Monday August 17, 2015 Bearpaw Mountain Camp near Jarbidge Nevada
It was cold last night for some good sleeping and I waited for the sun to warm up the van this morning before getting it going for the day.
We were going to hike up to the top of Bearpaw Mountain today and we wanted to get started early enough to beat any heat so we were off around 8:30 in the morning.
Steve followed me up the hill through the bushes and grasses.
Not quite to the top yet. The view back to our camp down there by the spring.
We heard some mooing and looked out to the desert to see these cattle headed to a pond for some water.
The top
We made it to the top of the mountain without any difficulty and enjoyed the view for a bit.
What’s that
After a short break at the top, we headed on down taking a different route. I saw Steve looking at something up ahead.
We had spooked an antelope out of the area and it had stopped and was looking back at us, checking out the situation.
Headed on back to camp
Steve seemed to not like going through the brush, so we split up and went different ways back to camp. I’m following this trail through the quaking aspens and almost back to camp.
Resting up
Back at camp we rested and just sat around enjoying this campsite up on the side of a hill.
The sun was out, but there was a cool breeze coming up the hill so the day was nice.
More antelope
Later in the day, we spotted this male antelope on the skyline near the top of the mountain and watched it.
The male was watching over quite a herd of antelope which soon appeared.
We watched the antelope for about ten minutes before they spooked and took off for some reason.
Plans
Tomorrow we are breaking camp and headed over to the Jarbidge River Canyon where we are setting up for a hike down into the river canyon which we plan to do the next day. We will not be going where most people go around here as most people do not know about this secret access point into the thousand foot deep Jarbidge Canyon. The access point is about in the middle of the 23 mile long, thousand foot deep canyon. If the canyon is entered at the top end of the twenty three miles there is nowhere out until Indian Hot springs where the Jarbidge River meets the Bruneau River where there is a four wheel drive access point right to the river.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow. This trip has been leading up to getting in shape to hike down to the Jarbidge river which I haven’t done in ten years or more. Being a bit older now, I want to be sure I’m in shape to do it. It’s not really that hard, but I don’t want to take any chances and a lot of what I’ve been doing is being sure Steve is ready to do this and it looks like he is.
That wraps up another day out here in the high desert.