West Fork Black's Fork, July 13-14 2012

[pixie1339]

Nice report! I'm sorry that the weather never let up while you were there, but I agree with the others that the rainbow pictures were definitely worth it. It look like a beautiful place!

 

[gnwatts]

A friend and I tried, in a drunken stupor, to beat a cow to death with big sticks after it would not leave our camp site near Swazey's Leap. We finally cornered it, and then it proceeded to try to kill US, charging around, farting etc. We decided to try to live together at that point, as it obviously was not of sound mind.
I love the "cartwheeling cow in space" imagery, that will stay with me for awhile.
Greg

 

[HomerJ]

Saw something kind of like that with cows once while bowhunting in the Henry's almost 30 years ago. Except the bumped cow went right off a cliff. Disapeared from my view while doing cartwheels in space. I've always presumed the cow wasn't particularly fine...

- DAA

LOL! I would have loved to see that!!!!

 

[PureLightImages]

Killer report. The rainbow shot would make the trip worth it for me. Also, the adventure of it all. You'll look back on it months from now and want to go again. I encountered similar sheep in the Pioneer Mountains near Sun Valley. People up there didn't like them in their mountains either.

 

[moose droppings]

+1 on the rainbow picture. inclimate weather always makes for an enriched wilderness experience. oh, and strong work by team subee.


in a distant mountain range reside some cows that enjoy ransacking basecamps. these scavengers can be heard at night milling around camp licking any pot clean, eating any scrap of food, and tearing into food kits, even going as far as crushing a bag of beef jerky. similar to gnwatts xperience, these cows showed signs of aggression. well it just so happened, in the middle of the night i decided to brew up some tea (to ease the effect of high altitude). i fired up the stove, set the pot on, cracked open the vestibule, and layed back down. woke to the rattling sound of the pot lid at full boil, turned, and to my suprise, i was face-to-face with a cow who had stealthly stuck his head including horns through the vestibule opening. the tea bag was hanging from his mouth. i screamed, he pulled-back, and choas ensude. his horns hooked the vestibule/pole on his way out and literally thrashed and trampled us about, covering a distance of about twenty feet from our original tent pad before tearing free. rodeo clown in a barrel experience for sure.
so yeah, another reason why livestock in the mountains blow.

 

[Aldaron]

My wife had a very unpleasant encounter with a pile of cow crap once in the West Elk Wilderness in Colorado. That place was just overrun with cows and she unknowingly stepped in a pile after dark. When she got in the tent, she reached down to take off her boot and...well, you can guess what happened after that.