Ep 170: Backcountry Research, with Zig Peacock

Zig Peacock (also appearing in episode 137) is the President of the Weber Basin Anglers chapter of Trout Unlimited and an avid backcountry angler. In this episode, we talk about what he’s been up to since our last episode and how he does backcountry research, including the books, apps, and online resources he uses to find new fishing spots.

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• Transcript

  Katie

  You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast your home for fly fish in the backcountry this is episode 170 with zig peacock on backcountry research last time I got a background on you which is how I usually start episodes but this time I figured a good way to start would be to kind of get an update on what you've been up to because I know We're going to talk a lot about like backcountry planning and logistics. But I'd also like to hear, I know you've done another Cutt Slam. You did the hiking challenge. So I think instead of kind of a background on you, let's hear what you've been up to since last time we talked.

  Zig

  So if I remember right, last time we talked, I was done with Cutt Slam 4 and was partway through 5. So now I've actually completed 5 and I completed 6. And six was actually completed during that Outdoor Vitals challenge. So I signed up for the challenge again this year to do the 100 miles. And I actually accomplished it this year.

  Katie

  Yeah, so give a little background on what that is again, if people didn't hear the first time.

  Zig

  Outdoor Vitals is a small ultralight backpacking company based out of Utah. And for about four or five years, they've had a challenge every year in the summer that is a 100 miles backpacking. So it has to have an overnight element. Some people will do it in one trip and others will do it what they call stacked, which is multiple trips. I did it stacked. I ended up doing six different trips to get my 100 miles with my last one. Believe it or not, this was probably a rarity for me, but I actually didn't take a fly rod or any fishing gear with me because I knew I had to get the miles in. And that one was an overnight trip with about 3,000 vertical and 23 miles total.

  Katie

  Bold move, not taking a rod. But I know what you mean, that you can turn a backpacking trip into a five-mile endeavor if you bring a rod and get too enthusiastic about fishing and then never move forward.

  Zig

  Well, and the lake that I camped at, I took a little bit of finding a spot there because I hadn't been there before. And the lake that I camped at is a brookie lake. And they were boiling right at sunset and boiling again in the morning as the sun rose. And I'm just like, oh, but it was good because I got to see a bunch of new territory and lakes that now I know where the lakes are if I want to go fish them. And I've done some research and I've heard stories about one of those lakes having very large tiger trout. So I'm sure that will be in the books again sometime in the near future.

  Katie

  I'm not sure if I asked last time if we talked about it, but how do you submit your runs essentially to this company? Do you just submit like a watch, like a GPX route or something like that? Or is it an honor system thing?

  Zig

  It changed from last year to this year. Last year, we had to submit the actual GPX files. This year, all you had to do was take a picture of you at the trailhead and then submit what your miles were for the trail and maybe one more picture of a notable feature in the trail.

  Katie

  Okay, to prove you that you were out there at some point.

  Zig

  Yeah. And for my trip, because I'm here in Utah and the Uintas are so close, I mean, I did 80% of my miles up in the Uintas over 9,000 foot levels. So up in the high country, high country lakes, high country streams. It was amazing.

  Katie

  I'm sure a lot of their submissions are from the Utah area or at least the Mountain West. So it's probably pretty easy. But I'm picturing somebody taking up this challenge in Nebraska and just being like, I hiked 100 miles in one trip, but all I saw was the planes and I don't know how to prove that I was out there.

  Zig

  It was interesting this year. So they do a recap at the end of the year with kind of all the submissions and stuff. And they do some statistics on it. probably, I think they said like 75% of the people that completed it this year all did long trails. So like the Appalachian Trail or the John Muir Trail or Continental Divide Trail, you know, one of those, those big epic trails. There were a few that did like the U into Highline Trail,

  Katie

  which is, that's just over a hundred miles. Um, I mean, that makes sense. Like if, if you know, you're already going to do like easily a hundred miles, you know, that could, that could be like three days of walking, you know, go ahead and throw your submission in.

  Zig

  Well, and they opened up the, the window this year, for the prior years, it was basically from July 1st to the end of September. That was the window you had to, to get your mileage in. And this year they opened it up to like April, you know, so as you, if you had people that had trained last year and were fit enough and their areas were open, they, they could actually start going right about that. I actually, I think if you were, I think I told you last year, I had Achilles problems. And this year, again, when I started training my Achilles slurred up again, so I was about four weeks behind. So I actually didn't get my first trip in until like July 15th. But then, you know, I'm getting right to the end of September and I had like two weekends left. And that's when I did that 23 miler. And originally it was going to be about 17 miles. But when I got into the lake, so that lake that I base camped out of, there's, there's a big loop that goes up to 11,000 foot level. And up in that upper basin, there's like six lakes. And if you take, take the loop counterclockwise, it's a lot easier because it's a really steep on the west side, which is the kind of where, if you were looking at a clock, kind of the nine o'clock area. And so I started up in there after I'd set my camp the first night, hoping to, I was hoping to get the miles in early and get them done before the next day. And as I was going, I got looking at the sun and I'm like, yeah, there's no way I'm making it. And, you know, about the point I look up and I've got two fingers of sunlight over the ridgeline. I'm like, yeah, time to bail back. And I ended up going directly across country because up there in that upper basins, there's not really any trails. So I went directly across country and just bailed off about 300 feet off a kind of a cliff edge where I find a break in the cliffs straight down to the far side of the lake that I was camped on and then walked around the lake to my camp. And so the next morning I'm like, well, might as well start from the same spot. So I went back around and went back up that kind of that same area and then finished out the loop. and as I was hiking out, I got to probably, oh, I don't know, about five miles from the trailhead, four to five miles from the trailhead, and I was just taking a little rest, getting some hydration and some food, and I was calculating my miles and looking at my mileage, and I'm like, I'm only going to be two miles shy of the 23 I need to finish, so I looked at, I was looking at my mapping software, which we can talk about, but I use both Gaia and OnX backcountry. And I was looking at the software and I'm like, well, there's one trail that hooks in just about a mile from the end of the trailhead. And it goes down to a series of lakes. And then there's another trailhead that it starts from. And I figured out that that first series of lakes was a mile approximately. And so I'm like, if I go down there and come back, I'm almost there. Right. So I booked and got to that point, went down, actually ran into a guy that I had talked with online quite a bit, but I'd never met. And he's like, Oh, you got to come check out this camp I found over at this other lake. And I went with him over there and that gave me 0.1 and I was 0.1 shy. So after I went and checked out where his camp was, I was like, perfect. Thanks. See ya. I'm out and bailed back to the car and got full 23 out of it.

  Katie

  So. So did you end on like exactly a hundred miles?

  Zig

  I was just over. I was about like 101.3 or something like that. So just barely over. I mean, not much over, but there, I mean, there's people that completed it. Like the person that did the most miles was like, I think they were like 345 miles that they did or something like that. So.

  Katie

  And, any, any lessons learned or anything that you took away from this year compared to the last time you tried it?

