Hells Bells

As Craig Ferguson says every night, "What did we learn tonight?" Well, yesterday I learned a few things. We took off early for a hike up Bells Canyon. We have hiked it several times before up to the waterfall(the one we thought was the upper waterfall). It was a pretty strenuous hike and we would pat ourselves on the back for completing it. This time our destination would be the upper reservoir which we thought would be "just a little bit further up the trail". We got to the waterfall and hung out for awhile enjoying the cool mist created by the crashing water. We then decided to push on. And push on and push on. The trail was steep and rocky and seemingly had no end, sort of like the universe. When the trail finally flattened out a little we encountered another waterfall(the actual upper waterfall). I remembered the guide book saying that there was a bridge across the stream. I looked back at the roaring stream and saw something. It would hardly qualify as a bridge. It was two logs tied together with thin nylon rope and with pieces of 2 x 4s nailed into them. It was not a bridge, it was a death trap. I immediately had visions of Diane's precarious adventure with a log on the Subway trip last year. I decided to go first and rather than walk across this "bridge", I chose to walk on the rocks and logs beneath it and use the "bridge" for balance and security. I got about halfway across and put my foot on a log to discover that it was quite slippery and I had to hold onto the bridge to keep from slipping. Watching me do this only made Diane more nervous when it came to her time to get across. In retrospect, this would have been a good place to turn around. Boy, hindsight sure is 20/20. Well, Diane made it across and we now looked for the trail. Shortly after finding it, it led us through a dense maze of overgrown ferns and other vegetation. It was difficult to find and follow the trail and we wondered at times if we were still on the trail. It was akin to a jungle. We hiked for about 40 more minutes and had taken several side trips that turned out to be dead ends. That was enough for Diane. We were scratched, bruised, bug bitten, tired, and out of patience. As we started back down, I told Diane that I thought I could see the actual trail(this was about the tenth time I had said that). She gave me the look and I decided to head on down. We negotiated the stream crossing without any trouble. Now we had the long hike down. Even though hiking down is easier on your breathing, it still taxes your legs and feet. It also seems to take such a long time to get down. We got to the first waterfall and kept on going. We were now seeing lots of people coming up, all asking how much further. I tried to give them a reasonable estimate of time so as to not discourage them but also not make them despair. One particularly colorful gentleman wearing a cowboy hat and big belt buckle asked how much further. He asked, is it about another "hoot and a holler". It was about 3 hoots and 4 hollers, I told him. We left the coolness of the stream and hiked out into the hot sunlight and finished the last stretch to the car before our tanks ran completely dry. We had hiked for over 5 hours and our legs, feet, and general constitution really felt it. I vowed to make it to the upper reservoir before the summer is out. After all, the fishing up there is supposed to be really good.

Fishing

I took off last Thursday to fish the Provo. I had heard that The Green Drake hatch was coming off. It was only about a month late. I am always excited to be able to fish the Provo on a weekday. There should be far less people. Should be. I pulled into my semi-secret parking lot and found it not only full, but the road leading to it was jammed with cars. I figured that if I hiked up river far enough I could find a little tranquility. Seems everyone was looking for tranquility that day. I guess the fish don't like crowds either. I had a few strikes but brought on one fish to the net, it was a nice 14 inch rainbow who came up slowly from below to take my Green Drake. I got a few more strikes and fished until I ran out of light. That one fish was worth the day's effort.

The next day I went with Tom Meuleman and his friend, Wally to the North Fork of the Duchesne. After a short hike we waked onto the river that loads of bugs hovering over it This looked too good to be true. It was a hatch of many varieties of mayflies, caddis flies, and midges. I was asked what fly to use. Put on anything, I said. We began fishing and much to my chagrin, we brought up nothing. The next thing I noticed was that the water, which was clear and made the bottom visible was now murky and unfishable. We had to change plans. We drove up river and found some construction going on. We went above that and got down to the river again. This time we started picking up an occasional fish. It was difficult bring them up to the surface. In about two hours there I caught about 5 fish. I decided to switch from dry fly fishing to a "dry and a dropper". Off the dry fly I tied on a length of tippet about 12 inches long and then tied on a bead head nymph. My favorite is called the Rainbow Warrior. It is a small, size 20, hook with some tan and red dubbing with a tungsten bead. As soon as I had cast into a run an allowed the dry to drift down, the dry fly wiggled. I set the hook but I was too late. I soon learned that I had to have no slack whatsoever in my line when I set or I would be too late. Over the next hour, in one spot, I caught 20 fish. Tom and Wally had a deadline to leave as they were going to play golf that afternoon. If they had not had that, I would probably still be there.

