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One of my favourite areas in the vicinity is the top of Placer Mt., which looks very much like your photo above. While camping up there one fall hunting mulies, we had a similar snowstorm, dropping over a foot overnight, and we'd struggled to get up there in my buddy's 2wd camper van on dry roads the day before, so it was a white knuckle drive back down the steep trails. On another camp trip up there on the Canada Day (July 1st) long weekend, about 30 years ago, it snowed 4" overnight, but luckily melted by noon the next day. I love that high country, in spite of it's challenges. I've hunted the headwaters of the Pasayten River several times, right at the Canada/US border, and once harvested a large black bear boar on the Canadian side of the border that had a US F&W radio collar, which I hadn't seen before the shot. I reported it to Wa. F&W, and they requested I send the collar to them, which I did. A few months later, I got a letter from them with their tracking data for that animal, and a cheque for $20. !

We used to pack mules into the Pasayten wilderness. One year my packing buddy and I were Mule deer hunting in there and when we got up it was snowing hard and when we met back up at noon at camp there was about 3 feet of snow on the ground and no let up. We struck camp and loaded the mules and bucked about 4 feet of snow over the pass to get back to the Chewack river. I believe the area we was in was called Spanish camp. Big open high country. Fun times.

I got to spend the day with my youngest son today, in an area that we've camped, hunted, and fished for about 50 years (he's 52 now)and it was a great outing, bringing back many memories of adventures past. We left early this morning for an area east of Manning Park, and just north of Washington State's Passayten Wilderness. This is on the east side of the Cascades, so much drier terrain than the coastal side, where I live. Although it's a long weekend here in BC (Canada Day), we only encountered 2 camps in over 60 km of logging roads and trails, and only 3 or 4 trucks on the roads, so pretty much had a vast area to ourselves. The highlight was making it in to the remote campsite on Placer Lake via 4 km of challenging 4x4 trail, which my son hadn't seen since he was about 8. The H3 handled the rough trail easily, and we had our lunch there before heading out onto more of the 100's of km of logging and mining roads in those mountains. In the past I've seen many mule deer and bears in the area, even a couple of moose and a mountain goat, but today all we saw was 1 grouse, a few chipmunks, and some ground squirrels. The only glitch for the day was the H3 refusing to start after turning it off at one of the viewpoints, 20 km from pavement. It would crank over, but not fire up. This is only the second time it's happened in the 3 years I've owned it, but I know the cure to bypass this anti-theft feature, known as "passlock" , so a little patience got it going again. The trick is to turn the key on to power, but not start, wait at least 10 minutes, then turn to start, and it runs. Apparently, many GM vehicles are prone to this glitch as they age, so it's annoying, but not too hard to overcome. WE were back home at 9:30, after stopping in Hope for a nice dinner, tired and dusty, but happy to have had the day out together.

Here is some photos we took of the museum a month ago.

Supposedly 130,000 years ago? Homo Sapiens had not yet left Africa. Let alone crossed the Berengia land bridge. Which means the thumbs that used a hammer and anvil technique to break open those bones to get to the bone marrow? Where not our own. Something much older was already here.