  Zig

  A couple things. So my first trip and my fourth trip, I had a lot of rain. And last year, the tent that I had kind of failed me and I ended up returning it to the company and got a full refund. And so I was using a buddy of mine that passed away. His widow gave me his tent. So he's using his tent and it's a, it's an old, um, big Agnes. I think it's a scout UL and it's a single wall tent. Yeah. Single wall tents and heavy rain up at like 10,000 foot level when the temps get down to 40, not, not good. I had so much condensation that that first trip, it was, it was heavy rain with those big, huge raindrops, right. And it's hitting the sides of and I'm feeling splashes and I'm like, is the tent leaking? And I pull out my headlamp and no, it was just the brain drops hitting the side of the tent or causing all the condensation to splash off. So I had that and then I had it in, yeah, I think it was like my fourth trip. It was raining as I was coming in, just a light rains and I had some good, some good, a good rain jacket. So it wasn't too bad. And stopped about the time I got to camp, set up camp in this small metal kind of by the lake. And then like literally right as I finished throwing my bear hang rope up, it starts coming down again. So I just clip my food on, pull it up, tie it off, go and jump in the tent. And I'm like, I guess I'm meeting the couple of trail bars I still have right here, you know, for dinner. And it actually cleared up just right at twilight. And I got probably one of my favorite pictures of all the trips because I've got the lake in the background, this old gnarled stump that has kind of this orangish color to it and the dark moody sky and a little bit of light coming in. So that was really cool. But again, it was one of those, The temps that night got down to about 38, 39. And luckily I had just enough clothing to survive it with my 25 degree quilt. That's actually like 35 comfort rating. So I was a little cool, but you know, I threw on some more layers and stuff. But again, the condensation kind of built up and I had a little bit of rain. I felt it splashing. And when I got up in the morning, I actually had ice on the outside of my tent. So I was like, all right, note to self, anytime you got weather, let's find another tent. So I ended up picking up a new double wall tent that I used for the very last trip. And it seems like it'll work great.

  Katie

  Yeah, condensation really is a pain. I feel like, you know, you can do things to kind of offset it. You can get some good airflow and stuff. But at the end of the day, sometimes you're just stuck getting rained on on the inside of your tent. And it's just, it's a real bummer to wake up and, you know, you're dry, but you're not. And your sleepy bag is getting wetter as the morning progresses. It's a lot. Yeah. And how about your Cutt Slam? We can touch on this briefly before we kind of move into the meat of the conversation. But any, I guess, like notable things from the new slam compared to any of the previous ones?

  Zig

  A couple notable things. So I think I told you before, I like to try and hit as much as possible new waters. So on slam five for my Colorado cutthroat, I actually went into a new area to me on the south slope of the Uintas. And that one, finishing five, I needed that. I needed the Colorado cutthroat and I needed the Yellowstone cutthroat. And finishing it was during runoff is when I finished. And so it was a struggle because, I mean, you know, what should be a nice mountain stream was roaring. And, you know, I went into an area called Upper Stillwater Reservoir and I hiked back to the lake a little ways. At the back end of the lake, there's a river that comes in. And I had heard that there was cutthroat in there. So I went to the mouth and started fishing there, caught some brookies. So I started hiking the river and pretty much the only thing I could fish without just, I mean, if you cast it anywhere out into the river, your line was like gone. It was just running so fast. So I could only hit those really soft occasional pockets on the edges. And it had to be on the edge nearest me because there was no way you were getting a line across the river and getting any sort of natural drift, right? So I started fishing that and I'm getting brookies. and another brookie and another brookie. And finally, I mean, I'm probably about five miles in at this point. And I'm like, all right, maybe there aren't any cutthroat in here. And I'm thinking, yeah, maybe I'll just turn around and head back. Right. And I get up to a pool, pretty long, long running little pool on the side there. And I see this dark shadow move up. And the first thing I think is, oh crap, I hope I didn't spook it. Right. And cast in there, nothing one more cast in there and bam it hits hits me and I set on it and land it and it was a probably about an 18 inch cutthroat oh that's awesome and I was like if anyone was around there they were probably wondering why the guy was screaming his head off you know out of excitement but so that was that one and then the Yellowstone the I went into the area I guided a friend that I I've talked with a bunch, um, into a river that I've fished a fair amount for the Yellowstone. And it was funny cause he's catching them and I can catch, but I can't land a single thing. And I'm just getting more and more frustrated and we're going along. And finally we go down lower on that river and he's like, I got to help you get one, you know, cause he'd gotten his and we're going along and like, I'm not catching anything. Cause there's hardly any holes that slow enough because it's such a small little stream and such high water finally we get to one last hole and it's like tug set grab the net you know and it finally landed it but it was it was a struggle just because you know the water was still in runoff conditions and going so fast on both of those So those were interesting. The last slam, the slam number six, for the Bear River, a lot of times people are going to focus on the Logan River and its drainage for the Bear River cutthroat. Or they might use kind of the Ogden Weaver drainage, which counts for either the Bear River or the Bonneville. You can't count it for both. but I actually got looking through and realized that there was a whole section in the, in the, um, Northeast, I'm sorry, not Northeast, Northwest corner of the Uintas. That's the headwaters. And so as I was looking at it, I was doing some research, um, talking with and talking with a few people on the chapter Facebook page. And a guy had posted about one of, one of those areas. And he said, yeah, it's fishing really good right now. So I ended up using that for one of my hikes and went in and got up in there. Beautiful, beautiful basin. And on the way in, you know, I passed like eight horse packers and probably 10 stock coming out. And I'm thinking, oh boy, you know, what's it going to be like up there? And I get up there and no one's there. I had this entire basin to myself. And by the time I got up there and got set and ate dinner and everything, it was getting really close to dark. And so just for kicks and giggles, because Peyton and Kelly, one of my other friends, both harassed me about Tenkara. So I actually had a Tenkara with me and I pull it out and there's an inlet stream that's going, it's about three quarters of a mile in length in the meadow as a crow flies, but it's meandering through this meadow coming down to the lake I was right by. I start fishing that and I actually caught four cutthroat out of there. And then the next morning I get up and I come around the kind of the south side of the lake when I went to and camped on the far west end. And so when I went out, I went around on the east side and I get to the, I get going around there and I'm fishing, not seeing anything. Finally get all the way to the, where the trail comes in and I see a couple of rising. So I go over there and I catch a couple on a renegade, which if you talk to anybody about the Uintas, they're like renegades are one of those fly patterns you've got to have up there. I catch one on that. I'm like, okay, I'll keep fishing. So I went back around kind of the way I went before and found a deeper drop off that I hadn't seen as I was hiking in and just started laying into them. And I finished the day probably about one o'clock because I needed to head out. And right at that last one, I caught one that was probably 15, 16 inches, which is a pretty good size for a high alpine. I mean, we're up at 10, eight and, caught and landed that one. And so really, really good fishing trip. And when I get back, I was talking with the regional, the region cutthroat biologist. They told me they haven't stocked up in that area since 1988. So they're all wild trout up there. And I'm like, yes. So it made it, I mean, it made it even just that much more special.

  Katie

  And what is, what's the, what's the future plan here? Like, are you, are you just going to do cutthroat slams in Utah for eternity? Or do you have plans to venture out and try maybe a different state slam or, or a different challenge?

  Zig

  So it's funny because originally when I first did the cutthroat slam was the old unpainted coin. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to do it at least twice so I can display both sides of the coin. Well, the backside of the coin is the same on the painted coins, but then they released those four painted coins. So then I was like, all right, well, I guess I'm doing it six times. So I finished the sixth one. I'm like, all right, now what? I had already, I've already paid four. And I guess basically because of the Utah portion, I've started the Western native trout challenge and then started looking into the Wyoming one. course, I'll talk with Skiddy, Payton Skidmore, you know, on his experience and stuff like that. So, yeah, I'm looking at some others like that. And, you know, I think I put out a shout out to Coulter Backcountry and their pro deal and the challenges on there. So I was even looking at some of those and I knocked off a few of those this year as well. Same, I've been enjoying those.

  Katie

  And I don't think his latest episode has come out, but he's coming back on. We've already recorded. I don't think it's aired yet, but we talked about the pro deal on that. So people will be familiar with that. But it's a pretty cool idea, like kind of a do-your-own-pace, various challenges and stuff. So I saw your name on there. I was on there recently just looking at challenges and saw that you had arrived on the page.

  Zig

  Well, I'll have to admit, I was looking at the challenges and I started looking through. And I'm like, all right, I got this one. And then I see Katie. And then I see Katie. And then I see Katie. I'm like, oh, I got to go get a few more. I got to have a few more than Katie.