Yesterday after work in Rock Springs, a friend called me and asked If I wanted to go fish the Green in the Seedskedee National Wildlife Refuge. Duh, it's fishing, why wouldn't I want to. My only question was do I get a annual nonresident license or pay the 14 buck daily fee. I figured that even with the conservation stamp you have to buy with the annual that I only have to fish 8 times in Wyoming to break even. Plus, I don't have to go and get a daily license every time I want to fish. We went as far as the Fontanelle dam and began wet wading. The wind was blowing and there was no surface action so we were stripping streamers across the riffles in the river. The wind was not our friend. Every once in a while it would let up and I would see bugs coming off the water. They looked like caddis to me. Then I saw a fish take one on the surface about 25 feet away. I quickly started tying on a caddis dry fly. I learned that the faster you need to tie on a fly, the slower you actually get the fly tied on. I took my time and negotiated the elk hair bristles nearly covering the eye of the hook and got the fly tied on. Was I too late. The wind was still down and I was able to get a nice dead drift over the spot where I had seen the fish before. Bam! He took that fly like he had not had a bite to eat all day. When I landed him I saw that he was a beautiful brown trout. He was only about 9-10 inches long but he will get bigger and maybe I can catch him again some day. That turned out to be the only fish I caught that day. In my optimism I noted a pattern developing. Catch one fish one day and then 25 fish the next. Hmmm. Should I go fishing tomorrow? Duh!

Back Home Again

On the Friday before the July 4th holiday, Diane and I drove to Craig, Colorado where I had an assignment to be on call for the weekend. I no sooner got there and got called to OB and then to the OR for an appendectomy. I got home about 11PM to find that Diane had saved me some chocolate cake, which I ravaged. The next day I was on beeper call and fortunately did not get called. Diane and I went for bike rides around Craig both in the morning and in the afternoon. The next day I went in for a leg fracture and after that I went off duty and we drove to Green River, WY. We stayed at my place there and the next morning(which happened to be Diane's birthday), I dropped her off at the airport and then I went to work. I worked the week until Friday and came home Friday evening. On Saturday we did our Costco business and then worked around the house for awhile. We watched Fiddler on the Roof that evening. Sunday was our hiking day. We decided to hike the White Pine trail. It starts at the same trailhead as the Red Pine trail and then splits after a mile. The trail was actually an old jeep road. It was long with lots of switchbacks. Diane was using her Camelback. After a little more than 2 hours hiking, we encountered a snowfield that we started to cross. It was on a pretty steep incline and I realized that it would be easy to slip and slide down into some boulders. That had broken femur written all over it. We backtracked and tried to climb down through the boulder field and cut across below the snowfield. We decided that this too was treacherous and unhappily decided to turn around and do the hike later in the summer when the snow would be gone. We made our way down stopping for food and water from time to time. We got back to the car 4 hours and 10 minutes after we started. We treated ourselves to lunch at the Porcupine Restaurant, eating outside in some delightful weather. I am working in Salt Lake this week but hope to do some more hiking and fishing in between

Colby and Camo

My neighbors in Green River have two labrador puppies. One is a charcoal lab and the other is a silver lab. If a chocolate lab has two recessive genes on the gene for color formation, then a silver lab color results. If a black lab has two recessive genes at this location then a charcoal lab results. Camo, the silver lab, has blue eyes. The next door neighbor girls, Aspin, Jessica, and Paige posed the puppies for me to take pictures. Meet Colby and Camo.