Adventures in the Wind Rivers

Episode 8.


Our exciting conclusion, well exciting for us anyway! We had just spent seven grueling days backpacking across 30 miles of some of the roughest county in the United States. The dream destination of thousands of anglers and other crazy backpackers. Home to the infamous Wind River Golden Trout, not the puny ones the people's republic of California keeps locked up in the Kern river drainage. I am talking about the monsters that still prowl the lakes and streams of the winds. Greg caught a nice one, but lost it before a picture could be taken and Coltin may have caught one also. We will have our revenge, perhaps not this year but next for sure. I have already began making battle plans and I will devote this winter to getting myself into better shape.

I awoke to find that everyone else was already emerging from heir tents and we made quick work of camp. We were on the trail right at 7 am. The boys had their warp drives engaged and we struggled to keep up!

Crossing the outlet, along the way out.

Sunrise over Miller as we were leaving!

Lousy fishing but a beautiful lake!

They sure dislike waiting for us at every trail junction.

One last look back at the trail we had just burned up!

Can we please go?

About time you guys showed up! They covered 3.8 miles in just over an hour!

Even Dawnette beat Greg and I back.

What do you mean we have to wait until you get back?

Greg, Trevyn, Garrick and I took the car and flew down to Pinedale. Greg spoke with Tressa and she was just outside of town. I left them next to the Forest Service office and boogied back up for the rest of the Chargers. The entire shuttling process took about and hour and Greg had doughnuts waiting for us when we met back up with them. Greg is the man! We loaded up the vehicles and hit the Wrangler Café for breakfast. Wow what a difference the thought freshly cooked food makes to your outlook. While waiting for our food Greg and Tressa went to check the truck at the repair facility. Since they were unable to determine the problem with the engine there was no charge. After breakfast we loaded back into the cars and headed for home. As for Greg's truck he came back with a trailer and brought it back home. According to him the trip back from Pinedale was plagued with flat tires and other assorted problems. As of the final draft of this blog his truck was fixed and it appears that is was the wiring harness for his fuel injectors. Glad it all worked out for him!

This was quite the adventure, I was privileged enough to spend an amazing weak with a five terrific kids and two great friends. The miles were long and the aches were deep and I can't wait to do it again.

Keep your boots laces tight!

Ryan

Adventures in the Wind Rivers

Episode 7

Friday, one more day left. After the monster storm had passed, I awoke around 6 am and just laid there in my sleeping bag contemplating life, love, and the fact I was nuts for wanting to punish my body by hiking 30 miles into a remote wilderness with a 50lb pack. Ah well, I guess I am crazy, because I didn't want to leave. I know most of the kids and Dawnette wanted nothing more than to go home, but I really wanted to stay. After about thirty minutes of just lying there, nature's call was beginning to drown out all of my other thoughts. I scrambled out of the tent and I was amazed at the amount of water on the rain cover. The rain was brutal last night but the skies were clear! Nothing was in the sky, nothing not even a contrail from a high flying plane. The greatest part of this particular morning was the mist, it was completely blanketing the area around us and the waterfall, sorry no picture, the camera was in the tent and I wasn't going to get any more of that cold water on my back, by climbing back into the tent. Even with a picture it would have been hard to capture the beauty of that morning.

Morning like these are one of the main reasons I enjoy backpacking, there has to be a reason for putting myself through this. While I was waiting for everyone to get up, I just sat on a large boulder and scribbled my thoughts down in the same spiral note book I dragged with us all over the Winds.

Everyone eventually emerged from their tents and we choked down our second to last breakfast of the trip. We broke camp and began planning our exit strategy, which included a lesson in off trail navigation and a little bush whacking!

I did manage a few videos on this trip, here is one of the Pole Creek waterfall. Sorry for the quality, it seems that they want you to upload videos, but they can't handle big files so they degrade the quality!

 

 

Our plan was to hike around the south eastern shore of 1000 island and up the inlet to an unnamed lake above. It wasn't more than a mile, but a little tough with weight on your back. We bid a Farewell to 1000 Island lake and off we went.

 

There isn't one thousand islands at this lake so I am not sure why it's called 1000 island lake. I would have gone with Italian vinaigrette or Ranch, personally.

 

 



We made it to the no named lake above 1000 Island and ran into a scout troop from Ogden, one of the leaders works with Dawnette at ORMC. Quite a small world, it seams there are other crazy scout leaders in Northern Utah! While she was talking to them we decided to do a little fishing.

This lake had quite a few patches of lily pads, so lets refer to it as lily lake.

Even Russell got in to the action and caught his biggest fish of the trip, after a week of small brook trout, these were huge!

We fished for a little while and Dawnette managed to procure some trail mix, snack bars and candy from her colleague. She was quite excited to have something other tan Mountain house to eat! We continued our backpacking adventure and negotiated over hill and dale to the next lake, Middle Sweeney.

This is a strange site, below is a circle of  trees that are all dead. Greg and I guessed that lightning hit in the center of these trees and killed them.

Here's a mushroom for you, a big mushroom!

Middle Sweeney.

We had lunch and threw a couple lures and caught absolutely nothing. We decided that if the fishing stunk here we were going to move on to the next lake. Heading to the next lake would put us two miles closer to the trailhead, so we hit the trail again.

Along the way we ran into these remnants of a small cabin. I am guessing it belonged to someone named Sweeney.

One last look back at Sweeney.

We arrived at Miller lake and set camp near the outlet, Greg and I took advantage of having Dawnette with us again and hit the water. One fish was caught but we had fun. Here's a few pictures.

Greg took a few of me.

 I almost look like a professional angler! A boy can dream can't he?

After walking the whole lake we came back to camp and found that Russell had made fire. We teased everyone when we arrived that since we were only four miles from the trailhead, Greg and I were going for a burger and would be back later. They didn't think it was very funny! After dinner we did a roses and thorns for the trip and discussed the adventure we had just lived the last seven days. Everyone was anxious to get back to the car and we all were having dreams of eating a hot pizza. I suggested we get up very early and get out of there, no one seemed too excited about the early part.

Tune in next time for our exciting conclusion...