  Katie

  Well, yeah, I was one of the early people, I think, that found out about it. And I had been doing a bunch of fishing right as it came out. And I tried to butter him up and let him count my trout man from last year because that was one of them. And I was like, I'm not doing one of those this year. I want to count mine. He's like, no, it's got to be from this year. And I was like, well, that's fine. I've done like four of those by chance in the last month. So I was able to submit a couple that I had just finished. that's cool but yeah I saw your name a couple times as well well just to move on to kind of the meat of the conversation here I'll kind of let you lead the way because I know you've got a bit of an outline that you're following from it sounds like a previous presentation is this like a presentation you gave?

  Zig

  so it was a presentation I gave to our trout unlimited chapter on just planning backcountry expeditions and kind of my methodology and what I i've used over the years it kind of has like four parts. If you look at it, human intelligence sources, you know, so talking with people, fly shops, stuff like that, print, digital media, and then just trial planning tools. So when you look at human intelligence, you know, one of the things I kind of wanted to say, you know, fly shops are great, right? But there's some things you need to do when you're dealing with fly shops in my opinion you don't want to be a grifter i've always liked to support small shop small right and you know luckily around here we don't have a lot of like chains except for maybe like sports sportsman's warehouse or something like that and honestly I don't go to don't go there because even though the flies are cheaper they out they're cheaper they fall apart faster you know but I like to support local and if they have socials or they have guides, you know, try and support them as much as possible. But also if they give you information or tips, come back and take care of them and give them a report, you know, give them a trip report and let them know how it's going up there so that then they can use that to help their other customers. So, you know, fly shops is kind of one of those human intelligence pieces. Obviously But, you know, another good source of human intelligence that I've found, I had the opportunity for like a semester. My son went up to Montana State and I was like, yes, I get to go visit my son in college. Right. So both there and locally in Utah, I found that the region biologists, if you look up the state websites for their division of fisheries, whether it's a DWR or whatever, that's a great resource. You reach out to them and it's their job to make sure there's a viable fishery, a good fishery. And so they can give you some great resources. Through that, I've actually gotten to know Matt McHale in the Northern region here in Utah really well. He's the Northern region cutthroat biologist and he's given me a lot of great information. I've gone into a few places. There's one place on the north slope of the Uintas that I've gone into that he actually dropped me a pin and said, based on the surveys that we've done, the fish population is higher past this point. We went in. It was a Colorado cutthroat area. We went in. We started fishing down lower. Beautiful area. Absolutely fishy looking area. Couldn't catch a thing. Couldn't see a thing. Went up to that pin and started fishing there. Finally caught a couple small ones. And then a little further in, we found this hole, this deep hole on a bend that I'm not kidding you, Katie. In every trip I've gone there, I have caught between 60 and 100 fish. It's just an insane hole. So, you know, I have to give all credit to Matt for saying above this point because we started searching from there. And so, you know, reach out to those biologists and, you know, start talking with them and make friends with them. and you're going to get good information.

  Katie

  Well, the nice thing about them is, I mean, a lot of them probably are also anglers, but it's a little less, I don't know, when you reach out to somebody who just fishes, it feels like you're just trying to like get info that, you know, you're trying to steal information that they have potentially worked really hard to find. Not the biologists aren't working hard, but, you know, it's their job to go out and kind of know where the fish are. And they're not necessarily giving up their favorite fishing hole. They're just giving up, you know, survey data that they've taken. So it feels like they're typically a little more willing to give out information than the average angler who will keep secret spots very close to the chest.

  Zig

  Well, and that kind of goes back to that thing I was saying about the fly shops, right? Don't be the grifter. Don't be the guy that's just trying to get the tip, get the easy information, right? If you're going to reach out to someone on socials, start talking with them, right? Get to know them first and let them know that you're not someone that's going to just grab that information and spot burn or something like that. And people are more willing to talk with you then.

  Katie

  Right. Do you find that fly shops, how do I want to say this. Like they give they give you the info they're giving everybody. And, you know, you wonder how many spots that they're like, not that they're not telling you because that's the actual good spot to go. Or do you feel like you're actually getting kind of like the best advice for what you're looking for when you ask them? Or does it does it vary based on, you know, the person you're talking to the fly shop, all that?

  Zig

  I don't know that it varies on the person you're talking to, but on the relationship you've established. Because, you know, when I was in Montana, I stopped at a couple of fly shops to try and get some information. And yeah, it kind of felt like I was getting the information everybody gets right. But at my local fly shop where I spend a lot of time and I refer people in when they're getting into fly fishing. And, you know, I give them information and stuff like that. Yeah, I've gotten some other information. I mean, one of the guys in one of our local fly shops, when he was there, he gave me a tip that has been an absolute blast of a lake to go to. And it's on super popular trail. It's probably a three to five, three, three and a half mile hike into this very popular lake. But off trail, about a half mile off trail, once you're a mile into the trail, there's a lake that's unnamed and nobody really knows about it. And I've gone in there and just it's like Brookie Bonanza. It's crazy. So, you know, he mentioned that there was a really good Brookie Lake kind of in that area. And I just did a little bit of research based off of some of the other stuff I do and kind of targeted that one as a possible one. And then went and did an exploration trip with a buddy of mine and we found it and we're like, yeah, if we were going in again, we're going into that lake. And since then I've gone into it about two, three more times. And it's been a great fishing lake since then.

  Katie

  So basically the lesson here is, you know, go into your fly shop, go in regularly. spend money there they will start to recognize you and then it's no longer you just coming in and kind of mooching information out of them it's it's you've developed a relationship with them and they're going to be a lot more willing to to share spots that they're not worried that you're going to go off and just kind of like rape and pillage the lake and share it with you know all your followers on social media and and there goes that spot

  Zig

  so exactly yeah that's exactly it when we were talking about socials, I mean, again, that's, that's building that relationship, right? Getting to know people, comment on their posts, help them out, you know, reach out to them about stuff. I mean, you never know where it's going to go, but building those relationships. I actually, I actually had one guy that I had commented on a few of his Instagram posts and gotten to know him and talk to him and stuff like that. And I was at one of the local ponds fishing with him. Well, I didn't know it was him at the time. So I'm at one of the local ponds, just it's 15 minutes from the house. It's just, if you need to need something to, to reset the brain, go over there, catch a few stalkers and, you know, have fun and then leave. And I was using a pattern that I created that works really well on stocked rainbows. And I was over there just slaying them. And he was having a little bit of trouble on top water setting on him. And I just looked over and I'm like, hey, just a quick tip. Match your set to the take. So if they come up and take slow, slow down your set. If they come up and hit fast, speed up your set. As soon as I did that and talked with him, he started landing him. And the funny thing is he actually, about a month later, he sends me a message on Instagram. he's like, Hey, I just moved into a new house. I think you're, I'm your next door neighbor. It turns out he had moved in right next to me. Oh, that's hilarious. It was kind of funny. And, and at the time I'm, you know, we were talking and I, I started, I put together his name and the guy who I talked to online. And I'm like, Oh, are you this guy? And he's like, yeah. So, I mean, the relationship had started to be built already and then it just increased once we got to know each other.

  Katie

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Zig

  So, I mean, you know, like I said, same thing on socials and a lot of that you can, you can build almost an inner circle, you know, you can get into an inner circle. If you get out and go on trips with people, maybe, maybe it's just taking them out and you're not going to take them to your best spot, right. But you're going to take them to a good spot or something like that and get to know them. And then if you trust them, cool. Through that guy that became my neighbor, I actually, I was going to guide both him and his brother-in-law up for Yellowstone cutthroat on the slam and he couldn't make it, but his brother-in-law could. And so I took his brother-in-law up there and got him into the Yellowstone. We had a great trip and everything. And I didn't, I didn't know him at that time, but I got to know him through that trip. I mean, it's two hours up, two hours back. And he had a good time and he reached out, you know, he just said to me, Hey, if you're ever down in the Cedar city, which is fairways about three, four hours South of me, if you're ever down in that area, look me up and I'll take you out. Well, I happened to be down that way for a soccer tournament and my team didn't make it to the finals. So I had a day that I was going to be coaching, but I'm not now because we didn't make it to the finals. So I called him up and said, Hey, I'm, I'm in St. George, which is just, you know, half hour or so from Cedar city. I'm in St. George. You want to go out? And he's like, yeah, you want to go hit some small streams? I'm like, yeah, perfect. And so he guided me into an area for Bonneville Cutthroat. Again, small, tight, brushy, alpine stream, absolutely beautiful. And we're catching Bonneville Cutthroat on terrestrial patterns in February.

