I needed to get out of the house but could not go too far so I decided to make a return trip to the Sekrit hunting camp. This time we had a fire and enjoyed hot tea from water heated on the fire.
My friend only had experience starting fires with split wood and an axe. Fire starting was not going well. I had my friend step aside and I showed him how to start a back country fire with so-called "squaw wood". That is the tiny dead twigs attached near the base of a douglas-fir tree.
It takes a lot of work when this stuff is wet because you have to keep feeding the fire with tiny twigs until you have coals, only then can you add pencil sized pieces of wood. It takes a lot of tiny twigs to get to the hot coal stage but the twigs burn up fast so you have to keep adding them and adding them and then once you have some coals you can finally add pencil sized pieces. It takes quite a while before you even dare to put baseball bat sized pieces on the top to dry.
It takes time and patience and a lot of work to light a fire in a wet rain forest with no fire starter this time of year. Even once the fire was going good we knew that we could not let it sit for too long without adding more bits of wood to the sides to try to get them dry enough to eventually add them to the fire.
On the way in we saw a very large trap set up on Forest Service land but it was not loaded. It would have taken something larger than a pick up truck to haul the trap in I think. Also who ever hauled it in must have had a key to the gate. Strange that it was left unlocked but not loaded.
I don't understand why Green Diamond aka Simpson gets to put a gate across forest service land. The Green Diamond gate should be placed where the actual Green Diamond land starts in my opinion.
I was expecting rain and was not feeling energetic so I only took my little point and shoot camera.
4 miles 300 feet elevation gain 500 calories
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| Very fresh bear poop |
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| mystery trap |
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| Soft fuzzy dead shrew on a bed of moss |
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