Clearing Trail to Alpine Lake Camping, Fishing, Pack Goats, Dogs, Firebox Stove Cooking & Baking.

I'm trying to make it up into the high country. Last time I was up here, I got stopped by snow. Another time, I actually made it to the lake, but found that it was still frozen over. I've got the goats with me. I'm hoping I can pack into this remote lake. Beautiful little spot. So, I'm crossing my fingers and I'm going to go for it again. I do have a saw, but it's very small. All right, here we go. Nice. Heat. Heat. Woohoo! We made it to the trail head. Oh, good. Good. Okay. Come on. Let's go. Come on, Maggie. Hey, come on. all this mud and all this trouble getting here. And we might get there and the lake might be frozen over. I really don't know. We'll definitely be the first ones to get there. This snow isn't from the winter. This is all new snow. The snow cleans off the mud and then you go back into the mud. Good girl, Maggie. a little runoff pond and it's not frozen, so I'm hopeful. But boy, this sure is messy. All this snow melting. You can hear the frogs. I know that as we get closer, like at some point they'll just be quiet. Let's just see how close we can get. They are making quite a racket. That's pretty fun. Maggie's going to scare them. Oh yeah, there's less and less. Oh, there they go. Beautiful little spot. I'm going to a different lake, but if this one's not frozen over, I'm sure the one I'm headed to will not be either. Beautiful spot. I'll tell you what, the mud is bad. There's so much mud. You see it here? It's just slippery and sloppy. The dogs are just filthy. Hopefully, there won't be any mud and I can just pretend like we're winter camping. The birds are singing and it's not muddy up in here. I've camped here before and it looks like we're going to be in good shape. So, we got snow and tree litter. I think I can work with this. Stay here, buddy. All right. You're free. I bet these goats are tired. I know I am. Dogs aren't. They got plenty of energy. They're just getting warmed up. Let's go look at the lake. Come on, Ursa. Let's go. But there it is. And it's not frozen over. This is very exciting. Oh, it's beautiful. But let's get down here and see if we can catch a fish. It's like 2 ft deep right here. I'm going to have to dig the snow out of my boots. Looks pretty good. Hopefully I can catch a fish. It's very weird to see it with snow. I've never seen snow here before. So, it's pretty cool. That's fun. Beautiful lake. As you guys know, if you watch my videos, this first cast is important to me. So, let's see what happens. Usually if the fishing's going to be good, you know, on this first cast. Come on. This lake is usually a little bit harder to catch fish. Like the fish are just a little more picky. No bites. Isn't that crazy? Solid as a rock, but they're not biting. The goats found some willow. I just caught a fish. Oh yeah. Woo! Holy smokes. See if I can get him in. I didn't bring my net over here. I had too much stuff to carry. I'm holding my camera with my knees, so I apologize for the poor camera angles. And Ursa, watch out, Ursa. Just dropped my camera. Oh yeah, this is a big fish. Let's see if I can get my camera fixed. What a beauty. Look at that guy. Woohoo. See if I can get him up here on these rocks. Look at that guy. Holy smokes. All right, let's let it go. Let it go. Woo! Wow, that was fun. I could never eat that much trout. Just out of the blue, no bites. And then suddenly it feels like I've got a boat anchor on the end of my line. Pretty fun. The goats found some wild roses, so they're pretty happy. This is a pretty cool spot with all these boulders. You can almost just imagine boulders tumbling down and creating this beautiful spot. Makes a great place for fishing, too. Well, I'm certainly not pulling them out left and right, but even if that's the only fish I catch, I'm going to be pretty happy. Come here. Good dogs. I'm going to set up my stove on my pack table. And I have to give you a little bit of a disclaimer because if you do use your stove on your table, it will discolor the finish. Um the only other thing you need to worry about are these ends are um a nylon plastic. So if you have in too much heat, you know, near them, they will melt. But other than that, there's no other plastic parts in between. So these uh these tables can actually handle quite a bit of heat. This is the hex kit that has the folding fire grate. And we did have some trouble with our hinge tool and we had to send it back. Um, you know, we