  Katie

  Oh, wow. That's not something I would have guessed.

  Zig

  Right? I mean, it was amazing. I'm like, you're serious? I asked him what to bring and he's like, yeah, these are what hitting. I'm like, seriously? In February? They're hitting on top water on terrestrials? And he's like, yeah. And sure enough, they were. So, I mean, that was like one of those most unique trips and it all came from the inner circle on Instagram, talking with people, getting to know them and just building that relationship. So that's kind of that human intelligence side of it. Print media. I mean, a lot of people are going to think books and, okay, the books are going to go out of date and they're going to be old and stuff like that. But yeah, they are. But some of them still have a lot of information.

  Katie

  They do. And I feel like the nice thing about books, even if they are out of date, is it's kind of just a fun – it's a snapshot in time. It's kind of like a time capsule. And you go there and like, yeah, sometimes it is out of date. But I almost like the – you know what's supposed to be there, but you might be wrong. I like that sometimes a little bit more than knowing exactly what I'm going to catch. If I go in knowing I'm going to catch 10-inch cutthroats, I can have a good time. But if I go in being like, well, at one time there were 10-inch cutthroats, maybe now they are 20 inches. It's kind of fun to have a record that there were fish there, so you know you're probably not going to get skunked. But you don't know quite what's going to be there 10 years later.

  Zig

  Yeah. A good example of that, I did a day trip with Skiddy this year. And we went into an area and it was actually a fun area I wanted to try and get into because I tried to get into with my I've got a Ram 1500, but it's stock. And I tried to get in there one time before and there's one feature that there's no way. And so now I've got a Wrangler four door and three inch lift. And I was actually able to get clear that and get within a quarter mile of a brookie lake that I'd wanted to. I'd hiked into it before, but this time we were able to drive up there. And so there was a couple other lakes off trail up there that we went into. And we went into these two other lakes and everything I could find, even from the DWR, the Utah DWR has what they call a fish finder that will actually show you the lakes and what should be in there. even from that tiger trout. Well, we went and hit that second lake. We hit the grayling lake, and then we went and hit that tiger trout lake, went down the other tiger trout lake, and then we went back up to the middle one. And Peyton's fishing, and all of a sudden he yells out, guys, I got a cutthroat. I'm like, no, you didn't. There's no cutthroat in here. He's like, no, I did. I'm like, keep it in the net. I'm coming over there. And we go over there and there's this beautiful cutthroat that he caught in that lake. And we still have no idea how it got there. It could have maybe come up through the streams, but that seems like a big if because of the distance and the grade that it would have to come into. Maybe someone was doing some bucket biology. But I mean, even talking with the region biologists is like, that shouldn't be in there.

  Katie

  yeah it makes you wonder you know if you if you read a book and 10 years later you go up and something else is there but the stocking reports don't reflect that it's just kind of a fun like thing to think about too you know like how did how did this get in here what's the story behind this

  Zig

  yeah so one one print source that people might not think to look at that i've discovered is has actually been pretty valuable is your state library. Because like in Utah, our DWR, Division of Wildlife Resources, when they do a survey or go through and do some gill net surveys in an area just to check what's going on, what the rates are, do they need to change their plan for stocking and stuff like that, they'll write up a report. And that report actually gets posted in the state library, which is accessible to the public. And if you know the right way to search, you can find these reports. I found that because back in the, I think it was the late 60s was the first set of the books. So like 1968 or early 70s, there was a series of books called the Lakes of the High Uintas. As you've probably figured by now, I love going up in the Uintas because all the lakes, I mean, it's got a thousand lakes and 600 of them have fish. So, you know, it's, it's a playground. It's my Disneyland. I was looking for these books because I'd heard about them. Right. And I was trying to find a digital version and I found one or two places online that kind of had digital versions, but they were scans of the paper versions and they were kind of crooked. And sometimes the, it was hard to read them and stuff. And I, so I reached out to one library system and asked them about it. And they're like, Oh, you should go check out this. And so I ended up going to the state library and I found all those books plus the rewrites. So there's, there's like, don't keep me, hold me to this number, but there's like eight or nine of them. And most of them cover a major drainage or one or two or three smaller drainages in the Uintas. And in the eighties, they redid a few of those books. And then just last year, they redid three of those books. All of those can be found in that digital library. So you can download the PDF, have all that information. I mean, and it'll give you a little write-up on every lake. It's got a map with the lake name or the lake number because the unnamed ones are numbered based on the drainage. So like if it's in the Bear River drainage, you might have a BR or something like that. I can't remember what the exact one is in the Bear River. But it'll say like BR2. This small lake is 11 acres in size, maximum depth of six feet. And there's no campsites here. There is horse feed and no spring water. But spring water is available at the nearby Bourbon Lake or something like that. So it gives you information on camping, gives you information on horse feed. If you're coming in with a horse, it gives you information on fresh spring water. If you're interested in that tells you what they used to have in there, whether it was stocked or natural reproduction. And I'm like, this is a gold mine, you know? So I know since, you know, I mean, sixties, that's 60 some odd years ago, right? Yeah. Since then they've changed how often they stock and maybe they stopped doing brookies and now they're doing tigers or something like that. But it gives you some good information. If you've never been into that lake, hey, this lake has spring water and decent campsites. Bravo. Let's go check it out.

  Katie

  Do you know if that's Utah specific or if like most states have something like this?

  Zig

  I would think most states have something like this because it's the state, it's the government website, the state government website. So it also has like, if you wanted to go read Senate type stuff or stuff like that, which I'm like, yeah, no, I just want this stuff. But I saw there was stuff on big game. There was stuff on small game. There was a bunch of different reports in there. One of the actual reports that I found on the south slope of the There was one where they actually went through and surveyed some more of the lakes. That one went into as much detail as they gill netted and some of the fish that they gill netted. They also took and opened up the stomachs and checked the stomachs. It will tell you there was mud snails, scuds, and worms in this sample. It's like Everything you need. Everything you need, right? I mean, okay, I'm going to tie up some of these. I haven't figured out how to do mud snails yet, but I'm going to tie up something to match all these and let's go explore and have some fun. So that was just one of those sites that I'm like, okay, this is a little bit of information that, yeah, you've got to work for it. You've got to figure out how to do the search right to actually get to that information. But once you do, There's some cool information out there.

  Katie

  Yeah. Are you considering this digital or print?

  Zig

  Kind of print. Print online? I mean, it's print in that it's a PDF of the actual print document, right? So it's kind of in between, I guess.

  Katie

  So a state library. State library is where you're finding this kind of stuff.

  Zig

  It's the state online library. Yeah.

  Katie

  Yeah, I'd be curious if that transfers to other states. I would love people around the country to try it and see what they find.

  Zig

  So I know doing some of my research to try and find these books and information on the lakes up there in the Uintas, I actually found the Forest Service had a Excel spreadsheet. It was probably eight years old, but it listed most of the major lakes up in that area and gave the GPS coordinates, what trailhead got you there and what fish were expected in that lake. So even that, I mean, it was an Excel spreadsheet. Actually, it was a PDF copy of an Excel spreadsheet and I used Adobe PDF to put it back into an Excel and adjust all the information. I'm kind of a digital geek that way, I guess.

