Red Mountain

The blue water glistened brightly as the sun went higher and higher in the sky.   Gracefully, the blue skiff skimmed across the water taking us to our hiking destination.  Flynn, Ghen and I were sitting in front of the skiff while Kenton drove and John sat by his side.  Jakolof dock came into view as we entered the bay.  The skiff hugged the cliff for 30 meters because the water was too shallow in some places.  We docked on the right and got on our fleece pants.  We grabbed our packs and jumped out of the boat, anxious for more adventures.

   We waited for the taxi to arrive to take us close to base camp.  Hmmm, not the kind of taxi you would see in a city.  An old, gray, eight seat van rumbled to a stop.  We put our gear in and started the ride up.  The forest on our left was full of lush, green alders and devils club and on the right were spruce trees hugging the edge of the water.  When we were about halfway up the Rocky River Road we were surprised by rustling leaves and black fur and into view came a bear eating the red, ripe berries off a devils club bush.  The taxi dropped us off at the bridge.  We unloaded our packs and cooler and had to hike a quarter of a mile up the creek to base camp.  We put the cooler close to the water and set up our orange teepee tent and a purple tent.  After feasting on our  beef stroganoff camping meal, explored the granite boulders before bed.

The next day we packed up the orange tent and left the purple tent and cooler behind.  We first headed toward the old mine and there was a rusty trip wire in the ground.  Flynn tripped and fell but did not hurt himself.  We went up to the mine and found lots of old, cool metal scraps, bars and parts of chains.  We continued up the mountain and took a rest on a very steep rocky slope.  John's backpack started rolling down the hill, we all scrambled for it but luckily it got hung up on a rock.  After we got the backpack we ate some bars and cheese sticks.  We hiked up the mountain and it felt like it took a very long time.  We stopped at a huge boulder and ate bagels, wondering how much longer it would take to reach our camp spot for the night.  We passed by a creek with green and purplish tundra everywhere and did jumping tricks off a little drop above the creek.  We started to hike up the hill.  Flynn and Ghen went the steep way and I wimped out and followed John and Kenton.  When we finally reached the top there was a cross with a necklace on it and it was cool.  It kind of freaked me out I wonderd what the story behind it was.

We started back down on the other side and Flynn spotted something moving on the hillside.... A wolverine!  We took out the binos and the wolverine was cream colored and amazing to see.  We decided to set up camp on some tundra that looked a lot like a snow drift.  That night, inside the tent, John farted.  It smelled so bad that Flynn and I had to stick our noses out of cracks in the bottom of the tent.

The next morning we had oatmeal for breakfast and it was really good.  We started hiking and our first challenge was to go down a little cliff and hike across a really long ridge.  John took a picture of us through the mist from 20 meters away and then dropped his camera.  It started to bounce down the mountain and John took a dive for it.  It was really funny watching John fly through the air after a tiny, bounding object.  We hiked to another cliff to have lunch and then we trundled a rock that was as big as a Toyo stove heater.  After the main rock went down there were many small rocks that followed it but there was one rock that suddenly turned into a marmot!  It uncurled and scampered away into the fog.  We figured it was probably not a good idea to do any more trundling.  We started to hike back up through the fog and when we got back we broke down our camp and headed back down the mountain.  We came down through a shoot with wet clay and creek bed and it was very difficult because some spots were very slippery.  At our base camp near the bridge, we scrambled to the cooler and fought over the orange cream sodas.  POP!       POP! POP! Carbon dioxide fizzled as we hurried to chug down the sodas. It was a pretty satisfying sound at the end of our trek.