Day 2
The second day started at 630am with the sun, and the birds, the damn birds. My security system worked well, it was an improvised idea at the time, lessons learned; next time I may place a second rung, the first one was at about waist level. I think a rung about 6 inches off the ground would work well too account for sneaky little guys .....like raccoons.
So raccoon/s got into my pack, well got into my food. I lost all but one vacuum sealed food pack, however on a whim i had packed one of what i call my "rice rolls". (basically sanitize a two litre bottle and let fully dry put 5-6 bay leaves one the bottom, add some chicken or beef stock powder, then your rice. top with a few more bay leaves and seal). i think this may be a life saver. I gathered my remaining stores and went over my camp site three times, so as not to miss anything. I checked my water collection, and saw i had collected about 4L of water(light rain), unfortunately, upon closer inspection i saw what may or may not have been small paw prints on the bottom of the sentiment, and since i only had a camel back and didn't want to possibly contaminate it, i dumped it. I deconstructed my lean too (which i might add worked very well) and returned the site to as close to as i found it, ensured the fire was completely out (pee) and buried it. I them completed a full medical inspection on myself and was ready to take my bearings and head out.
800am, i was munching on a power bar from my pocket and making decent time i figured if i did a km an hour i was in good shape for getting to the meeting spot at 10am. At this point i had my axe attached to my B.O.B. and machete on my belt and my handy walking stick in hand. it never occurred to me at the time but my walking stick could have made a great cross member for my lean too in the event i could not find a good one. At around 915 am i stopped to look at my map again as i had come to an impasse, a gorge about fifty meters wide and about twenty meters deep, with flowing fresh water the bottom. i didnt notice it on my map earlier in the morning but i was definitely there now. One look at the map and i knew i could not go around, and a trip to a road with a bridge was a gamble that may add hours to my trip. so with that in mind i prepared for the decent. I had no heavy rope with me to use as a repel, and in fact the decent was not really that sheer, but i knew descending with a B.O.B weighing 45lbs plus machete, axe, walking stick and firearms (of which i will not disclose for obvious reasons) would not be easy, so sat down and resolved to find a way to tame this beast, plus there was water, and i could use a refill. after 30 minutes i had what i thought was a good plan. i would store everything in the bag and lower it down to the bottom, wrap the paracord around a tree and tie off the other end to myself, and use the weight of the bag as a brake fall so to speak as i hiked down. It worked fairly well and i was able to recover all the paracord. The water below was not deep and complied with all the water basics, it was clear and didn't smell, it was flowing and not stagnant and from what i could tell was fairly up river, so I finished off what was left of my tap water and filled my camel back, i did have iodine and water tabs but didn't use them for 2 reasons. one i knew i could boil it in a few hours and at this point was very well hydrated and, two i wasn't quite sure how the chemicals would react with the material of my camel back. Onward, the trek up was easier, and i did the same thing in reverse. the rest of the hike was uneventful and i reached the meeting area around 11am.
there was no sigh of my friend, so naturally i rechecked my position, it was true. it is natural in these kind of cases to panic, but i knew i would have to wait and wait some more (our plan had a 24 hour redundancy, in the event that we did not meet each other within 24 hour of either of us being there we would stop everything and contact the appropriate people, our families had maps of our starting and end location and a list of materials. and so i waited, i thought about starting a fire, but choose instead to do a 200m parameter search. until that 24 hour time was up, we were sticking to the plan. i did end up making a small fire, in some training that i've had, i've learned how to make a "tactical fire" so i made a small one just to boil some water.( for more info on this method either ask or google it). in my parameter search it was my opinion that we were in a bad spot, but we would address that in due time. about two hours passed, i was taking stock of all my stuff, when i heard banging on a tree. our confirmation signal!!
three fast strikes against a tree to which i would reply with two slow and he would reply with three fast and stop( essentially S.O.S in morse code)( its important to note that this is changed monthly, and this code was chosen because its easy) it was my friend and we quickly met up and exchange stories, rested and took notes.
My friend agreed that we were at a tactical disadvantage where we were, so we discussed, look at maps and decided on a new place. the river i had crossed.
we were short on food only a day of pre packed, so we made our way to the river, at around 3pm we got to the river and set up camp, made food and talked, we decided we would take turns standing watches 4 on 4 off.
end day 2
what will follow with be what we did tactically, as this is not a tactical forum i will only post if there is interest.
....i will only post if there is interest.
There's interest!
reading, awesome reporting!
http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/
good read... good ideas that will help our family be more organized.. Thanks for this 🙂
Will be waiting for the sequel. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Zz
RElapse,
Excellent. Please tell more.
Mountainman.
Keep it coming. This is good stuff!