  Katie

  Did you have other print resources or was this like the main, but I mean, obviously books, which is going to be, you know, a region specific thing, but.

  Zig

  I do. So locally for Utah, Fishing Utah by Brett Prediman is a pretty good book. It's got some good information in there. There's a Fly Fisher's Guide to Utah by James B. I think it's Demo. That one has some good information. Obviously, the Uinta books, if you search on the Uintas, you'll find a lot of books. There's a book by a guy by the name of Jeffrey Probst. Basically, he's taken all of the information from those lakes of the Uintas and distilled them down into tables. So you go into each section and it has a table. But the new versions that the WR just did, in the very back of them, they've done basically that table now. So that one's really good. And then there's this guy by the name of Cordell Anderson. And I found him because I was doing some research on the smallest basin up in the Uintas and trying to figure out if there was a way to get in there, if there's actually a trail. Everything I can see, there's trails that go along the outside of it, but it's like a pretty steep drop in to get in and no trails inside it. And I found him doing research on that. He's a gentleman that has backpacked every basin in the Uintas. And I mean, he was still doing this when he's in his 70s, late 70s and stuff. And so he wrote, you can either buy a print copy from him for, I can't even remember how much he charges for that. Or you can send him 20 bucks and they'll send you a digital copy of his book. But he's got a book and, you know, he's a funny older guy. he kind of rambles a little bit in the book, but there's still a lot of good information on how to get into some of these areas and stuff. And 20 bucks, I'm like, yeah, okay. Shot him the 20 bucks, got, got a download link for the book. And, you know, I think it's like a couple hundred pages and it covers all that area up there, you know? So that was another one I got up there. The, there's a Fish Utah website. There's, um, the Boulder mountains is another big area. That's fishing area that people will go into. It's not quite like the Uintas, but there's some big fish in some of the Boulder mountains. And again, the DWR has done a booklet on the Boulder mountains where they rig the lakes based off of Trophy. I can't remember the exact rankings they use, but Trophy is like the top ones. And those ones you're expected to find big fish, but maybe not as many. There's like a provisional or something kind of along those lines. And those are the ones where you're going to get into the bigger fish, not necessarily the big ones. And there might be more. And then there's the ones where it's kind of like a stock and take type lake, you know, where they're going to have a bunch of different stuff in there. So that, again, you got the Boulder Mountains, you got a list of the lakes and a table, and it's all in print. You can flip through it and get that information.

  Katie

  And I feel like, again, this is Utah specific, but most states are going to have some set of their own resources. Absolutely. I know there's plenty for Colorado as well. And those are the ones I'm familiar with because that's what I'm looking up. But I feel like most Western states that are known for fly fishing in some way probably have at least two or three good solid books that cover a lot of the places to go.

  Zig

  Yeah. I've got a couple for Idaho that have some good information in them and stuff. And like I said, even at human intelligence, when I was going up to Montana, I reached out to the region biologists over that area and got some information.

  Katie

  Yeah. How about digital?

  Zig

  So on digital, I don't know if every state does this, but our DWR actually provides a report of all the stalking they do. And there's actually a video out there of them doing the stalking in these high Uinta lakes and the high Alpine lakes, they actually airdrop them. So I don't know if you've ever seen that video before, but it's pretty cool. But the nice thing about the way they give the information is it has the information, the water name, the county it's in, the species that was stalked, how many and what size and the date. And it's all in a table form. All right. Being a geek that I am, a data geek and stuff like that. I figured out that Excel, if you give it a spreadsheet and do this right, you can actually scrape all the data out of a table, a website table into Excel. And so I've got a stocking, I've got the stocking report from 2002 up to current in a spreadsheet, one for each year. And then I've got a compiled sheet and then you can run a pivot table, which I don't know if you know what a pivot table is, but with a pivot table in Excel, you can basically cross filter. So I can say, I want all cutthroat lakes in Summit County and it'll filter it out.

  Katie

  Oh yeah. Okay. I didn't know that was called a pivot table, but I have, I have done that.

  Zig

  It's not just the filters though. With, with the pivot table, you can actually, like I can add additional filters up top and say, okay, here's, here's my filters for the county. Say I want Summit in Duchesne County because that would cover a lot of the Uintas, right? And then down below, I can see all the lakes and I can then filter. I can then take the number. It'll give me the quantity total that has ever been stocked. So like if I were to go to, I'm going to just throw something out, Adams Reservoir, which is actually a small community pond. But if I were to go to Adams Reservoir, it gives me a stock of what it shows me, cutthroat, bass, whatever that's been stocked, ever been stocked in there. Right. And I can click on the number and it'll pull up a little subtable and show me what dates and how many were put in of that, of that exact species. So it gives me a little quick way to, you know, Cutt Slam. If I'm trying to find cutthroat and I want to be in Duchenne County, cause that's got the most prevalence of Colorado's boom pull that up look at them I can cross that over to our DWR has what they call a fish finder and you go on there and it's it basically has kind of a map of lakes through Utah and you click on an area and it'll highlight like a drainage and then it'll say in there sometimes you can drill down to a specific lake sometimes it'll just be a list and say okay expected to catch grayling in lake x lake y and lake z in this in this drainage so you can kind correlate between those. And then I was also correlating between those lakes of the Uinta books. So that would give me initial information. Then I could look at when stuff had been stocked. And you know, if, if they were stocking, you know, typically when they're bombing these fish in, they're five, six inches, right? So you want to give them a couple of years. And if they're doing like, you can actually see patterns. You can see if they're doing it on a three year or four year or five year timeline. And so I can go, okay, I want to hit it on about year four. And you can look at the dates and go, okay, so right about this point, I want to go up and hit this lake. And it just gives you kind of a higher percentage probability of getting into that. Other media sources, I mean, obviously we've got different YouTube people and that that are out there doing stuff. It's funny because some of these big guys, I don't know if you've heard of Wildfly. So they actually did a big thing on the Uintas. They did a big trip, had an hour long hour-long video on that. My neighbor that I talked about earlier, he actually told me I should become a detective because I actually took their video. And from one location that I recognized in the video, I figured out what their entire path was, where they camped, because they had this great flyover video with a drone shot over the side-by-sides as they were coming in. And I looked at the profile of the mountains and I used Google Map and Gaia in 3D version and kind of went off the trail, followed the trail along and then went, Oh yeah, this kind of looks like those mountains. And so I figured out where they were fishing, where they camped at and all that stuff, just off of there, off of that, you know, and I was able to, I, if I wanted to, I probably could have pinned GPS points and gone in and replicated the thing. So, I mean, I guess that's maybe a shout out to some of the YouTube people. Be careful what you post. You may just be driving past the sign at 30 miles an hour, but someone can still frame that and catch an idea of where you might be and then build from there.

  Katie

  Yeah. Thankfully, I feel like, so I've done the same thing where I've looked at blog pictures or whatever and figured out where somebody was. You need a little bit of knowledge typically, and typically a lot of hard work too to figure it out. But yeah, that is a fair warning to people who think they're hiding spots by taking what they think are vague photos when

  Zig

  they're not quite as big as they think they are. Well, and you know, that also goes to these people that are freaking out that they're hotspotting. And it's like, I don't know that area. If I'm looking at that, that's not a hotspot to me because I don't know that area. If I'm anywhere near that area and I've been by that area, I mean, even like that wildfly one, I, there was one spot that they showed video of that. I'm like, I know absolutely where that is.

  Katie

  Right.

  Zig

  Because I knew that, that gave me one point to start correlating from and build the rest of it. Right. And it took a little bit, but I also enjoyed doing that.

  Katie

  Yeah, I did too.

  Zig

  Additional media sources, podcasts. I mean, there's a lot of good information out there from podcasts. I'll put in a kudos for your podcast. I love your podcast because it hits a lot of high alpine lake stuff and gives good information on that.

