Campers have frightening experience in the Marble Mountains Wilderness witnessed in Siskiyou County, California

Open Map

This was summer, 1977, and I lived in Arcata, California working as a volunteer Botanist for Six Rivers National Forest. I was helping out a graduate student at Humboldt State University with his Master's Project (we studied wildlife and plants associated with freshwater ponds in the forest near Willow Creek). One weekend, my girlfiend and I drove up to the Salmon River to go camping. Its a remote area; it seemed that most people up that way were either miners along the river or fire crews. Near Forks of Salmon (town) we stopped and camped at a pullout near the mouth of the Little North Fork. The next day, we hiked up the stream, went swimming, (even saw a black bear on the trail) and later drove home. The following morning (Monday) my coworkers came to pick me up for the week's work, but I realized while packing that I was missing the telephoto lens to my camera. I remembered using it on the Little North Fork photographing a frog. Figuring I had laid it by the stream and forgotten it,...