Nugget Creek trail

This past week Peter and I went on a 3 day trip along a 15mi trail to Nugget Creek for survey and control work. We were able to get a UTV to use so we didn’t have to have to hike the entire way out and back. On Monday we left the headquarters and started our journey to the trail. The trail starts along the McCarthy road, but we didn’t have to drive the entire three hours to get to the end we just needed to go about an hour. After we got to the trail head we loaded up and were on our way. It took us about 2 hours to get to the end; we had to drive over some pretty big boulders, go through 3 or 4 creek (aka smallish river, and by no means gentle) crossings and some pretty wet swampy terrain. At our ending point was Nugget Creek. Now earlier in the season you are able to cross the creek; but not now, this creek was a good sized fast moving river. We unpacked our things at a camp site a little ways from the river and when we were finished Peter looked at me and said ok are you ready to cross?

Um, no!

So Peter failed to tell me there would be a creek crossing so I did not have do sturdy sandals to cross with, I had rain boots that were going to fill up super fast. Thus I elected to try and just walk through the river on the smooth river rocks. Peter went first, I wasn’t really watching him cross because I was attempting to get to the crossing location. So he gets across and goes to me, “it should be fine it was able this high.” The this high apparently meant his knee, but I was looking at the water at that point and didn’t really register what he was saying and I sort of was getting antsy knowing this was going to be cold so I just went for it instead of trying to figure out to where he had indicated. I did look up and see his rolled pants weren’t wet at all so I just figured it would be fine. Wrong! So Peter is a 6’4” tall guy who is pretty solid verses my 5’4” body. That foot in height makes a lot of difference when crossing a river because about a quarter of the way in I was getting soaked up to my thigh. We both had found walking sticks to help us cross, I heard walking stick so I assumed use it like you would a walking stick. Well apparently that is not the right technique I lost my footing and almost fell. At this point I am so cold by body is starting to shake (that water was fricken cold), so crossing is getting harder. Peter had to come out and help me to rest of the way, because it was getting harder and harder to manage. My bare feet were really hurting, I was soaked up to my butt and it can be difficult to recover from a near fall when water is still barreling down on you from above trying to make you fall. In the end I got across, plus I had on my 5.11 gear pants that are quick drying and awesome, so I was dry pretty quickly

Once on the other side we walked around the public cabin that was just up the river bank and surveyed the area. As you may recall our camp was set up on the other side of Nugget Creek so we got to go back across, Oh joy! : (

At this point I developed a new strategy, this is one of those things I won’t let beat me. I was determined to get across with no assistance. For one I was prepared for the fact that I was going to get super wet. Also after Peter came over to help me the rest of the way I saw how he crossed and developed that stance. Finally, and I think probably most importantly, I took the insoles out of my rain boots and put those on for some protection against the rocks. This time I crossed like a pro and only managed to get my rolled up pants wet to the mid-thigh, whoo! The rest of the night we made some food and had a nice little campfire near the river.

wooo bug jacket!

The next morning we woke up had some breakfast and got ready for the day. The night before all we had done was survey the area at the public cabin so today we needed to go back and pull everything we found. From the time I got up I was sort of dreading having to cross the creek. Mainly because it was quite a bit colder than the previous night and the sun also hadn’t peaked out of the mountains yet. So when Peter asked if I was ready I was slightly less than enthusiastic with my response. When we got to the creek I tried to suggest several different areas to cross but each and every one turned out to be far worse on closer inspection than the original spot from the day before. So much for trying to stay slightly drier. Either way, you gotta to what ya gotta do. So I slapped on my rain boots, shoved my hiking boots in my backpack, rolled up my pants, walked up to the river, did a sort ‘Don’t let me fall because that would really suck prayer’, and death gripped my walking stick (in the proper stance) all the way across without any problems. Plus, once again my paints weren’t as wet had they had been after both crossing from the night before.

After I poured the glacial water out of my boots and had a little bit of time to recover from the shivering I had a little ‘hell yeah!’ moment in my head and we were off to the cabin. Peter was ahead of me and was going

to go into the cabin to retrieve the garbage bag we had left there for the night. I was just walking up the bank and Peter was almost to the door when he let out a little shriek scream. (I was making fun of him today about it and he claimed it was a manly scream, it wasn’t, but if he asks say it was.) I stopped in my tracks because he backed away pretty quickly from the door. I asked if it was a bear. To which he responded, “No a porcupine!” Sure enough was is a very large porcupine displaying its many large barbs just chilling on some logs that were near the cabin entrance. Apparently it wasn’t too happy with Peter interrupting its sleep haha. We had to yell at it a few times because he wasn’t willing to leave this fine spot. The rest of the morning went like normal just controlling the weeds around the cabin. Then we headed back across the creek. I got across with no problems, Like a BOSS! We loaded up the UTV and were off back to the beginning of the trail.

Now the first day and night out on the trail really wasn’t very buggy. We were in a pretty open area with the creek nearby. This was not the case heading back slowly along the trail. The mosquitoes were everywhere. I wore my bug jacket the entire day and was even forced to eat lunch and dinner inside the jacket. I felt like a freak, but being a freak is better than being covered in mosquito bites. At the end of the day we reached the half way camp and unpacked. There was no sitting out in this buggy area for longer than you really needed to so once we were done eating dinner I stood by my tent planning how I was going to get into my tent with the least amount of mosquitoes. I decided on standing a few feet away breathing out hard a few times to get those horrible things to fly around my face (I still had the bug jacket on), and then I ran quickly unzipped the tent and dove in. Again I am sure I looked like something is wrong with me, but I don’t really care.

The final day we packed up and continued mapping and pulling invasives along the trail. About a mile away from the half way camp the UTV just died. Luckily we had a satellite phone and we were able to call the maintenance people. They had to drive all the way from headquarters to pick us up after finding some ATVs to get to us on the trail. Needless to say we called at 10am and they weren’t there until 2:30pm. Two guys showed up each on an ATV, they weren’t able to figure out how to fix the UTV with the limited resources they had so they decided to tow it out. The towing went pretty well considering we still had to cross a few creeks and some pretty swampy areas. Really I was just glad we didn’t have to hike out. We would have had to carry a lot of crap for about 7 miles. Plus we still had to make it the rest of the way along the McCarthy road to reach Kennecott by nights end, if we had to hike and then drive 2 more hours I would have just keeled over. We ended up making it to Kennecott at around 7pm so it wasn’t that bad from our planned 4:30pm.