  Katie

  Yeah, hopefully it's not a ton of hotspotting because I don't like mentioning spots that aren’t well known.

  Zig

  No, you're not doing that. But there's good information on the different slams and stuff like that to give you that starting point to start researching stuff and say, okay, here's someplace I want to look at, something I want to look at. Some other digital sources, oftentimes the flow in the rivers can dictate a lot what you're going to be able to fish for and catch, right? The USGS has the stations that track all that. You can look those up really easy. Also in the USGS is an app called Streamer. And Streamer, you can select, say I select the Green River or the Colorado River or one major river. From that, I can use Streamer and it will fan out and show you like the veins of your blood system, right? It'll fan out and show you all the primary, secondary, and tertiary streams that are coming into that. You know, and that's a great idea. If you've got a really good big river system, go hit those secondary streams. You know, go hit those tertiary streams.

  Katie

  Probably the same species, but with fewer people.

  Zig

  Yeah, fewer people. And, you know, that'll give you all of those streams and whether they're, If I remember right, they'll even give you whether they're consistently running or just an annual type running and then they dry up in there. So there's that. There's, you know, fly fishing forums may have some information, but again, people can be protective if they don't know you and stuff like that.

  Katie

  Also, forums I find are just like, I don't know what it is about people on forums that are just wrong so often. like I you'd think that you know if someone's like oh I've been there and I've caught it whatever but then you realize how bad people are at fish id and knowing what lake they were at and things like that and it's like I love forums too but like man I've seen some bad info on forums I'm just like how can you be this wrong so take those with a grain of salt

  Zig

  yeah exactly I kind of use that as just kind of like a gut check to some of the other stuff I've done

  Katie

  yeah so I mean there can also be like great info on them. I just, I just find it funny sometimes how like two different people will say two different things about the same place. And I'm like, well, one of those is right. And one of those is very much not right.

  Zig

  Right. Well, I went there and fished and there's no fish in that lake. Sure, buddy.

  Katie

  I went there and fished and I caught some. So I don't know what you were doing wrong. Maybe you're just not very good at fishing.

  Zig

  Right. Trip planning tools. Probably some of the big ones for me are like, so when I first started getting back into everything, there was a blog post that was a local hiker that liked to go out and hit a lot of the hikes. And I would hit her posts just to get an idea on the trails and where lakes and stuff are. And she had a competition. And from that competition, I won a free year of Gaia. So since that point, I've used Gaia GPS a lot just because I like the ability of having the multiple maps and being able to set the transparency on those maps. For me, I mean, like this last trip that I was talking about, the big trip to get my 23 miles, that one I had downloaded their hiking map, which has good labels on all the lakes and the slope angle map. And so based off of that, I was able to look at that slope angle map and get a good idea where there was going to be a break in the cliffs when I was going and bailing off that 300 feet down to the lake. So that one's been a really good tool for me. I also use OnX Backcountry. Last year when I did the OV100, we got a free version of that. And then I found another really good deal after that free version was up. So I've used that as well. I like how OnX has in the trail guides, the trail will actually be colored based on how steep it is and stuff. That's something that Gaia didn't have until just recently. Now that it has it, I'm kind of like, do I really need OnX anymore or not? I don't know.

  Katie

  So I find just personally, so I use OnX Hunt. I've used OnX Backcountry also like on a, you know, a sale they had, but mostly for backcountry skiing. But I use OnX Hunt for hunting and fishing. And I find that Gaia has some really useful layers, but I find it way too much to deal with on the phone. Like it's too cumbersome for me to bring layers up, change the opacity to darken it and like organize the layers in the right order and all that stuff. I find that Gaia's layers are really helpful on a computer, but on a phone, I want to use OnX because it's like, you know, a one button tap between topo, hybrid, satellite. And Gaia is like, you know, they have like 18 different topos, which is awesome when you want that flexibility. But like, I don't want to have to sift through 18 different topos on my phone. I want like a quick thing. So that's my kind of like opinion or hot tip.

  Zig

  I think the thing that I really liked about OnX over Gaia was their satellite seems to have higher resolution too.

  Katie

  They have very good satellite images.

  Zig

  And so I've used OnX more for the satellite than for anything else. With Gaia, I've gotten to the point where now I basically just download the Gaia hike because their mapping has come along enough that I feel like that Gaia hike has enough information in that topo that I can get what I want out of it. And I use a slope angle. And so I just download those two from that. And then I've got both the OnX and that. between OnX and the satellite and the guy with those two, I can kind of parse out the information I really want out of those two. So those two are probably my two main ones, especially when I'm in the backcountry. The other thing that I found with when you're kind of researching areas, if you want to kind of understand what the slope really looks like and stuff, I don't know if you've played around on OnX, but they have that Terrain X. Yeah. And that beta I found when you're in the mode, if you have it in the 2D view and you hit the arrow up, that's supposed to go back to that 2D view and you're at the very top, it kind of causes the terrain to bounce. And when it bounces, it kind of gives you a little more live 3D view of some of the areas. So you kind of get a really quick view of what's going on in that area in the 2d mode to see if it's like really steep in an area I mean because you know some of these topo lines if they're about 50 80 100 feet in between them I'm sorry but I'm not gonna jump 50 feet right so there might be a cliff in there that I can't really tell because of the topo and if I'm in the 3d even if I usually use like the the topo overlaid on the satellite if you kind of bounce it it kind of gives you a little better discrimination of what's going on in that area.

  Katie

  Have you checked out their LiDAR? I think it's new-ish.

  Zig

  I haven't checked that out yet. I saw the email come out about that and I haven't checked it out yet. I bet that's really cool.

  Katie

  Yeah, so that might kind of solve what you're talking about. And I don't know. I know it's new-ish. I don't know when I first noticed it. But if you're in topo mode, you now get kind of a... It's not reflected in the topo lines, but it's reflected in the shading. So you have to be in topo mode and you have to be in the 3D mode, which I feel like you kind of already want to be anyway. But you won't see them reflected in the topo lines, but you might see a cliff that is like physically represented in the 3D that happens to be between two topo lines.

  Zig

  Between two lines.

  Katie

  Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's some error and it's only so fine. But I have seen little benches and little cliffs that were not reflected in the topo lines because they were smaller than the 40-foot interval or whatever. So check that out and see if you can spot some of these features.

  Zig

  That'll be cool.

  Katie

  What else for digital planning? I feel like this has got to be the biggest category, especially for what most people are going to be doing. This is where the vast majority of personal research comes in.

  Zig

  Well, and one more thing on OnX. I noticed this last trip when I went in, as I was doing my final planning, the satellite was actually showing snow. So I don't know if it was like from early in the spring or from the year before or what, but I'm like, this doesn't really help me to figure out the streams that are coming in and stuff like that that I might want to fish, right? So sometimes, you know, that fails. There is a website and I think it might be deprecated now and be under a different version, but there's a website that a buddy turned me on to called Sentinel Hub. And in Sentinel Hub, they have what was there called EO Browser. I think they've changed that EO Browser to something else and I don't know if they have the free version anymore. But basically it was going out and pulling down the information from like the Copernicus satellite passes and stuff like that. information that's going to all these mapping apps and it was pulling it down in fairly real time and you could search an area and find what satellites and how how occluded it was with cloud cover and stuff so I could go back like one week and there was a pass through this area and it was only six percent covered with cloud cover so early season trying to hit in the high country I can pull that up and I can see you know what snow might be off well enough now that I can go up and give it a try, right? As long as I know the road's open, now I can start looking at the different trails and seeing where that snow might be coming off and whether the lake has thawed out or anything without having to drive two hours up and then hike in to figure it out, right? So that Sentinel hub was really cool for looking that.

