A Few Trips, Here and There
Here’s some photos from trips all around from the fall that I have missed; From campouts to fishing trips, short hikes and all.
Picturebook: Birthday, Deadhorse
Picturebook: Amethyst
Close Calls at the Sleet Creek Reservoir
Close Calls at the Sleet Creek Reservoir
I’d been eager for the summer to come into full swing as the road through Monte Cristo in Northern Utah would open up and grant nearly backyard access to a fishing hole my neighbor had been hyping up over the entire winter season. His little secret spot was two hours away on an inaccessible road during the winter months–likely covered with ice at the time as well–but now was a meager 50 minutes away, and he’d told me dreamlike tales of the fishing he had out on the gentle bends in the dog days of yesteryear. I just couldn’t wait to get out there, so I loaded up the girls and headed for the trail.
We got started on some nice dirt roads with incredible access to beautiful riffles all along the roadside, seeing only two other vehicles along the modestly maintained pathway. Things were looking good, the sun was high in the blue sky, and it was a stunning day for trout fishing. There was so much good that it was hard not to ignore the one glaring problem: There were no trout here. Well, none rising as far as I could tell, a bit of chaco-wading up the river without little shadows darting undercurrent gave the impression that the little dudes might still be deep down in slower pockets as the runoff was still rolling.
So we made our way up the hill and over near the reservoir, the opposite end of which was the promised land, the good place, the dreamy meadows of godly fishing just beyond the horizon. But a lack of a clear trail and a naive belief in Google Maps left me thinking we’d have to access some more tight backcountry, and we were still another hour away from the destination. So we fished a bit, talked with a fella who loved this place since he was young, and listened as a family set off a few rifle rounds into a couple pounds of tannerite: Quite the echo indeed.
Eventually we set off for this other road, but not too long in discovered that this track was only for OHV access, behind a gate that was clearly labelled PRIVATE PROPERTY. “No biggie,” I promised my passengers, “There’s another place we can check out that’s not far from here at all, it looks really similar!” And similar to it did look from 450 miles up in the sky via satellite imagery and hopeful winter dread.
But here in the late Spring, the ass end of Bitch Creek Reservoir seemed an aweful long hike away on a very narrow path. But we vowed to keep it light, leaving the majority of our daypack gear back at the truck and keeping it to a couple of water bottles and my fishing gear. We started along the pathway, more of a game trail than any real walkway, and waddled over towards the other end of the reservoir. The last hundred yards is where the real test of patience began, myself having to hold the dog and my pack, I was slipping and sliding all over the steep shale and mud, constantly slipping into the deep rocky reservoir and having to clamber my way back up, half soaked and chunks of pebbled silt coming to rest between the sandals and my feet.
Once we finally reached the tributary creek, I breathed a sigh of relief and began to head upstream, keeping a sharp eye out for feeding trout in the narrow, clear water. A 15ft tall bank gave us a vantage point that provided the discovery of a few schools of 30 or 40 fries, racing up and down the low water and avoiding every single cast I placed. There were presentations so delicate that they’d begin some five yards ahead of the schools, and the entire family would split like the red sea when my dries and emergers floated past, as if the knew it was something not to fuck with. This led to a desperate attempt to net an entire school with a leap from another 5ft bank into the water, pulling up an entire empty net that the fish probably could have simply slid straight through. Things were looking rough, but I was excited to get up and hike around the rest of the reservoir and head back for the dead, casting as we went, so we left the creek and returned to the larger water. My fiancé did not want to go in a new direction; the way we had come already was annoying enough, and she feared that the new pathway might get nastier. In hindsight, she was more than 100% correct, but in the moment, I was eager for some new views and emplored her to press on.
I had only one opportunity for a larger catch, a fantastic chunky looking Lake Trout that I spied from the trail we were following along the newer side of the res, and of course as I cast a much-too-heavy streamer for this particular rod, in haste, I found myself tangled in a birds nest of fly line as the trout approached with interest, saw no movement, and left annoyed. I called it after that, some storm clouds in the distance seemed to be getting darker by the second, and I wanted to be down in the truck before that thing hit.
Damn, did I miscalculate all that.
