Backpacking trip to Black River

May 2015

It was a little bit of a last-minute decision to go on this trip, and we were in the middle of getting ready for trek as well.  I was a little stressed out about making it happen, but we really wanted to do it!  There was a little scrambling to do, but we pulled it off.  I really love backpacking! For me it's all about the gear! For Dale it's all about the fishing gear.  He made sure we were well prepared!

 The Anderson's told us of a great fishing/swimming spot so we decided to try it out.  It was a long bumpy ride to get to the trail head, but we were told it would be worth it!

 I sure love hanging out with this man!  I enjoy all of our adventures together!

 We planned on staying for 3 days, so we had to pack all our stuff with us.  It was a pretty heavy pack, but we made it, no problem!

 Starting out at the top of the mountain.  Way way way down at the bottom is the river.  It was a ROUGH and ROCKY climb down.

 The terrain was quite rocky.  There was only one good flat place to camp on the edge of the river.  It was an open rocky space, but it put us in a good position to fish up and down the river.

 Our cute little backpacking tent!  The campsite doesn't look too lush, but the river around it was beautiful.  We were happy to find a flat place for our tent!

 The fishing was great! The first day we arrived we headed downstream and found some nice pools and caught some good ones!

 Later that evening I headed back to camp to start dinner while Dale did more fishing.  I heard him yell for me and I came running.  He wanted me to take a picture of the fish he had caught.  When I got there I was shocked to see a gash on his forehead and blood on his face.  He had slipped on a rock and cut his head open.  The fish was pretty awesome.

 It looked pretty scary to me.  We were worried about maybe needing stitches..  We were at least an hour hike out of the canyon, plus having to pack up all our gear and then a 4 or 5 hour drive in the dark to anywhere we could get help....after thinking about it we decided to try and patch him up the best we could with what we had.  We had brought a small first aid kit with simple bandages and such.  We finally decided the best way to help close the wound was with duct tape!  It worked great.  That night we prayed about our decision to stay and felt good about it.  We were able to enjoy the rest of our trip without incident.

Our patch job worked out pretty well! The tape stuck the whole time and it seems to be healing well!

The river was so beautiful and we enjoyed it so much!

 Yes! We caught a lot of fish!!

This was from way across the river with my camera.  My little Nikon Coolpix has survived many backpacking and camping trips and does a pretty good job!

I love the plants and the beautiful trees along the river.

 There were some really high cliffs right next to our camping spot.  The fishing wasn't really great in this area, but swimming and jumping off the cliffs would be awesome! We will have to do that the next time we come, and bring the kids!

There is our tent, on the top of the cliffs.

 I actually caught some fish too, just never took any pictures.  I was content mostly to sit and enjoy the scenery and watch Dale in action.

What a fantastic trip!  We will have to do more backpacking (fishing too)!