we're going through some growing pains with the manufacturing thing, but we're getting it figured out. So, we should have these ready to ship before too long. This is the sixsided stove. And I like to set it up like this. Get it into position just like that. Fire sticks go across just like this. And then this one I do kitty corner just like that. Perfect. And the grill can sit right there. But I wanted to see how those dehydrated potatoes would work um with the cheesy potatoes. And I think they'll be delicious. I'm looking forward to it. Maggie's ready for some cheesy potatoes. and we can put some bigger sticks in around. It'll be especially important to go slow on this steak because it is once again a little bit frozen. I don't think it'll take very much water. And that water is boiling. And then we'll just set those aside and let them rehydrate. I'm going to use my coffee maker to drain my potatoes. I think they're plenty rehydrated. I don't have the filter in the bottom. I just have the um just the basket. And we'll just cover them up. Keep the wilder spice out. Every once in a while, we get this little sleet. There's like one cloud up there. Maggie likes to be close to the snake so she can dream. Huh? Maggie me. Ursa, stay. Let's Get these cheesy potatoes going. I'm going to do a bunch of butter. Let me get my potatoes in on top of them before the butter browns too much. Get some salt and some pepper. We'll get our cheese going. And then we'll cover it up. All right. Cheese. Okay. It's all I have. It's all gone. My fire was a little hotter than I realized and I had to just pull it off the heat real fast. I really like the flavor of when this cheese gets a little brown. Oh, no. We're fine. We're fine. It's not burning. Oh, it's browning up though. That's what I wanted. Knock these coals down so my plate can get hot. So, this will leave some of the fat in the pan, but I'm making sure to get all those crispy cheese parts. Yeah, those crispy cheese parts are the best. I'm going to try to cut my steak up here on my plate. I don't know if I'll be able to or not, but let's just see if I can. Oh, yeah. Looks good. I was worried I went a little bit too far, but it looks like a very nice medium rare. So, what's amazing about the hard anodizing finish on these pans and plates is I honestly can cut like you can hear the knife hitting that hard anodized finish and I've never seen it actually do any damage. So, that hard anodizing finish is very, very tough. It's very durable. All right, let's just turn this and kind of cut this into chunks. Oh yeah, cheesy potatoes are starting to get all crispy on this plate, too. Oh yeah, very crispy. Yeah, the hash brown style cheesy potatoes is very good as well. The uh golden Yukon, whatever those were, potatoes, the baby potatoes, that was delicious. But with this, I was able to get more crispiness. That's good. Very nice. Oh man, cheesy potatoes are my new favorite. I swear. Okay, you guys have had enough. The rest is mine. So good. I'm going to bake a coconut lemon cake. So, I have some flour, some coconut, and this is just yellow cake mix. Let's start with the eggs cuz I want liquid to be in the bottom. Two. Three. Then we'll go ahead and put our cake mix in. This is just boxed yellow cake mix from the grocery store. This is the coconut. And it's really hard. I vacuum sealed this. Maybe even a year ago. I don't know. It's been a while. So, and if there are a couple of chunks of coconut in there, that'll be okay. Cut that. And I don't really mind seeds too much. It doesn't really bother me. All right. This is the secret ingredient. Coconut cream. So, let's get that in there. Oh, yeah. I might have too much liquid in there. Put this butter on this pan because I'm going to butter and flour it. I don't want it to get too hot though. Gets hot fast. I'm okay with if that flower layer turns out a little bit thick. I'm okay with that cuz I really like the flavor of it, the texture of it, everything. All right. So, I'll go ahead and kick out the excess of this flour. I put a little bit of salt down before I put my batter in. put my pan on. Pizza stone in the bottom. And then this will go in on top of that. I don't want to get carried away because I really don't want this to overflow. And that will be plenty of cake for just me. Ready for me to make your bed? Is that what you getting cold? Yeah, it's starting to rise a little bit. So, let's move this to here. We'll put the grate down. And I'm going to put it everywhere except for