Life on the Trail

(field notes from SBTS crew leader, Henry O'Donnell)
When we first went back to work at Antelope Lake, Coz and I decided we were going to camp, even though we were seeing cat tracks everywhere and knew it would be getting really cold. The first night wasn’t that bad; we had plenty of easy to get firewood and built a huge campfire. It was dark by 5:15 and as soon as the sun went down the temperature dropped below freezing and the party was over.

The second night I decided to take home some firewood, so Coz stayed and camped by himself. He said he crawled into his camper early, but at about 1:30 in the morning he woke up to the sound of a mountain lion checking out our camp ,only three feet away from his truck. He opened up his window and shouted at the cat to scare it off, but the thing came back no more that twenty minutes later. The second time it came back, Coz pulled out his 22. caliber woodsman and fired several shots into the air. This kept the cat away for the rest of the night. By Thursday morning the temperature was down to 17 degrees, so we decided that would be our last day camping on the job.

~ Henry O'Donnell