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Sierra Chronicles - Part 2To:
TomBurch@AOL.com Subject: Re: The Sierra Chronicles -Part 2 Date: 11/04/95 02:22 PM Hi Tom & Laura, This was the second installment of "Sierra Chronicles" with a few tidbits of family news. We love you! John & Betty --FORWARDED PRIVATE MESSAGE] To: AFWA58C From: AFWA58A Subject: THE SIERRA CHRONICLES -PART 2 Date: 10/30/95 11:19 PM Hi Larry, Sharon, Lindsay, Sara, & Samuel, We took Marissa home Friday and returned home Saturday, so it's quite in the Montgomery branch of the Burch family now. We had a lot of fun with her and miss her activities. Wish Lindsay, Sara & Samuel could try that one day. We look forward to seeing you for the Nutcracker. * * * * * The Sierra Chronicles -Part 2 * * * As we first trudged into the base camp area, I told you that it was snowing very hard. By the time we got into the camp area, snow was already two feet deep. The snow was to affect greatly almost everything we did while in the mountains. After we built our teepees and beds (and a good fire or two), we started learning where to find food. If we had actually bailed out, we would have a minimum of emergency rations, but most food would come from the land. We spent a week in base camp and the lessons every day were how to build little traps to catch small animals (squirrels, chipmunks, possum, even porcupine. We were not amazingly successful with traps, but did catch a few animals and ate all we caught. Divided among the total number in the camp, it amounted to a taste each! We also found a beaver dam on a stream and caught trout which we cooked on the back of a shovel and made into a very nice meal! On the veggie side, we found lots of water cress and similar plants along the streams. You could make a meal on that sort of thing if you ate enough of it and I'm sure that it provided good nutrition. With all the snow around, finding water was no problem. We just gathered a container full of snow and threw it on the fire to melt. Without that, we would have been very dependent upon streams and would have probably camped much nearer the stream.
The snow was a problem, too. First, we had to dig down to hard ground to keep the teepee and beds and fires from melting down through the snow and disappearing. With two (it later became three to four) feet of snow on everything, just finding dry firewood became a real challenge. We learned , that if you broke off the smallest ends of branches, it was dry enough to start fires (and yes, we did learn to rub two sticks together for a fire!) Once you had a fire started, you added slightly larger and damper sticks and as they burned you kept dragging up the larger and still damper logs to dry beside the fire. Our fires smoked a lot, but they burned well and put out a lot of heat when the temperatures were down in the teens. With the large smoke hole in the top of the teepee, you could have a fire inside and heat up a lot of space. You learned to live with a LOT of smoke! We were dressed warmly and slept in double thickness wool sleeping bags in full clothing on top of the pine bough mattress. I changed socks at night, and wore socks through the night to help keep my feet warm. We slept comfortably, but not excessively warm. Actually, my teeth chattered a LOT! The worse part was getting up in the morning and putting somewhat warm feet into ICY boots. With all of the cold weather, hands constantly exposed to snow and damp cold, a chilly wind and no bath for over 10 days, your hands begin to crack and feel very uncomfortable. You wear gloves as much as possible, but they come off a lot to tie knots and do other small work. I guess "chapped" describes not only hands, but face after a few days. By the end of the week, they had taught us most of the routine of living off the land under more peaceful conditions. (You certainly couldn't build a teepee under combat conditions.) We were prepared for the next stage... cross-country navigation. They came in with busses and moved us to a new location 30 or so miles away. We still had no snow shoes and the snow was at least 3-4 feet deep and still snowing. We had built primitive backpacks while in base camp and packed our meager belongings, including two-man trail tents we had made from panels of the parachutes. The objective was to travel, using maps like we would have in a bailout kit for navigation from point A to point B. It was a distance of about 25 miles as the crow flies. When you took into account the hills and valleys, it was probably closer to 40 miles as we walked it . Now, the snow became a REAL problem. Every step was up and over a lot of snow and even fallen logs, rocks and other mountain barriers. The mountains were very steep and sometimes it felt like only inches at a time that you went forward. When you reached the top of a ridge, you had a similar problem slowing your descent. It was tough, tough, travel and we rested often, but still traveled about 6 miles a day over seven days on the march. All the way along, we took sightings with a compass and compared the map to prominent features we saw. At night, we chose a sheltered spot near water and looked for something to eat. The pound of beef they gave us in base camp to dry was saved for this trek and came in very handy several days. After a week in base camp and 3 or 4 days on the trail without shaving, my face was feeling positively furry. It felt bad enough that I actually tried to shave in a cold mountain stream without a mirror. Big mistake! I think I must have looked like I had survived (just barely) a bad cat fight! I didn't try that again until we were "rescued" at the end of the trek. * * * Next time: Rescue & Capture! * * * Sharon, your Mother is asking for a Christmas idea list from you. We love you all and really look forward to our trip to Omaha! Hug each other for us!
All our love,
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