  Katie

  I assume the resolution on that was not, like that you're not gonna be using that to find a bend in the stream. As far as I know, Sentinel goes down to maybe 10 meters, Maybe 30 meters. I don't remember which. I know Landsat is 30 meters.

  Zig

  It was kind of your high level. Once you wanted to get into more detail, you're going to use an OnX or a Google Earth or something like that.

  Katie

  But this is for like telling what the current conditions are like. You know, like is it melted out? And on that point, if the one you're talking about is no longer in service, Earth Explorer, you can pull like Landsat. I don't know if you can pull Sentinel data from that. But same thing. I mean, Landsat is passing over every 16 days. So you can get, at the most, a little over two weeks old information from that. Good to know.

  Zig

  It's a learning curve, but the information is there. Yeah, it was the same with Sentinel. And I was seeing the warnings about it being deprecated late spring. So I haven't been on there since then. So I can't tell you for sure whether it's gone yet or not.

  Katie

  There's a couple of these. And the downside is that they're government websites. And it's obvious that they're government websites. They're not built for ease. They're built for comprehensiveness, which is great. But when you first log in, you're just like, oh, my God, this is overwhelming.

  Zig

  Yeah. You're going to be overwhelmed by all the data and how to do anything.

  Katie

  Yes.

  Zig

  And you're going to spend some time figuring it out.

  Katie

  But, yeah, for those willing to learn it, I learned it for work because I pull satellite images for work sometimes. But if you're willing to put in the work to figure out how to use it, I'm sure there's YouTube videos and stuff. That is a great, great tip for like current conditions.

  Zig

  Yeah. I mean, I mean, you know, you've got those high mountain lakes, right?

  Katie

  Yeah. You hike the whole way up there and find out that you can't fish them.

  Zig

  It's solid, right? So it's nice to have something like that where you can just get an idea. All right. Is it starting to melt out up there? You know, can I maybe get in or not? You know, so.

  Katie

  But OnX also does have a recent imagery layer now, which it's kind of similar. Like you'll see something in the past two weeks or so. Resolution is terrible, but yeah, you can see there's snow on the ground.

  Zig

  I was going to say the resolution is not as good as what you're used to with the rest of OnX.

  Katie

  I wish it were. I wish I could look at a high resolution. Like what did it look like yesterday? But yeah, you're right. Great for telling if there's snow on the ground. If you're looking for fall colors, you can maybe tell if the aspens are changing. Stuff like that. That's what you're going to get from it.

  Zig

  um you know when trying to go in obviously high mountain areas or areas that can be affected by weather rapidly you want to know what you might be facing obviously you know the the mapping tools like Gaia you can get like a three-day forecast or then you have to pay for I can't remember who it is they they partner with but you have to pay pay to get any more than that OnX it's what 10 days out that you can get on there, I believe.

  Katie

  It's either seven or 10.

  Zig

  Seven or 10. Yeah. Something like that. One that I found is actually fairly decent is actually the government website, NOAA. If you search for a NOAA forecast or forecastweather.gov, one thing I think people might not know is when you're doing the regular searches, it wants to pull up a city. I won't even say a major city, but it wants to pull up a city. But if you then go look at the map and you know the area well enough by looking at other topos or satellite to kind of pick out a lake or something like that, that's going to be right by where you want. You can click on that map and it will move your point to that map. And then it will update and say something like seven miles northeast of Kings Peak or whatever major landmark it was using city or whatever. Right. And so that actually has been fairly accurate for me as I was going and doing all this backpacking because everything I was doing was the trailheads were 9,500. Most of the campsites were 10,500 or above, you know, so you know how fast weather can come in at those levels.

  Katie

  Yeah. I think, I think that's the problem. It's not that the services are bad. It's just like, no one is good at predicting weather that far out in the mountains. I mean, it'll change from a forecast of sunny to a forecast of snow overnight. It's changed.

  Zig

  Just being up in those mountains, they carry their own weather, right? At least you can get a good idea off of that, get a good range. I actually canceled one of my trips because as I was looking at the NOAA forecast, it was predicting two to six inches of snow, first snowstorm of the year. And I'm like, yeah, I don't have, you know, I've got a nice Zen bivy quilt that I love, but it's 25 degree survival rating, right? Snow is not doing it. So I canceled that trip. I actually, my next trip, that, that big one that I did, I brought a buddy's 15 degree to go in and do that one. And I'm glad I did. Cause it got down to 30 that night, but Noah is where it was telling me that there was snow coming in and they were expecting two to three inches of accumulation. And I saw on Facebook in the High Uinta backpacking group, I think it was the High Uinta lovers group, that someone posted up pictures where they had gone hiking up into some of the upper basin areas. I think they were hunting. And when they came back, they couldn't find their tent for a little while because it had started snowing. And on the way back, it got blizzard conditions and then it kind of cleared up. And when they were near their tent, their tent had like a half inch to an inch on it and it kind of blended in with the rest of the surrounding. And so they couldn't find it for a little bit. So I'm like, yeah, that's where you want to have your digital maps and stuff, right? So you've got that pin marked.

  Katie

  Mark that, yeah.

  Zig

  Mark that.

  Katie

  I find those forecasts are pretty good about temperature, but precipitation is a real crapshoot. Like that's

  Zig

  It can be.

  Katie

  Like definitely good to have, but also like you know be able to recognize weather coming in on your own too don't just rely on those it's great for like planning purposes like I should or should not cancel my trip but anyone who hasn't used them before don't take it as gospel because like if you were if you go out of service odds are the forecast has changed but you can't see the change that's happened yet

  Zig

  I, um, do you use like an in-reach or anything? 

  Katie

  Yeah. I use an in-reach. 

  Zig

  Yeah. I've got an in-reach mini and I've, I've found that one's fairly accurate as well, but within a percentage point, right? Like 10 percentage points or so.

  Katie

  There's like levels of how confident it is and like how much I'll trust it. If it says that it's like a hundred percent chance of rain, I'm going to trust it's going to rain. If it says 10%, maybe not. If it says 50, it really is like

  Zig

  Kind of a crapshoot.

  Katie

  I have no idea. Yeah, you got it. I mean, I guess that's kind of what 50% is, but it's not always right. It's helpful though.

  Zig

  I actually found though on a couple of trips that even though it was giving me like a 50, 60% chance, it was saying that 50, 60% chance was around one o'clock or two o'clock. And sure enough, when we got rain, it was right around that point.

  Katie

  Oh, that's funny because I feel like the thing that I've noticed that it's the worst at is the timing prediction. Really? Yeah, if it tells me that there's a whatever percent chance of rain, I feel like it's pretty good about whether it's going to rain. It's been many, many hours off in terms of when the rain arrives. And so I don't put any stock in when it's going to happen. So it's funny that you've kind of experienced the opposite.

  Zig

  It's been fairly accurate for me around about when it would hit on at least a couple trips.

  Katie

  Yeah, maybe that's a state-by-state thing because I know we have slightly different weather patterns.

  Zig

  Maybe. Who knows? Mountain forecast is another one. If you've got major landmark mountains around, that one actually has some pretty good information. And then I actually found for just kind of a general overview of what to expect in a season, there's a guy on YouTube, and I can't remember the name right now, that will do, he's based mainly around skiing, but he'll do forecasts of like long range forecasts based on being he's a traditional trained weather guy and he does like long range forecasts for like the west based on what's happening and what's going on and he'll give give you a little more detail and information on that so that was interesting too so I think probably the only other thing I would put out there is always having backup battery, backup with like maybe a paper mapping compass. If you aren't confident in your electronics or you've only got electronics and you don't know that you won't drop it and lose it, knowing your abilities, planning that route in advance, knowing the effects of altitude. I don't know what you see, but, you know, we definitely see over here people coming in, you know, coming from sea level or so and thinking they can just start hiking at 9,000 foot level. And yeah, that's not going to happen. You know, I, I, I do a lot of my training, even at four to 6,000 foot level. And there's a few times I'm in there hiking and I'm, I'm really bad about hydration. I have to, that's one of the things I learned through this is I have to just keep on my hydration every hour and keep on my calories every hour to keep my energy and everything up, but I can always tell, you know, I'll start to get a little bit of a headache and stuff. So just making sure you know the signs of altitude effects and sickness and you can mitigate that if you need to.

