Best Beer

[bullskin]

I just read egrady's recent post regarding the Frank Church. Ah, the Frank Church. This calls to mind the Legend of the Miracle Beer. My Hotshot Crew visited in 1989 if I recall correctly. We established camp along the river and each day would scale another ridge in the hope of establishing control lines. We wasted the first several days setting fire line explosive, at the insistence of overhead, which proved to be a complete bust. It works over permafrost, but did nothing but blow a little dirt in Idaho. Every afternoon the wind would come up and chase us back off the hill. After a week or so there was a pretty good camp established along the river and we arrived back early one afternoon with time for a swim. As a few of us were lounging on the rocks, I heard a muffled gasp from one of my crew mates (selfish crew mates--you know who you are Jon) and noticed that he disappeared into a crevice along the shoreline. Another quickly followed with never a word to the rest of us. My curiosity piqued, I went to investigate and found the two of them guzzling beer just as fast as they could. The cans were completely barren of paint as they had been floating in a small eddy and bumping against the rocks. I arrived just in time to grab the last one. I may have said something to the others, but by then it was mostly empty...

As it turns out, a group of rafters had left a six pack for an attractive USFS employee, and she had left them in the river. And she would have enjoyed them, too, if not for the tinkling sound that only a beer can makes as it bobs in shallow water. Now THAT was a pretty good day...

So, where did you enjoy your best beer?

 

[Blank]

About 35 years ago I took my wife?s boss on an elk hunt in the Middle Fork area up behind Callis. We hunted hard all day, and ended up out of water about noon. Continued to hunt the rest of the day, and got back at dark. Went straight to the cooler and plunged my hand in, pulling out an ice cold beer. Popped it open and drained the entire thing without stopping! Looked over at my companion (who was LDS), and he said ?Was that as good as it looked?? When I said Yes, he just said Damn, and did the same thing with a Fanta Orange!! He said it was the only time he ever missed having a beer!! We still laugh about that today.