the center. The last time I burned the center of my cinnamon rolls, there's still quite a bit of heat below, but not quite as much. We just want to get it brown and then we'll move that heat back down below. Oh, it's looking good. It doesn't look like it's going to overflow. put those hot coals back down in the bottom because I don't think I'm going to get it to brown on top. It's just not making progress. Let's put this back up cuz I think it might be getting close to being done or it is done. Yeah, that's coming out clean. I think it's done. I'm going to separate the parts of the oven. So, we'll take this part out. And then I'm going to turn this part over like that. Yeah, it was kind of a thinner cake. I I was worried about it rising too much. I probably could have put quite a bit more in there. And then I moved the heat from the bottom a little bit early, but it's cooked. It's done. I'm going to let this cool a little bit. Set this over here on this log for a minute. This is mint. Cut this up. Nice. I think that's more than enough. I had two lemons cuz I was thinking I was going to catch a trout and I needed lemon for the trout and for this cake. Maybe I could kind of scrape it with the blade. Yeah, that works. Now I know. Okay, there's a piece of our cake. Cream cheese frosting. Put some of this zest on there. Try to get it to sprinkle, but it wants to clump up. Oh, well, guess it'll have to do. And a little bit of this mint. Probably not as much as I cut. I think it's going to be good. Let's try it. It is actually really good. I really like the the uh mint. Yeah, that's good. I'm happy with how that turned out. Very gourmet. And the zest. Perfect. So nice. Dogs wouldn't even like this. Dogs only like meat. That is a very nice little cake. I'm very happy with that. And the little garnishments just take it right over the top. Oh yeah, the cake is still a little bit warm. I could have kept trying to brown it, but I didn't want to dry it out. And it really turned out nice. Really happy with it. That was good. Oh. Oh, I was getting a bite. Good morning. I don't know what time it is. Let's see. 6:30. The dogs are up. The goats are not tied up and they did not bother me at all. They just stayed over there perfectly content all night long. It was a very good night. I slept really well. Probably would be the best time to hike out would be right now. It wouldn't be muddy, but I'm not going to do that. Okay. For some beautiful calm, still lake just waiting for us. A few moments later, got one. Yes. Come here, Maggie. Come here. You want to come see? Come here. Another big Oh. Oh. Yeah. Wow. Wow. What a beautiful fish. No. Ursa. Hey, Maggie. Come here. Come see. Look at that. What a beauty. I'm going to let it go. There it goes. Gers is still wondering where that fish went, wishing it was still here. They fly right over our heads from the one lake to the other. Let's walk over and look at the other lake. A little bit sunny over here. Bill, come here. Lots of grass over here. Coffee time. That's good. I like to cook bacon pretty hot at first, at least because if you cook it too slowly, it ends up being very dry. Now, my fire is just hot coals, which is perfect for the eggs. I don't think I can do these with one hand. They've got too tough of a opening. All right, I'm just going to put my plate right there. Keep things nice and warm. Oh yeah, these eggs are nice and runny. Cooked in bacon fat. Delicious. Wow, that is good. Bacon turned out great. Very nice. Maggie. Ursa, sit. Good girl. Here, Ursa. No, Maggie. Okay. Go on. Go on. Go play. They're like, "Yeah, right. I've got my cake right here. I'm worried the dogs are going to kick stuff into it. Okay, sit, Ursa. Sit. Good girl. That's pretty hot. Let's give it just a second. Okay. Okay, now go play. That is good bacon. Reach my frosting here. They're chasing a squirrel. Wonderful breakfast. And I caught that beautiful fish this morning. That was even more beautiful than the fish yesterday. The fish yesterday may have been bigger, but this one was a cutthroat. It was really pretty. I'll give it number one score. Nope. You're done. I'm not going to give you anymore. That bacon got a little overcooked. Sometimes it doesn't feel like those are going to fit, but then they do. And then I like to keep a ranger band around it because it is maxed out. It will pop open. So, I just fixed that by throwing one of our Ranger bands around it. And it's snug as a bug. Thanks everybody. Bye-bye. Ursa, sit. Sit. Good girl. Stay.