Wanderlust

Joined
May 31, 2009
Messages
472
So I have not been around here for a while and I figured that you all would appreciate this more then most people I tell do.

Some of you may remember back around this time last year I told you about the greatest outdoor job ever that I got the pleasure to have. This past summer I was a crew leader for a Wilderness Immersion Trail crew. Now what that means is that I lead a crew of 6 people, including myself, into the Selway-Bitteroot Wilderness in Northern Idaho to do trail work for four months. The kicker is that we never left the Wilderness. Personally I entered the SBW the first week of June and never even so much as saw the Wilderness boundary until the first week of October. It was the most amazing adventure every.

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Me over looking the Selway River

The living conditions were PRIMITIVE to say the least. I slept in my backpacking tent on the ground the entire time, but we did have a Wall Tent to escape to if the weather got bad. We purchased all of our dry food before we left and we got resupplied every two weeks by mule train. Our water all came from the creek we lived next to, and we ran that through a gravity hang water purifier. For the entire summer we crapped in holes and wiped with Old Mans Beard. Cooking took place over the fire or on backpacking stoves.

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Our Camp
 
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The work was back breaking. Good old fashioned hard work, is good for the soul. As some of you may know in a Wilderness area mechanized anything is NOT allowed. So that means we did everything with primitive tools. Axes, pick-mattocks, loppers, hand saws and the amazing Cross Cut saw. It was amazing! Our job consisted of rebuilding an overrun trail that had not been worked in over 15 years. 12 miles of trail that was all ours. It really makes a man proud to look back at what he has accomplished.

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Enormous tree we had to remove.

Our work schedule could not have been better. We worked HARD for 9 days then had a glorious 5 days off to do whatever we wanted. Persoanlly I spent a huge amount of time exploring and just wandering and enjoying Wilderness life.
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A great find on one of my exploration hikes

I also decided that I was going to learn how to fly fish for the first time. Now I had done it before but only once or twice. Let me tell you that was the best way to spend an afternoon off and the trout were DELICIOUS!
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Now I guess you all want to know what I carried with me, and more importantly which Knives I took with me. Well here is my EDC List:

ESEE-3 in a Martin Swinkles Sheath
Firesteel
A Bic lighter
Bandanna
Watch w/ Compass
Para cord Bracelet
5 ft of P cord
Whistle around my neck
Fenix LDO1
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I should add that my LM Wave and Petzl Headlamp were never far away.

Well I guess I'm done rambling. This was by far one of my greatest adventures and one of the most life changing experiences I have every had. You cannot live in the Wilderness for 4 months without changing for the better. I cannot wait for next season and what it may bring. Be safe out there and remember not all who wander are lost!
 
Great stuff Wanderlust!!!! Thank you so much for your willingness to serve the "Outdoor" Community. :thumbup:

I'm sure the pay was staggering (not in a Donald Trump sort of "staggering" - rather "staggeringly low"), but is all the same much appreciated.

Thats looks like some very different topography from low-hills of Michigan!!!

I'd hazard a guess you learned more in those 3-4 months about backcountry living than in the previous 3-4 years!!!! :D
 
I met a Trail Immersion ( i guess thats the name) guy who became a good friend. I never learned so much about axes from this guy. Also, he introduced me to the glorious pack frame systems. Cool stuff!
 
The pay was low but oh the rewards were so high! And it was quite a bit of change from Michigan but in such a good way. I have had mountains in the blood for a while now and so this summer was great to go off and live like a mountain man for a while.

I will say that my skills improved greatly. I became very proficient with an axe, much better then I thought possible but no where near an expert. We had a forest service advisor who could do AMAZING things with an axe, whom I learned a great deal from. I also focused on lighting fires only with my firesteel. I never once reached for my lighter when lighting a fire and I got very good at it. My crew even got into the spirit of the wilderness and every one of them started a fire with my steel, most of them couldn't even start a fire with natural materials at the beginning of the season. A point I am VERY proud of.

And as requested some more Pictures.

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That sounds like the chance of a lifetime, you're a lucky man. I'd like to hear more about the survival/camp craft you had to do during your daily life and of course MORE PICS PLEASE:D
Did you forage at all or have anyone to show you the edible local plants? Did you hunt/trap any small game to eat?
 
Fabulous! Thanks for sharing. A more detailed gear list would be nice too, so we can get a sense of what extras you wish you had and what you didn't. Only one knife and a multitool?
 
Years from now people are going to still be enjoying the benefits of that trail y'all rehabbed!

So did y'all see any cool animals not normally seen? Did you learn how to sharpen that crosscut?
 
The Compass on my watch was just a cheap one that came with a replacement band I had. I will say that it worked for a while but I wore my watch constantly almost never taking in off and by the end of the summer it had developed a huge air bubble and had stopped working. I feel like it was due to the repeated shock that my watch took due to swinging the axes and Pick Mattocks.

I will try and pull together a more detailed gear list of stuff I took and things I wish I had. Yes I only carried my ESEE 3 all summer, that paired with my LM Wave for the tools were my only real Knives. I took my ESEE Lite Machete but never really got to use it, and almost never carried it. I did pack along my BM Grip, in my bag of luxuries that the mules brought in, just in case anything happened to my ESEE 3.

As far as the camp craft goes we did a lot of customizing of our permanent base camp. I Lashed a tripod for a water bag to create "Running Water" or a faucet idea. We also built a fire pit and the typical tarp hanging and such. Our cooking and serving spoons left something to be desired. The spoons were all to weak to stir our dried beans and other gruel type foods. To remedy the situation I carved us a nice big wooden spoon. That became our main cooking tool. It wasn't pretty by any means but it worked out great.

We brought along a lot of reference books with us on plants wildlife and birds. So we were able to do a bit of foraging for wild edibles but we never got crazy with it because we were so far from care, didn't want to risk it. We did go crazy on some wild strawberries and Huckleberries that were out and they were delicious. We also tried some ginger tea made from wild ginger. We did a good bit of fishing but no real hunting. We tried for some grouse but with no success. I wanted to try and set up some primitive traps but just never got around to it. There was just so much going on out there, so many holes to fish, so many places to explore, sometimes time just got away from you.

We did not end up seeing any special or crazy wildlife. We did see some eagles, elk, mule deer, white tail deer, lots of osprey, and of course the ever present nuisance the Rattlesnake. They were quite annoying, we actually had to kill one in our camp early on in the venture. I ended up dispatching it with my ESEE Machete. It was a tragedy especially since my supervisor was out visiting and wouldn't let me skin it and eat it.

We did not end up learning how to sharpen the cross cut. I did get a good overview of how to do it but we never did such in the field and I have yet to actually get to see it done or do it myself.
 
Oh man thats a memory of a lifetime. Beautiful pics and an awesome adventure. :cool:

You just carved your name in the wilderness for the benefit of all:)

I want to do a wilderness hunt from horse back with spike camps one day:thumbup:

Your trip reminds me of Last of the Dogmen. Both great !
 
That's a great way to spend a summer. Very jealous of that trip. Thanks for posting.
 
Just fabulous!! What an experience and one I dream of doing some day. Thanks for letting me live vicariously through you.
 
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