GM1
Chance favours the prepared mind
How did coons get into your food? Isn't it standard wilderness practice to get your pack high off the ground via a tree branch that's high up, and well away from the tree trunk. So bears and other critters don't get it?
Here read this before you attract more dangerous critters than a few coons. http://www.princeton.edu/~oa/training/bearbag.shtml
Howler; I'm going to assume that for literary drama, he added in the challenges of the racoons for those of us who would not have thought of the 4-legged bandits... Just my guess. Adds a little heightened suspense. Will he now have enough food to make it to the final destination or the next food opportunity the crowd wonders?!?!?
(of course, maybe he didn't think of them either but I like my version better when it goes to production and script)
Good reading!
(thanks for the link as well Howler)
How did coons get into your food? Isn't it standard wilderness practice to get your pack high off the ground via a tree branch that's high up, and well away from the tree trunk. So bears and other critters don't get it?
Here read this before you attract more dangerous critters than a few coons. http://www.princeton.edu/~oa/training/bearbag.shtml
Howler,
It may be, that due to the tactical nature of the outing that all gear was kept close to RElapse. Hanging the food may have been seen as a tactial error, like hanging a flag at the end of a hoochie??
But it does provide a lesson to us all, even in a tactical move situation, food must be secured and camouflaged from sight and from thieving critters - great and small. Those not in coon country, remember squirrels and chipminks are not cute little critters, they are theiving buggers. They will naw through a food bag in no time. Of course, there are rats, weasels, mink, fishers, martens and birds. All of which can make easy destruction of your food resources.
Remember, a smart person learns from their mistakes, a wise person learns from the mistakes of others.
Thank for providing the lessons-learned RElapse. You could turn this tales into a book or a blog.
Cheers,
Mountainman.
Sorry for my reaction. I grew up in bear country. If you went out in the woods you had better know all the rules of bear safty. Even my parents made a mistake once of cooking near the tent. That night they had a bear sniffing under their tents rain tarp.
There are bags that are critter proof. just google bear proof food storage, and you will find several different styles. Just remember to store not just food, but your toiletries as well. Bears love the smell of toothpaste, they can follow the scent of your stuff from miles away.
Everyone who grew up in bear country has at least one famiy story and one personal story, I will do my best to keep it short, so my grandparents always made a trip to B.C. for fruit each summer, and one year they did some berry picking, and on the trip home, it was of course warm so they decided that they would put the cans of fruit in a river to keep them cool, the cans had big heavy lids on them..
Needless to say, along came mr gizzily, swip, and eat, swip and eat.. I was amazed as a kid to see that can with those claw marks moving though it.. that was one! big bear..
BACK in 1999 yellowknife area, we had what the locas called the summer of the black bear, bad fires and the resulting aftermath of loss of food in the burned area's had moved a number of bears, most of set up camps but truck slept that summer and if you saw a bear, you woud blow your horn and so would others and you could folloew where they were at by the sound of the horns, coming or going.
anyway out for a days canoe, stop to make lunch, set camp, make cook fire, did't even start the cooking, and i can thought heard something way up the ridge, hill's like, i don't and starts cooking well, we sure heard him coming, we look at each other and i'm like only a bear would make that much noise and head straight for us, never broke camp so hard and fast, we barely had time to get the canoe pushed out and paddling when he hit the camp, he was something else, and within a week it had been done one to many times.
http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/
thank you for all the comments, and advice. when you do something like this, it is in the hopes that you learn lessons and improve on them before you really need it as for the comment and I quote "a smart person learns from their mistakes, a wise person learns from the mistakes of others." this is true, however I would add that a fool doesn't even try and lets other make the mistakes for him, I now know my limitations and where i need to improve in a real world challenge. i would hazard a guess thats more then most people.
but i digress
food was strung up, let me clarify.
I had vacuum sealed freeze dried meals, in my pack I assumed (incorrectly) that critters would not smell it because of the hermetically sealed packs. To keep the safe I did indeed string them up with the classic over the branch of a large tree trick, properly done i might add.
If you don't know or didn't know, and as i failed to remember, and now will never forget, raccoons are accomplished climbers, now before i go on let me add that i can not confirm it was raccoons, but it definitely wasn't monkeys!! I suspect that they literally pulled the bag up from the branch, but to be honest i have no idea crafty bastards.
I had protection, and have been situations much sketchier then this in the past, like one commenter said, everyone in BC has a story, just goes to show that no matter how much you plan, and no matter how much you think you know, you may still be caught off guard. I love discovering my limits and testing my knowledge
knowledge is power
lastly, "adding" raccoons simple is not the case, I had enough food to last a day or two, but they would be small meals after my food ran off. I guess in the end i was more concerned with the immediate physical threat of bears of cougars, that i forgot about racoons ... live and learn!!
day 3 will be posted soonest
again thank you all for your comments and interest and support.