Round 2, Day 3 29Jun06

The following morning We fishermen again closed ranks, and decided to tackle the 4 miles up to Cheesman Dam. As I recall, Russ was the baby of the group, a mere 28, while Gary was a more mature 35 and older brother Will pegging 40 or so. That made me not only the only Navy representative, but the oldest by a decade. As they say in fighter lingo "fight's on".
We packed up lunches and bags into Gary's truck and hit the trail. Being on a bike I was already pared down pretty good, and the idea of a 4 mile trek in the 6-7000 foot range gave me further encouragement to lightenup. I had boots, gortex waders, a 4 piece rod, one reel, and one flybox. I also carried a small lightweight umberella and a Safewater filtering waterbottle. This, the waterbottle, turned out to be the gem of the trip, but I'm getting ahead of the story, as are the photos. Skim down to the bottom shot. This is typical of the trail, which bounced from stream-side to about 200 feet up, all the while (naturally) gaining altitude toward the dam.



Beautiful doesn't beging to describe the scenery, and without coming off a little light in my waders I cannot tell how enjoyable the comradre with military , aviation, fishermen out on a hike was to me.
As the day wore on things played out about as one would expect, Russ was like a dog on a scent, out in front at a trot, occasionally coming back wagging his tail to ask if we were still there and coming. Gary hit his stride, though he was to find out later the price of his fancy sandals and no socks. Will was paying a bit of a price for living the good life since leaving the Army, but he soldiered on (hey, that's pretty good). I don't think I was a hinderence.
Arriving at the dam we took the appropriate hero shots, Gary soaked his feet, Russ ran to the top to check a return route (wanna time me? OKGO!), Will poured water over his head and shirt and ate a sandwich, and I strung up and started to fish.
On the way up we could, no kidding, SEE fish from 150feet up the bank, holding in the pad ahead of the monster rocks. Now it was our turn to amuse them with flies not much bigger than the letters in this post.
With Gary's expert help I managed to catch about 4 or 5 before surrendering his guidence to Will. Russ was beating the water to a foam just above the 'keep out - danger' line near the dam and doing well. It was, as they say, a glorious day.
On the way back the others noted with disapointment that they had consumed all the potable water they had laboured to carry, while I kept drinking and drinking from my magic bottle. Aha! So you've been refilling! We took a 20 minute break to fill all the bottles from my Safewater filter and then pressed on.
Russ was so entertaining we almost forgot the 8 miles we had to walk. As a fighter jock he lives by his aggressive, competative nature, and as the youngest of the group, he hadn't yet realized that others will sometimes play upon this nature for their own amusement. At one point the path was well above the river, separated by a seemingly unnavigable drop over steep and high rocks. A minor taunt was all it took to put him over the side, heading to the water, scrambling to prove he really did have hair in all the appropriate places, and just another comment had him doing a Brad Pitt across the deep, fast running water. I'm glad he's a tiger in the plane.
We all slept well that night, after more campfire burritos and firewater.