The creek we were to be fishing was Big Elk Creek, which flows right down to the highway, but we were meeting up with a couple guys from work who were camping about four miles in from the end of the road. We hiked up a beautiful canyon along the creek, marveling at the gorgeous fall colors and watching the kokanee make their way up the crystal-clear stream to spawn. We were also jabbering on about all manner of things while hiking, so we didn't have any idea of how long it took to hike in. This fact would become important later.
When we got to the campsite, the two guys were still sleeping in their tents because it had been raining that morning and they didn't really want to face the wetness outside. Pansies! But we rousted them out and got started fishing. The creek was really too small for my six weight fly rod, but I made do and picked up some nice cutthroats on mayfly and caddis imitations. It's impressive that such a small stream can support so many large trout. No one caught one smaller than 12 inches and we caught a few bigger than 18.
About the time we figured we needed to quit and get back to the car, a big rainstorm moved into the canyon, so we threw our gear into our packs, said "later" to the two poor souls who were going to camp again that night and started hiking in our waders and felt-soled wading shoes. We kept up a good pace, trying to get back to the car and out of the rain, but that's when the lack of a concept of time bit us in the butt. Both of us kept imagining that the parking lot was just around the next corner or over the next hill as darkness began to set in. When we could just barely see the trail and were hearing rustling in the brush around us, we realized we should have left about an hour earlier.
Obviously, we made it back to the car, but we're both pretty sore now from hiking in wading shoes which aren't made for such activity. Turns out that it was about four miles from their camp to the parking lot, so I did nine miles of running followed by eight miles of hiking and lots of tricky wading on Saturday. I picked up some pretty smashed toes and blisters on my heels. The upshot is that it gives me a great excuse to skip running for a couple days while the stupid wind is blowing hard again.
