It's been a good year to reflect on some old photos. These are a few from a wildlife collaring and tracking project I got to be a part of back then. It was decades before the big fire, and it's fun to remember how it used to look while chasing big cats all over the country on foot and in the air. Taylor Ranch ski landing, View of Soldier Bar in winter, and Chamberlain Basin.

Love to see stuff like this . Thanks for sharing. Cool stuff happens these days but the real good stuff always seemed better “ back in the day “.

Nice post, Lee! I too love these shots from yesteryear and wish I could help the older generation get them digitized, and record the stories along with.

Uh oh. Are we the "older generation" already? That sure seemed fast.

I think there are a few thousand slides from the area at that time. I'm only a fraction of the way through them, with a number of flying pics from several of the strips we used (Vines, Mile Hi, Monumental, Taylor, Cold Meadows, Chamberlain, and Bernard mostly), and a lot of epic sized sheep, elk, and goats from the area the likes of which aren't around any more. A lot of archaeological stuff as well. I also have a number of photos of photos in the boxes somewhere of the strips with Jennies,Tiger Moths, Travelairs, and Wacos from the 30's and 40's, when flyers were apparently compelled to wear jodphurs and sashes.

lesuther wrote:

This is how I remember Chamberlain before the fires. Thanks for posting.

CAVU

Beautiful pictures. Please share more if you can. I'd love to see the sheep.

lesuther wrote:Uh oh. Are we the "older generation" already? That sure seemed fast..

Heh...I wasn't exactly talking about you, though maybe you qualify for having anything saved on film.

Great post. Made me think about Wilbur Wiles. His life celebration at Big Creek last summer was something else. Thanks for reviving good memories.

You should get in touch with Richard Holm, Jr. in McCall to get some of those historical photos, etc. immortalized. I’m sure he”d be interested in publishing some of it in some way.

For those who enjoy ID backcountry aviation history, here’s an additional snippet

https://yellowpinetimes.wordpress.com/2 ... ar-3-2019/

J

Timbuk2 wrote:Made me think about Wilbur Wiles.

I met him a few times. In fact, some of the equipment used was his old stuff he had used a decade and a half earlier in the same area with Maurice H. (same pack, tree climbing spurs, and the dart gun, Nat'l Geographic, November '69).

I was there seasonally across four years, mostly the summers, since I was cheaper than a grad student at the time apparently, the UofI needed two people in the summer for safety reasons, I was tall enough to easily pass for 18 as long as I kept my mouth closed around people who thought that was important, and I was highly motivated.

And lucky. Very very lucky.

I'm continuing to scan slides. There are thousands. Almost all of them require a long pause.

Shoring up the Taylor strip. After we felled them, I floated logs down one at a time, log rolling to keep them from getting sucked into the current. I had just fallen off the log after getting it spinning too fast- I didn't have corks, just some adidas tennis shoes for the job. We dragged the logs up with the University's mares.



Putting up hay.



Lots of archaeological sites in just about every drainage or bar.



A big kitty just before getting a half dose of ketamine.



The rewards of long climbs up out out of the hot canyons.