Trip report! was gonna do this Sat, but had other things to do. So i got to go out today
another short and sweet day hike. Gonna be descriptive because i don't have a camera)
Started out zipping up the dirt road and drifting corners with the truck 50km/h, 2000 rpms, engine purring like a kitten gorged on milk , steered out of one nasty drift, straightened her out and eased off the pedal and coasted into the busy parking lot. Grabbed the ruck and plunged into the woods, off the regular trail. Walked about ten minutes and stopped, the silence a welcome relief. Gradually the birds started chirping again and the squirrels started running up and down the Douglas firs. I hiked some more, following old trails (used to be part of an old Interpretive forest).
Stopped for several minutes sipping icy cold water from my Camelback Storm. Warm today about 30 degrees Celsius. Took a few minutes to spray some bug spray, the sweet sweet odor of Deet a pleasant scent in the woods. Not even 20 minutes in and i spotted a black bear down the ravine. Not good. More on this later ........
as i looked around, i spotted something!
the Holy Grail!, Eldorado!, the Motherlode! bathed in sunshine and forest dust floating in the breeze, a veritable bounty in the forest, a big Douglas fir tree oozing copious amounts of pitch.
Dropped the ruck , pulled out the tinderbox and started dipping my PJ/wax cotton balls into the pitch, then dipping them in fine wood dust to prevent stickiness in the tin. Pulled out my new Emerson CQC14 (SNUBBY) and started prying off and slicing chucks of bark and globs of pitch. HARD USE KNIVES indeed! that poor Snubby was coated in sticky pitch! I gathered a ziploc bag full of pitch globs and pitch covered bark. Tucked it into another ziploc and stowed it away. About 2lbs worth. The SNUBBY was pretty much gummed up with pitch, hard to open. Thats ok, i carry around 4 knivs on a hike anyways....so i dipped the Snub into the ground up punk wood to coat the pitch so it wouldn't be sticky in the ruck and stowed it away. Pulled out the Emerson Bushman to replace it.
Walked a bit more, sat down to eat lunch (i missed breaky so i was famished). Enjoyed flax seed wholegrain mini pitas, 6 year old locally made organic cheddar (very sharp, almost too strong, but so flavorful in the woods) and a can of tuna in olive oil. Topped it off with chocolate. Burp. :thumbup:
now about that can of tuna.....we have a bear problem on the North Shore, they are fearless, aggressive and can smell food a mile away. That tuna/olive oil odor was STRONG, as was the cheddar. I did not want to risk attracting a bear, I packed away the rest of the food triple bagged in the ruck. Now what about that empty tin of tuna, hell i could smell it from 60 feet away, and i have poor sense of smell.....normally i light a fire and burn the tin black, and burn out the oil and residue...but the forest is bone dry right now..so no fire.
instead i found a tree that had been struck by lightening and i scraped off about 3lbs of black carbon. Packed the oil/tuna soaked can with the black carbon and let it absorb the residue, scraped it out, buried it deep and filled the hole with shredded carbon and chopped up fungus to mask the smell. Repacked the tin can with fresh carbon and crushed it tight, no smell whatsoever! packed it back into my ruck.
walked around a bit more, feeling satiated, my belly looking like a kittens belly after a feed......drank more icy cold water and continued on.
drove the CsabaCanada/Ranger modified Becker BK7 into a few stumps, looking for fatwood. Nothing but moldy wood
. oh well, got LOTS of pitch to work with.
walked along a little ridge, spying the tiny swimsuit clad backside of a rather attractive mid 20's girl
, walking back from a swim in the river. I continued on the ridge trail, ended up meeting up with her group on the main trail.
FOXY bunch of girls!
Headed to the truck and back into the rat race.
thats about it. Got a bag full of pitch, a fungus that i need to cure (for firestarting). The pitch i tossed into the freezer, to make it easier to remove from the bag. Going to let it freeze solid and then crack it into a old pot i use for melting pitch and wax. Will process later.
Now, i'll spend the evening with a bottle of Hoppes #9 and a few rags, cleaning that pitch gunked up CQC14
edit: make that a bottle or 6 of DEAD FROG ale, locally made. (and the HOPPES #9, that Snubby aint gonna clean itself. )
