Boys wash day at Sheslay

Later that day Bill, Tracy and |
visited with the Vance family while the
boys went fishing. Mike caught a nice
rainbow in the Hackett River. He also
left his hatchet there. That afternoon
we also met Mike Erickson ''The Sheslay
White Resident'', We checked out his
cabin and could find no food and little
else to speak of. That evening the kids
went and had tea with him and came back
thinking the ''free life'' isn't so hot
after all.

Monday, July 24th - while we were
preparing to leave we wondered if we
should pack Paleface and decided that he
would probably have forgotten the incid-
ent two days before. How wrong we were,
Bill was just putting the pack saddle on
when he let fly, this time kicking Bill
in the hand, However, Bill was determined
that Paleface was aoing to pack so they
snubbed him to a tree, put a running W
on him and he packed. :

After we left Sheslay it took 2 hours
to climb the Summit. It was a lonq,hard
climb for man, woman and beast. We stayed
in high country from there right to “Atlin.
That afternoon we rode through a lot of
buckbrush, Found 4 more insulators. About
5 pm it started to rain so we beqan to
look for a qood camping spot. As we
wound our way down to a lake we could
see tents in the distance, and as we qot
closer we could see it was an Exploration
Camp. We arrived at the camp at 6 pm and
the cook was there to greet us and
invited us in for supper. The camp
helicopter had seen us earlier and told

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the cook we would be there around supper
time, he had a lovely meal ready for us
and did we enjoy it. Fresh salmon, salad
mashed potatoes and pie for desert. By
the time we finished eatina, it was raiin-
ing quite hard so they asked us to spend
the night in camp. We took a vote and
everyone wanted to go on so we went

about 2 miles further where there was
better grazing for the horses.

tn background,

When we awoke the next morning it was
still drizzlina but we had breakfast,
rounded up the horses and moved on. Bi1]
tried packing Paleface without the running
Wo and got belted in the same lea as the
first time, so was limping again. From
then on Paleface was tied short and had
a running W put on each time he was pack-
ed or unpacked, Just to show how smart
horses are, after the third time he had
the running W put on as soon as the rope
touched his hind leq he lifted it and
before long we only had to put the rope
on very loosely and were able to pack him
without any trouble at all.

The trail from this point to Ball Lake
Was Swampy and grown in quite badly with
buckbrush, That day we also went over our
first of many corduoroy bridges which the
packers had made through the swampy areas
by cutting logs and literally making a
log road. By the time we reached Bal]

Lake it was raining very hard so we
decided to stay put for the rest of the
day and do some fishing. Just as we
arrived we saw a cariboo swimming the lake
and a moose at the far end,