Early Archery Season 2nd Trip Bullion Basin - Norse Peak

For my second trip out I wanted to go to an area I was more familiar with.

I headed to Crystal Mountain where I spend anywhere from 30-50 days skiing per year, since I do a lot of Backcountry skiing here I have been all around the area and found it nice to go explore the same area in the Summer without snow.

An area just northeast of Crystal is called East Peak by backcountry skiers in the Winter. I have hiked it and skied it 4 times from about 1999-2001(highschool).

I started up the trail just at sun break on the Bullion Basin trail, on my way up the trail I stopped for a minute to look around at the other hill sides with my binoculars for deer. As I was putting the binoculars down I heard a snap from behind me and looked up the hillside no more than 20 feet to see a large Buck through a tree. Before I could even take an arrow out of the quiver on my bow he had seen me and charged across the trail behind me and down the hillside towards the Bullion creek below. That was the closest I have ever gotten to a large Buck and it was great!

I proceeded up to Bullion Basin where I found a small camp set up. I talked to two middle aged guys who had a set up a scouting camp complete with a horse and where getting ready for the upcoming rifle season.

From Bullion Basin I headed up and reached the ridge that separates Eastern WA from Western WA, dropping into Eastern WA the amount of deer tracks became much higher. I also started hearing Bugling coming from the direction I was heading down from the ridge into the valley.

I figured it was just some more people out scouting for rifle season and messing around. As I came over the next ridge I was pretty shocked at what I saw on the mountainside across from me, about 9 elk(one week after the end of early elk archery season). Also above the elk where about 6 Mountain Goats.

I walked the trail and made it to Basin Lake, looked up and found 3 more Mountain Goats above the lake. I also ran into another rifle scouting party just up from the lake, waved and proceeded on. I made it to Norse Peak got on that trail and followed it back to the Jeep. I ran into one group of hikers on the way down and unfortunately they where far from as nice as the group I had run into on my last trip out. One of the people in the group actually got off the trail to avoid me all together. Pretty rude but whatever, I was going to tell them about all the mountain goats I had seen...... their loss.

Overall a great trip, covered a ton of distance and saw a lot of wildlife on the last hunt for the Early Archery Season 08