We had decided to put all our eggs in one basket... we'd go down the south side of the waterfall instead of the north.
We woke up at daylight to a cool clear morning. Tranquilizer went over to the creek to get some water. When he came back he said all the meat and skull were gone(the skull was in a game bag with some meat). I thought he was ****tin me... but Tranquilizer can't tell a lie to save his life. I thought eff that and went to take a look.
Sure enough in the creek, only the hide was there. Tranquilizer was wondering how 3 bags of meat could float away. I was wondering the same. He went across the creek and we started scanning the edges to see if something was caught up somewhere.
Things weren't making sense to me. I spotted something white on the far side of the creek. I walked Tranquilizer in to it. It was a game bag. Sure enough a trail of scraps of meat was leading into the thick brush. We followed it for as far as we could until we lost the trail.
A grizzly in thick brush, in the fog on a kill did not sound like a happy place to me. Disappointed we broke camp, loaded the hide and gear into our packs and started our way back down.
It was pretty easy going for the first little while. Then we were into alders on a steep slope, down gullies and creeks. It was some serious monkey business. We just knew we weren't going back up. We came out on a granite slope. We could see the trail at the base of the falls. We knew when we hit that it'd be home free and easy going to the truck.
Tranquilizer just said "where grass grows, we can go"
Good enough for me. We carefully made our way along a 4 inch ledge and down some cracks. Then we ran out of footing. We decided that we'd lower packs down. So off with the packs. Tranquilizer carefully made his way down barely holding onto a crack. He slid a couple feet then got his footing back on a crack. He shuffled over onto a little bit bigger of a ledge behind a little 2 foot drop. He scouted out the edge of a granite. He told me that there was a 20 foot drop off, then a 10 foot drop onto some rocks. We could probably lower ourselves down off the ledge.
So I pulled out some paracord from my pack, tied them up and lowered them to Tranquilizer. Then I started to scurry down the same route Tranquilizer went down. I ended up losing my footing and started to slide. I started to pick up speed. I seen Tranquilizer's hand reach out. I spotted it and grabbed it. I felt him pulling me slightly to my left. I felt him starting to slide and I looked up at him. I seen he was on one foot. So instead of both of us going over... I let go.