That evening and all the next day it rained some, and then a lot. We moved camp to Long John Lake accomplishing some trail maintenance and corridor trimming along the way.
The fishing at Long John was great and produced a nice 18 inch Cutthroat trout for dinner. Monday we were greeted with clear skies and great fall weather. We broke camp and headed back to the trailhead. When the skies were clear, we had some noise pollution from fast/low flying military attack jets as they flew about 500 feet off the ground, turned around Tumac Mountain and swooped down through the Bumping River valley.
Over the course of the outing we met about 30 PCT through hikers, about the same number of archery hunters, rode past 8 archery camps, and contended with about 12 ground bee nests which made our stock swish their tails a lot. The entire journey of over 28 miles and 9 different trails we traveled were in great to fair shape with the PCT being the best maintained.
Once we stepped off the PCT we had the whole area to ourselves. The fall colors were in their best form. The meadows were golden; the huckleberry bushes were bright red, green and maroon. We saw Elk tracks, heard and saw them all over the place. We make this trip every 2 years. So, get your rides ready for 2020.
And folks think all we do in BCHW is trail riding and trail maintenance.
Learn more online: www.bcha.org
We tied eleven jugs onto to our pack stock, containing 3,020 Cutthroat Trout, and traversed 28 miles to release the trout in Fryingpan Lake