It wasn’t more than 15 minutes before the rain started, a sneaky storm hitting us from the North that I didn’t see over the mountains we were hiking on, the opposite direction of the storm clouds I was concerned about. It had swirled entirely around us, the small reservoir acting like a heatsink for the changing air pressure. The pitter-patter was a welcome change from the hot sun at first, the warm air even made the light rain surprisingly hospitable. But as we started coming to an area I thought would have a pathway through turned out to be a lovely barbed wire fence with slits barely large enough to fit through. It’d take us another hour and a half to traverse around the other way, and with the storm present I thought the scrub oak would at least provide us a little relief from any further developments that might come down on us along the banks, so I helped the dog and wife-to-be over the fence, climbing over myself careful not to snag pants or feet, and we started through the thick, whipping branches.
Complaints and angst were mounting now, spirits were becoming dismal in the dreary downpour, and I opted to give wading through the beach–out and around the oak and willows–until we reached a better clearing. This lasted just 20 feet or less, the dog having to swim the entire way and the gal filled with dread wading through murky, unknown waters. She’s got a small phobia of such things, and this was turning into a nightmare for her. I felt terrible, but I needed to get these two back to the truck before the storm got worse, its tempo picking up from a nice drizzle to pelting heavy drops. After the hundred-yard slog through the scrub and leaves, we can to another tributary that banked even further out of the way; We could swim across and be done with this in three minutes, or hike all the way around for another 25, avoiding the water. Thunder in the distance more than confirmed that the latter decision would have to suffice as the “safer” in these circumstances. We finally made it past the inlet, crossing another steep hillside of scree and slick rock, everything now thoroughly soaked through and my Chacos struggling to find purchase while providing grip without my feet falling out.
Looking up, it seemed as if we were at the end: The reservoir was less than a quarter mile away now, and it seemed like we’d just have to cross a narrow pathway next to a rocky outcropping. Just then, a flash of lightning and a loud crash of thunder very shortly after left us with an omen as foreboding as the one you see when you come to the patio of some decrepit bayou house, most obviously haunted. I looked back with urgency and told her that we need to start moving, my poor gal now stunned with fear, and kind of blank nod of an “ok” and a staggered motion towards me. The last bit become more sheer rock and shale, and I told her to wait a moment as I check ahead to see what the pathway was like, the wind now howling and the rain becoming dreadful. As I peeked around the corner of this tall rocky face, our fate seemed to be sealed into a helpless howl in the wind. It was a sheer cliffside that perhaps would make for a fun traverse in the bright summer with friends, unafraid to do a little cliff diving, but in these conditions, and especially with a tired husky, were completely impassable.
Coming back, another crack of lightning hit, and I told Taylor that we needed to get to some low cover to wait out the storm. She was paralyzed with fear in a way I’ve never seen, asking instead to just sit a minute on the barren rocky embankment. “We can stop soon, but we can’t here, we have to go, now.” Taking her hand and the dog, I was able to help her snap out of it and we moved under a small juniper brush, sitting most uncomfortably ontop of a pile of deer shit. She was cold in her tank top, so I took off my sunshirt, soaked but warm enough to ward off the cold wind, and sat a while watching the storm.
Moments like this I pause and take it all in, smiling in awe at just how cool it is to be here, now, alive amongst weather that happens every day in these wild places with all the wild animals, and I like to reflect on how silly our delicate little homes and comforts really are. This is what the world is really like, and we’ve been able to adapt to it in a way that we rarely get to interact with it anymore, many friends I know never having had to sit out a shitty storm, cold without a shirt under barely any cover. The hail that started pelting my shriveled fingers and cold skin helped hammer home the fact. I laughed a little bit to myself–trying not to scare my fiancé who was just starting to shake off the fear she’d built up–saying
“Hey, just so you know, if this keeps up for another hour or so, we’ll just have to go up and over the mountain despite the lightning. Are you ready for that?”
She laughed as well, saying, “Well, I guess we at that point we might as well huh?”
I smiled, and thought how fucking stupid it’d be to get struck by lightning or come down with hypothermia with just a cliff and an eighth of a mile between me and my truck stocked with all sorts of goodies, warm clothes, gasoline and joy.
But it wasn’t more than another fifteen minutes until we saw a little light at the end of the tunnel: a distant patch of blue poked through the dark hazy gray, and grew more and more from the Northwest until the clouds passed us Southeast, and the blue sky and sun kissed the wet ground and soaking faces on the mountain side.
A playful yet quick-paced hike up some 500ft in less than ten minutes and another 600ft descent past the reservoir and back to the truck would have made you think nothing ever happened, and we both ruminated on that. We talked about how, really, nobody had any idea what we’d just been through. Even more, nobody would really care. Maybe that’s the point, to experience the things and take it all in, life in motion, nature in action, the world breathing us in.
But hell, you’re here, and I’m typing, so maybe somebody cares after all.
