Hiking 1:00:00 [1]
Quite an adventurous day. Headed to the Snowies to review some areas that had been Lidar basemapped. We turned off onto a side road and saw that a pickup and camper rig were already there, so we parked across the side road from them. When we got out, it was quite apparent that the truck owners were not happy that we were there. They had just come walking out of the woods and gave us nefarious glances. We almost left, but decided to stick together (instead of separating as planned) and do the field check together.
We came back about an hour later, and the truck was still there, but the 3 guys were packing something into the truck bed, then they high-fived each other and drove away. SF was curious enough to run off into the woods, where they were coming out of again, and look around. Lo and behold, he found a freshly killed and partly dressed poached animal (he thinks a moose) hidden under some logs, right near the road. Sadly, the truck was already gone, so we couldn't get a license plate, but we still called it in to the game warden, and he's going to take a look.
Hiking 30:00 [1]
After the poaching adventure, we headed to the long-abandoned Platte mine. It was pretty cool, with an old piece of mining equipment still pretty much intact (and from NJ!). Brought back some interesting rocks...oh, sorry...minerals!