Wes Coffey

Talked.

Slept.

October 9th.

This is the day I need to tell you about.

We got up before first light.

Cole wanted to push north along a ridge that overlooked a second smaller basin he hadn't fully scouted in August.

The plan was to glass from the ridge at sunrise, then drop down into the basin if we didn't see anything from above.

The hike out of camp took about an hour.

The ridge was covered in lodgepole pine, with some clearings where we could set up and glass.

We got to our first glassing point around 7.15.

Sun just coming up, light was that thin cold blue that you only see in the mountains in October.

We set up the spotting scope and worked the basin for about 40 minutes.

Nothing.

No elk, no deer, nothing.

Which was strange.

That kind of terrain, that time of day, that time of year, you expect to see at least something moving.

Cole said we should drop in and still hunt the basin, work our way down through the timber, take our time, see what we could turn up.

I agreed.

We packed up the scope and started down.

The drop from the ridge was steep, maybe 800 feet of elevation loss over a quarter mile.