Leaderboard

I was there about 1974 after it was no longer in use. That was before they dammed the Applegate River. According to Wikipedia it is still there. Was there with the person who made the trap and had it transported to that spot. Have several other photos and even some of the miners cabin just below the trap. Does anyone else have any photos of the trap from the 70's?

I am glad that you asked that question, because I have only had two really scary encounters on the hill. One was a bluff charge, and the other was a forceful escort off the hill. So when I said bluff charges, I should have said bluff charged. Other things like rock clacking, wood knocking, and stone throwing happen every time up there during the May to Nov months, but only two really scary events on that particular hill. So basically, one bright summer's day, on Aug 25th, of 2012, me and a friend, parked in the dirt area at the base of the hill, and started up the north trail entrance, check the map in my video, there is a north and a south entrance, and they circle around and come together to the trail leading up the hill. Well, anyways we started in just chit chatting and stuff, and came to the point where the trails meet, and went right up the hill, like what I had wanted to do. While we were walking up the hill, I could hear stuff moving in the bush on both sides of us. I would swing the camera, toward's the noise each time, never even seeing any brush move or anything. We had made it about a 1/4 of the way up the hill, when a thought popped into my head, that we were on the wrong trail. At this point, I had only been up the hill a few times, and I wasn't quite sure, if I went the right way, or I was actually heading back out to the south entrance. So I suggested, that we double back to make sure we were on the correct trail, and my companion had only been there once before, so it was my decision to make. Anyways, I shut the camera off, to save battery life, and we started back, and about where the north and south and hill trails meet, which is exactly where the nest is, but this was 2012 and I had no idea there was a nest there until 2019, well this is the point that a ton of stick breaking and noise like footfalls and brush moving and it sounded like an elephant running downhill through the forest to meet us on the right side of the uphill trail, and I fully expected something to come busting out of the laurel and other foilage which lined the trail on both sides, and I started shaking like a leaf. Unless you have experienced this for yourself, you can't even imagine the fear induced adrenaline rush. But we just stood there, we didn't run, for whatever reason, to me it seemed that running would be futile. I can't say why my friend didn't run. At this point, I turned the camera back on as soon as could, and suggested that maybe the forest people didn't want us around. The video is shaky as can be, I was literally shaking like a leaf in the wind. At this point, my friend suggests that maybe we could talk to the forest people and ask them if it was ok to hike into the forest. My friend was not the least be shaken by all the commotion, and I said go ahead and talk to them, and while my friend talked to them, we both still heard sticks breaking, and what sounded like a big stick breaking not 20 feet from us, and I couldn't tell where or what was breaking these sticks. I sat on a big rock and tried to get video of the bush, zooming in here and there, but couldn't see a darn thing. Then we heard what sounded like rythmic wood knocking, maybe a wood ******, but it seemed to go on for quite a while and it did sound like there was kind of a pattern to it. We must have waited about ten minutes, and nothing occurred after the wood knocking which again sounded like it was only about 20 feet away. So after about ten minutes, I was able to collect myself, and was still shaking just a little, but we contiued on our hike. But on the map, where you take a sharp right halfway up the hill to go past the nests on the hill, well that's what I used to call the decision point, and once there, you could go left, straight, or right, and that day we went straight. And aside from a couple of faint stick break sounds, nothing else of note happened. Well, that's what I remember, I'll never forget it.