Wind River Range Day 2: Chutes and Ladders

I slept in relatively late on the second day of my backpacking trip in the Wind River Range and got on the trail around 10 AM. I continued to work my way out of the valley that I had hiked up the day before and eventually came to an amazing land of alpine meadows. The wildflowers in the morning were simply stunning:



As I continued, the scene became more and more open, rugged, and ridiculously beautiful. Ludacrisly beautiful. The high alpine practically nudges the peaks only a couple of hundred vertical above the basin. At some point I dropped my pack and bagged a random unknown peak. It was there.

I continued my merry way through the alpine in an incredibly cheery mood when my first tactical mistake was made. I'm relatively used to the trails in the NorthEast that romp their way over peaks, but most of the high points around this area are too cliffy for trails; I had managed to practically mentally flip the up/down hiking of the rest of the day in my mind. What I thought was going to be a steep valley became a mountain pass:



I would continue down to that little Lake (way the heck down there) where I would see another bull moose tromping away from me. It was 3:30 and I discovered that I had only gone 3.5 miles out of my projected 11 or 12 for the day. I had stopped so frequently to take pictures and bask in the views that I was going stupidly slow. Not only that, I had another flip where I expected to go DOWN a valley where my direction would actually go UP the valley. It was time to crank on the gas. But I want to take piiiiiicturess......

I hiked hard up the valley for about 3 miles before coming to a junction where I turned West into a region known as No Name Lakes (most of them actually have names). I was back above treeline (with a few pine tree exceptions) and climbed in and out of what felt like dozens of little basin with random lakes (probably more like five).



It felt like the lakes would never end when finally I came to Palmer Lake and decided to call it a day (ok, it was getting dark and I was exhausted).

I settled into my bivy only to watch lightning across the mountain ridge. I had to get my head around this.... If it rained, I would probably get soaked and the lightning made me think too hard about wildfires (a serious issue...) Finally I dozed off after another indescribable day.

Wind River Range

Last weekend was pretty uber. This Tuesday was Pioneer Day (in short, the day the Morman posse arrived in the Salt Lake Valley and decided to chill here) so I was off work and snagged a vacation day on Monday to procure a four day weekend.

I had wanted to check out the Yellowstone/Grand Teton area for a while and got some good information on a three-day backpacking loop hike in the Wind River Range. This range isn't actually in the National Parks, but it's on the same ridge (the Continental Divide) and meant I wouldn't have to deal with permits or hordes of people.

Day 1:

I set off for Pinedale, Wyoming and the trailhead; driving through Wyoming was interesting, it's really pretty flat and filled with small towns until you hit the mountains. And I mean REAL small towns. Most of these places had less than 500 people and I couldn't help but wonder what they do for a living (I hypothesize the answer may be cattle ranch stuff).

Somewhere along the drive I discovered I had no pot to boil water. This means my freeze dried dinners would be... freeze dried... and my oatmeal would be dry too. I stopped in Pinedale and picked up a pot. A random lucky close call.

I took off from the trailhead after registering and all that. There are grizzly and brown bears in the wilderness and signs declared this in a way that made me think I was guaranteed to get eaten. A couple miles later, I passed this on the trail:



Shnikeys... Hmmmmmmm.... Well...... Ok.

My first day was spent mostly working my way up a creek drainage that was absolutely beautiful. You forget how much mileage you can cover in one day and I was surprised at how far back in the canyon I was getting.



I saw not one, but three moose along that river. One of which was a bull (male), these dudes are big and scary. We had a classic moment of "Looking-At-Me-Looking-At-You" before deciding that we were friends and not food (phew).



I started the climb out of the valley that night and found a campsite along a stream on a little bluff overlooking the valley. In an effort to cut some weight, I hadn't brought a tent and was instead using a bivy sack (sort of like a waterproof cocoon for your sleeping bag) and a tarp. Sleeping with the sunset and under the stars was magnificent.



I'll post day two and three in the next couple days...

Pfeifferhorn

Aye! I'm sort of frustrated with not updating this... but I've been one busy dude!

Two weekends ago I went on a hiking trip up a peak in the Wasatch range called the Pfeifferhorn. I explained my plans to some of my co-workers at the bar on Friday and Greg agreed to join me. He'd been thinking about the peak for a while and it was a good way to group up. The Pfeif doesn't have a trail to the top so it requires a bit of navigation and a lot of boulder scrambling so two is probably better for safety.

We met up at 7 AM and begin the ascent. The first three or four miles were straightforward on a trail to Red Pine Lake. After Red Pine we began the scramble up to a ridge. The views down into the lake were pretty awesome:




Eventually we found the ridge and a quick jaunt got us to the summit cone proper:



Our ascent route was that sort of left gully almost dead center in this picture. The climbing was pretty good and the views would clearly be rewarding.



The way down was tough on the feet as the boulders were not forgiving... The lake and real trail were quite a welcome sign...

Greg is training for the Wasatch 100 which is a run covering 100 miles (naturally) of rugged mountain trails in one body killing day. So he decided to run the rest of the way down to train and was considering doing another run back up another trail... schnikeys...

I went the chill route and opted to hang out by the lake and relax and enjoy the mountains. The wildflowers are out and are pretty awesome; I enjoyed them on the way down:



Rock steady!

Ah, the 4th of July.... was days ago....

I visited New York and the family for the weekend and half of the week until the 4th of July. It was good to see family including Aunts/Uncles/Grandparents I only get to see a couple of times a year.

We did the usual, a lot of relaxing, beaching, boating etc. I waterskied a couple times and wish I could have more. Waterskiing is a great outdoor sport for it's utter pointlessness. Hikers, bikers, canoers, etc. all use their sports to travel and have historic adventurous roots. Organized sports develop teamwork and strategy. Waterskiing is just the sheer glory of racing around getting dragged behind a boat. Bliss.

We also checked out the Sandy Creek County Fair. An event for the highly cultured, the demolition derby was awesome as always:




Carnage! I think this was following the firefighters righting a flipped car. The flipped car continued in the demolition heat like a champ.