We spent this summer and fall volunteering with Conservation Northwest again. Like last year, we placed remote cameras in the Northern Cascades near the Canadian border. In July we hiked into an area where we’ve backpacked many times, really lovely county with numerous peaks in the 8000′ range. All of which are readily accessible from the 7000′ basin where we camp. We spent the first day hiking in and taking pictures of scat and fungus. We then made it to the basin where we intended on camping and found a sweet spot with some shelter from the morning sun and nice log to function as the kitchen.

Shooting stars

The hike into the basin has looked like this since the Tripod Complex fire of 2006. This shot is from 2009

Looking west at Windy the burn was devastating.

And the forest is recovering

The next day we did some off trail bushwhacking we found two real good looking locations for the cameras. They were are at least one mile from a marked trail, near a game trail, food source, and water source. One was right along a game trail near a large strawberry patch. At this location we placed the larger and heavier Leaf River camera and baited a downed log with game lures. We then hiked on and found a small knoll with another game trail near a berry patch. Here we set up the lighter Bushnell camera and baited the target tree with the lures. We recorded the data and set our location on the Garmin GPS unit they lent us.

Canine scat chuck full of bones and fur

Bear scat chuck full of scat

Fungus

More of this bright orange fungus. Slime mold perhaps?

We were using two lures. One specifically for bear, it has a nice musky smell to it and we both found it rather acceptable to the nose. The other lure was for wolf and smelled like skunk with fresh cracked pepper corn. Not very pleasant. These and the cameras were provided to us along with instructions from CNW. We were super careful with these lures and pack them in small nalgine containers, bring surgical gloves along, a supply of ziplock baggies, and good ol’Dr Bronner’s soap. We also use these awesome odor-proof bags from ALOK. We bought them to use with our Ursack bear bag and absolutely love them. We had all the lures bottled and in at least four if not five heavy duty freezer ziplock baggies. Nevada and the cats could smell them the instant I brought them in the house. So, I then put them into their designated odor-proof bag and the smell was gone. Really cool and a testament to all the hype on their packaging.

 One, two, two lures.

Bushnell on the knoll

Regardless of our ability to keep the odors at bay I inevitability got some on my jacket. Bummer. We finished baiting the second tree and hiked on to a stream and washed out the lure from my jacket. Sadly, it was the unpleasant wolf lure and even worse we could still smell it after multiple washings with Dr. Bonner’s (not as awesome as we thought) soap. The Jacket spent the night by itself. The next day we hiked back out. This was a quick trip as we were returning again in September to change batteries and SD cards. Then in October we’ll retrieve the cameras before winter sets in.