Return to Vipond
This is a long post with a bunch of video clips from when Nancy and I visited Vipond Park and surrounding areas around noon today. The video production is sloppy or awkward at times, because I'm still learning to work with my new action camera, but I thought friends of the pack would want to see these places so I included everything here.
Nancy and I drove I-15 down to Highway 43, then along the Big Hole River past the town of Dewey, and then up Quartz Hill Road to the Vipond Park area where Nancy and George's adventure began on Mother's Day. The video below shows some clips from that drive.
Several inches of snow fell up there last weekend, and although it's melting each day there is still 2-3 inches up on top.
Driving from Butte to Vipond Park today.
Next we drove past the spot where Nancy and George were found last Friday.
The stretch of Quartz Hill Road where Nancy and George were found.
Next we parked near the pond where Nancy and George's tracks were spotted last Friday morning, and we walked over to the pond and looked around. This was my first time trying out the neck mount for my new camera, and because the mic is right at my neck, my breathing is very loud. Oh well. (We'll eventually get a remote mic and then that won't be an issue.)
You'll notice in the video that Nancy had a drink of water as soon as we got to the pond, and she also found some elk poop under the snow near the pond. She seemed to know where she was and what to do. FYI, we've seen deer, elk, coyote, and pronghorn antelope near that pond in the past, but we spotted no tracks of any kind in the snow around the pond today.
Nancy showing me around her pond.
There wasn't much wind, so I decided to get some drone video to show where Nancy and George's pond is relative to where they started their adventure. I took more drone video than I can post in a single clip, so there are two parts below.
Drone video, part 1: the area around the pond.
Drone video, part 2: where the pond is relative to the woods where we saw elk running at night.
Nancy and I headed down Quart Hill Road after that, first going back past the area where Nancy and George were found. Then we drove past the Addson Creek drainage. Isaac and I took two hours to search that area on Friday, a few hours before they were found. The video below shows how there is a narrow road that turns left down to Addson Creek, about a mile from where Nancy and George were found. I wondered if we were wasting our time searching down there on Friday, but from this angle it seems like a spot they might have gone to eventually if they hadn't been spotted up on the road.
Driving back past where Nancy and George were found, and then past the Addson Creek drainage.
And finally, the video clip below is a speeded up look at the 2.4 miles Nancy and George traveled from the meadows down to the cabin where they were last spotted on Sunday.
Nancy and George's walk from the meadow down to the cabin.
We saw other people twice when we were up there today. Two guys in a little blue side-by-side ATV passed us at the pond while we were on our walk, so there was a second set of tracks through the snow when we drove back down. And on our way down Quartz Hill Road, we ran into Mike, the man who had built the cabin Nancy and George went to. I had met Mike and his three Rottweilers while I was searching up there last week, and he had one of his dogs with him this time, so Nancy got to meet her. Mike was very happy to hear that Nancy and George were safely back home, which was a nice way to end our trip today.
Nancy and I didn't bother to explore inside the woods today, mostly because the ground was so soggy and there was lots of standing water from the melting snow, which made walking slow and clumsy. We'll go back with George on a warm summer day, and maybe they'll show me some of the places they hung out while they were there.