  Katie

  I think that's often overlooked, not the altitude itself, but you said like every hour. I feel like a lot of people wait until they're really hungry or wait until they're really thirsty to like take care of their needs. And I know it like kind of sucks to drink water when you're not thirsty. Like I find myself kind of forcing it down sometimes or eating before you're hungry. But it's a lot easier to fix that before as a problem than when you're starting to bonk and or you've started to get a headache. And it's like, I find it a lot harder to dig myself out of a headache than it is to prevent one from starting.

  Zig

  Yeah. And that was one of the really good things from going through this Outdoor Vitals because they have, you know, in the challenge, they have a really good training plan and they talked about hydration and they talked about the fact that the human body can only absorb so much water in a given point in time. So if you get way behind that curve, guess what? You can chug down that much water, but it's coming back out because your body can't absorb it. So you're giving yourself maybe another problem where you're up every hour in the middle of the night having to relieve yourself because guess what? Now you've overhydrated compared to what your body can handle and you're toast.

  Katie

  Yeah. Chugging three liters before bed is not the solution. Drinking three liters over the course of the day in small sips is the answer.

  Zig

  Well, and you did the podcast on the effects of aging, right? I mean, I'll admit it, I'm an old guy now. Old man bladder gets me up in the middle of the night. And so I got to be cognizant of that. And when I'm drinking and making sure I'm hitting the electrolytes. And I found for me, since I've gotten into my 50s, I've found that if I don't stay on my hydration, guess what? I'm going to be woken up. There's my left calf. I tore one time reffing soccer. And I can guarantee you if I get dehydrated, it's going to wake me up in the middle of the night when it gets cold, right in that spot as it cramps. And I'm now writhing in pain on the ground, right? So I've got to keep on top of it. And it took me most of last year to really figure out that it wasn't even the potassium that was getting me it was magnesium so I'm focusing on electrolytes that have good magnesium and that has helped me a lot so I mean you know be know your your area you got high mountains you're dealing with altitude you up here it's high mountains but you can get dehydrated really easily even though it's nice cool temperatures because it's dry air I'm sure the same over in Colorado. Um, you know, even going down South, if you're doing in, going into some desert type areas that you might be packing into to check out some fishing in some small streams or something back there, know what's going on for that area. Are there water sources? I mean, one of the things I love about the Uintas is there's almost always water sources. So I can carry a liter of water and my filter and know I'm good. I don't have to carry six liters on my back and hump all that weight into the backcountry. So just being aware of that, being aware of, like we were talking about, high country weather is going to change on a dime. You know, it'll be nice and sunny. Next thing you know, it's hailing, then it's raining, then it's hailing again, and then it's sunny again, right? And that was five minutes. So just being aware of that, making sure you're prepared.

  Katie

  Yeah, this is a little bit unrelated, but I mean, related to what you're talking about. I don't know if this made it to Utah, but two elk hunters in Colorado died this archery season. It turned out to be a lightning strike, but for a while it wasn't clear why they had passed away. And we were out elk hunting at the same time. And September is typically very warm, sunny. It's one of the best months to be in the mountains in Colorado. But you can get hit with these freak storms. When we were out there, we got hailed on several days. We got snowed on. Our tent was sagging into the snow. And we were just like, what is this? this is supposed to be you know beautiful sunny weather and these these two guys who died you know I saw people online discussing it and it was it was obviously people who didn't spend a lot of time outside in September in the mountains because they were like this just feels suspicious you know like I don't know I don't know how these guys could have could have died so fast like it's sunny where I am blah blah and I'm like clearly you've not spent much time in the mountains in shoulder seasons because like this I mean this could happen any month in Colorado but yes while September is nice like we got hit with snow and hail I think like four or five out of the 10 days we were out there and to to have somebody be like I don't know how they could have died like you know two miles from their car or whatever I'm like I i don't see how you you like aren't putting this together like you walk outside it's sunny you've got your your cotton t-shirt on you venture a mile or two from the car and then this rolls in and you're turned around because it's blizzard conditions and it's just, it was interesting to see the disconnect of some people online who had not been in these conditions before, but it's really easy to overlook them until you're stuck out in it and you realize that you've made a big mistake.

  Zig

  Yeah. And hopefully when you make that mistake, there's something that's going to protect you from that mistake, right?

  Katie

  Right. Right. Which usually, I mean, usually it all works out, but sometimes it doesn't.

  Zig

  So I'm kind of, I find it very interesting because I'm in the outdoors looking at stuff like that, how people have died or like some of these missing people. And when they finally found them, recreations of what may have happened and stuff. There was a podcast called Uinta Triangle. And it's about a gentleman from Australia that went missing up in the high Uintas doing the Uinta High Line Trail. And he went missing. And then he was found, I think it was eight years later, and he was found off the trail in an area that they hadn't really searched and stuff like that. But one of the local newspaper guys actually did an in-depth research into using his photos, the way he went, some of the reports that they had gotten of people running into him and stuff like that. And it was really interesting to see what may have gone into his thoughts that got him into that situation. I mean, it doesn't take much to get yourself into a bad situation out there. I mean, granted, it was a brief scare, but I had a scare even just this year. I got up out of my tent. I didn't take a headlamp with me because it was just light enough I could barely see. And I didn't take my phone with me. And I wandered off through the trees a little bit to relieve myself. And then I turned around to go back and I'm like, I'm not sure what direction my tent is. So black, I couldn't see anything, you know, and I'm like, all right, I can kind of hear the lake off to this side. So luckily I've got that to kind of guide me. And I know about from the lake where I can get back to my tent. So I was able to kind of guide myself back. But it was just one of those situations where I had just read about a gentleman that went missing up in the Uintas that all his family had gone to bed. He was going down to the lake to get water to put out the fire. And no one realized he never returned. And when they finally found his body, I think it was a couple years later, it was like two miles off from where their campsite was.

  Katie

  Oh, he just wandered the wrong way.

  Zig

  He just wandered the wrong way. And so, you know, it's stuff like that, that I'm like, make sure you got a backup, you know, make sure you got a way to get back and understand that stuff. So yeah, I mean, absolutely. And, and the lightning thing, I mean, I don't know, people realize that lightning can travel 10 miles horizontally. That's when you're up in a, in a, small basin and you're hearing those booms up at 11,000 feet, it wakes you up to what lightning is like

  Katie

  right so all right well is just to wrap up are there any other final parting thoughts or anything you want to leave people with

  Zig

  no I mean just you know get out there, have fun, enjoy the mountains you know like we talked about before i've got i've got my instagram is in2mtns, I-N, the number two, M-T-N-S and my youtube if I ever actually buckle down and and start editing video is the same thing.

  Katie

  Awesome. Well, thanks for coming back. You provided some resources. Some of them I'm very familiar with, but some I'm interested to check out. The library thing, that kind of stuff, some of the weather forecasts. Hopefully people got some hot tips that they weren't already familiar with and maybe people will be inspired to share some of their own hot tips. I feel like there's got to be more underground things that we don't know about yet.

  Zig

  Yeah, yeah. See, I'll turn you into a data geek yet, Katie.

  Katie

  Well, yet to be seen. All right. Take care. Thanks again for coming back on.

  Zig

  Thank you.

  Katie

  All right. That's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes, you can find those on fishuntamed.com. You'll also find the contact link there if you want to reach out to me. And you can also find me on Instagram at fishuntamed. If you want to support the show, you can give it a follow on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. And if you'd like to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise, thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care, everybody. you

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